UPDATE: War Thunder removed Steam from its Website after Review Bombing

[AquaUselessGod]

22/05/23 UPDATE: War Thunder removes Steam from its featured page on their website.

 

 

21/05/23 UPDATE:

 

20/05/23 UPDATE: Creative Director of Gaijin Entertainment, Kirill Yudintsev, has spoken out about the incident.

Summary

War Thunder developers recently introduced a slew of in game economy changes that turned the game from "Free-to-play" to "Pay-to-play". The change has been reverted due to massive backlashes from the Forums, Reddit, Russian VK and Chinese Bilibili and has also created a massive review bomb on Steam for the first time. 

 

In-depth

War Thunder has been on the path of making it harder for normal players to play the game without paying for a decent premium vehicle (that usually cost 60-70 USD), with multiple changes over the course of 10 years that continually made repairing vehicles a lot more expensive without the efforts of improving upon in game rewards. The complaints have existed since 2017 onwards, but it wasn't until only today where the community have had enough and decided to review bomb the game on Steam (as of writing it has nearly 7k negative reviews, up from the usual tens of negatives), while reddit, Russian VK and Chinese Bilibili isn't slowing down on the complains, some even suggesting a boycott for up to 2 weeks.

 

Quotes

Quote

"The recently proposed economy changes, according to calculations, were on average helpful to players as they reduced the repair costs, and the total amount of Research Points for most vehicles." Forum post by Community Manager

 

My thoughts

 Broadly speaking, this wasn't the first time they've made changes to the in game economy, and also not the first time slowly reducing rewards for even just playing the game. However, this IS the first time that they've made a massive change that it quite literally snapped the entire community, hence the current backlash.

 

Sources

Forum post on the reverted changes

The planned economy changes
The google sheet of all the changes (hard to understand if you don't read between the lines)

Reddit post on the start of the Review bombing
Steam review page of War Thunder
NEW Creative Director's response to the incident

NEW Blog post stating on the revision of the in game economy

Edited May 23, 2023 by AquaUselessGod
Updated information

[OhioYJ]

I got to say as soon as I see "Free to Play" I'm out. These kind of shenanigans are to be expected.

[bcredeur97]

war thunder would of been so good as a paid game

[Brooksie359]

34 minutes ago, OhioYJ said:

I got to say as soon as I see "Free to Play" I'm out. These kind of shenanigans are to be expected.

I wouldn't say free to play means the monetization is predatory. I mean look at fortnite as a really good example of a free to play model that has 0 pay to win in the game. Same with league of legends and valorant. I feel like free to play gets a bad reputation due to so many free to play models being basically pay to win. It's ironic because clearly free to play with games like fortnite, valoran and league make more than enough money and don't have horrible monetization so I am not sure why more companies don't go that route. 

[DrMacintosh]

Is this really tech new? WarThunder has always been very difficult to progress in. I stopped playing regularly about 8 years ago, the process of unlocking new aircraft was not fast. 

[AnonymousGuy]

34 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

I wouldn't say free to play means the monetization is predatory. I mean look at fortnite as a really good example of a free to play model that has 0 pay to win in the game. Same with league of legends and valorant. I feel like free to play gets a bad reputation due to so many free to play models being basically pay to win. It's ironic because clearly free to play with games like fortnite, valoran and league make more than enough money and don't have horrible monetization so I am not sure why more companies don't go that route. 

Fortnite is "technically" no competitive advantage but the nerd answer is there's certain skins and gliders that are heavily leaned on by pro players because they give an advantage.  Everyone plays as female characters because they're lower volume than the male characters even though the hitboxes are the same.   

[Arika]

they should just hurry up and make a microtraction of:

Price: $100

Description: Leak classified military documents.

[Brooksie359]

1 hour ago, AnonymousGuy said:

Fortnite is "technically" no competitive advantage but the nerd answer is there's certain skins and gliders that are heavily leaned on by pro players because they give an advantage.  Everyone plays as female characters because they're lower volume than the male characters even though the hitboxes are the same.   

If you are so into fortnite that you need those small advantages I don't see why you wouldn't just pay a little bit. Also I doubt it makes a significant difference which is my point vs let's say most other free to play games there are clear advantages for paying. 

[jagdtigger]

3 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

so I am not sure why more companies don't go that route

Because $$$$, and they want lots of it. They dont want an ok profit, they want huge and ASAP......

[Stahlmann]

I've been playing War Thunder on and off for the last 5 years or so. I even paid for premium for a time period of about 5 months. In that time period i've noticed that the game is ineed tailored for premium progression. But up until tier 4 everything works pretty well when playing free. You need about 20-30 battles worst-case to unlock a new tank, and individual tanks are maxed out in 10 decent battles or so. Progression is still fast enough to feel significant after every battle.

 

However, i noticed a few things over the years:

- After about half a year of inactivity all my ingame currency was set back to 0, including 2.4 million of the free currency (which is a lot), and a few bucks worth of premium currency.

- Now i struggle to earn enough of the free currency to even buy the tanks and modifications i unlocked free-to-play

- Once you hit Tier 4, you will hit a wall when playing free. Progression is suddenly extremely slow and you will need 100+ battles to max out even one single tank, even more to research a new one

- Additionally, game balance got way worse over the years with the added bloat that came with the newer playable nations like China, Sweden, Israel, Italy, etc.

- Many of the newer nations have a bunch of reused vehicles, not even adding anything new, but throwing off game balance even further giving team combinations access to tanks they shouldn't have, which results in insanely overpowered teams and one-sided battles.

- Also in terms of gameplay it get's increasingly less fun in the higher tiers. Most war thunder youtubers often use the phrase "low tier is fun tier"

- Pretty much all tank battles end with total domination of one team. There are no close battles. Either you get overrun and spawn camped or the same is happening to your enemy team.

- Map design is horrible, practically inviting spawn camping as soon as your team is winning

- Air planes are an absolute pain in the ass when playing tank battles. It's so fun being revenge-bombed by the guy you just killed without any counterplay potential.

- There is a defined range to what tiers you can face, but it feels like 9 out of 10 times I'm playing as the lowest tier vehicle in the battle

- They constantly add new vehicles in high-tier, giving the illusion of constant change even though these vehicles are practically unreachable for 90% of their players.

 

All in all i can attest to the game progessively getting worse over the years. And i can certainly see Gaijin to go down that road even further. That's especially sad since the game underneath it all is pretty good. The realistic vehicle handling and damage behavior of the tanks ingame is unmatched even by rivals like World of Tanks, which feels a lot more casual. The amount of different vehicles in the game each with their own damage models and the level of detail is just astonishing.

 

Again we see an example of devs creating a problem and then selling the solution. This happens with practically every free-to-play title and is the main reason why i mostly just don't bother with them, and why i will probably stop playing War Thunder again. Unless they lose a significant amount of players (especially the paying ones), they will not change their behaviour to the better.

[Brooksie359]

1 hour ago, jagdtigger said:

Because $$$$, and they want lots of it. They dont want an ok profit, they want huge and ASAP......

Ah yes because historically fortnite didn't make much money using that business model. I guess maybe they aren't confident their game would be popular enough to make good money that way? I guess maybe they figured out it would be easier to just make the game pay to win and have a couple of whales give them the majority of the money vs trying to create a large player base that would spend money on in game cosmetics. Granted I do think fortnite has done a really good job making items in their shop really appealing. 

[AquaUselessGod]

35 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

I've been playing War Thunder on and off for the last 5 years or so. I even paid for premium for a time period of about 5 months. In that time period i've noticed that the game is ineed tailored for premium progression. But up until tier 4 everything works pretty well when playing free. You need about 20-30 battles worst-case to unlock a new tank, and individual tanks are maxed out in 10 decent battles or so. Progression is still fast enough to feel significant after every battle.

 

However, i noticed a few things over the years:

- After about half a year of inactivity all my ingame currency was set back to 0, including 2.4 million of the free currency (which is a lot), and a few bucks worth of premium currency.

- Now i struggle to earn enough of the free currency to even buy the tanks and modifications i unlocked free-to-play

- Once you hit Tier 4, you will hit a wall when playing free. Progression is suddenly extremely slow and you will need 100+ battles to max out even one single tank, even more to research a new one

- Additionally, game balance got way worse over the years with the added bloat that came with the newer playable nations like China, Sweden, Israel, Italy, etc.

- Many of the newer nations have a bunch of reused vehicles, not even adding anything new, but throwing off game balance even further giving team combinations access to tanks they shouldn't have, which results in insanely overpowered teams and one-sided battles.

- Also in terms of gameplay it get's increasingly less fun in the higher tiers. Most war thunder youtubers often use the phrase "low tier is fun tier"

- Pretty much all tank battles end with total domination of one team. There are no close battles. Either you get overrun and spawn camped or the same is happening to your enemy team.

- Map design is horrible, practically inviting spawn camping as soon as your team is winning

- Air planes are an absolute pain in the ass when playing tank battles. It's so fun being revenge-bombed by the guy you just killed without any counterplay potential.

- There is a defined range to what tiers you can face, but it feels like 9 out of 10 times I'm playing as the lowest tier vehicle in the battle

- They constantly add new vehicles in high-tier, giving the illusion of constant change even though these vehicles are practically unreachable for 90% of their players.

 

All in all i can attest to the game progessively getting worse over the years. And i can certainly see Gaijin to go down that road even further. That's especially sad since the game underneath it all is pretty good. The realistic vehicle handling and damage behavior of the tanks ingame is unmatched even by rivals like World of Tanks, which feels a lot more casual. The amount of different vehicles in the game each with their own damage models and the level of detail is just astonishing.

 

Again we see an example of devs creating a problem and then selling the solution. This happens with practically every free-to-play title and is the main reason why i mostly just don't bother with them, and why i will probably stop playing War Thunder again. Unless they lose a significant amount of players (especially the paying ones), they will not change their behaviour to the better.

Hopefully this round of review bombing can change them, but something tells me that wont happen anyway

[OhioYJ]

8 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

I wouldn't say free to play means the monetization is predatory. I mean look at fortnite as a really good example of a free to play model that has 0 pay to win in the game. Same with league of legends and valorant. I feel like free to play gets a bad reputation due to so many free to play models being basically pay to win. It's ironic because clearly free to play with games like fortnite, valoran and league make more than enough money and don't have horrible monetization so I am not sure why more companies don't go that route. 

Don't pretend Fortnite is some sort of White Knight here.  They are just predatory in a different way. It's more psychological. Look how much FOMO, limited time only stuff is in it. I don't play it (again free to play, but my son does). I wouldn't be surprised if Epic was behind the "fashion show" content stuff that goes on that pushes all their latest skins on YouTube by the larger creators. They do everything they can to create new "whales".

 

You can bet if everyone was just playing for "free" they would be doing more obviously shady stuff. 

[Ydfhlx]

8 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Is this really tech new? WarThunder has always been very difficult to progress in

Yeah. The economy is so bad, that you literally loose in-game money just by playing most vehicles. And they made it much worse in this update.

[Brooksie359]

4 hours ago, OhioYJ said:

Don't pretend Fortnite is some sort of White Knight here.  They are just predatory in a different way. It's more psychological. Look how much FOMO, limited time only stuff is in it. I don't play it (again free to play, but my son does). I wouldn't be surprised if Epic was behind the "fashion show" content stuff that goes on that pushes all their latest skins on YouTube by the larger creators. They do everything they can to create new "whales".

 

You can bet if everyone was just playing for "free" they would be doing more obviously shady stuff. 

So you are upset because they use sales tactics and advertising? I'm sorry but if that is the extent of what is in the game and there are no predatory pay to win or lootbox gambling mechanics then I would say they are doing pretty good. To tell a company to not use advertising and sales tactics to sell its cosmetics is sorta insane. I don't like these sales tactics as much as the next guy but to say that a company is predatory because they use them is sorta crazy tbh. Can fomo help make sales? Yes but that is under the assumption that you actually want what is being sold to begin with. It means you wanted the product but were going to wait until later to get it but now that you see it's going to be limited time you have a bit of sense of urgency which I get can make people make poor purchases but I wouldn't really call that predatory especially when looking at all the other tactics other games have like loot boxes and pay to win mechanics. 

[Brooksie359]

4 hours ago, OhioYJ said:

Don't pretend Fortnite is some sort of White Knight here.  They are just predatory in a different way. It's more psychological. Look how much FOMO, limited time only stuff is in it. I don't play it (again free to play, but my son does). I wouldn't be surprised if Epic was behind the "fashion show" content stuff that goes on that pushes all their latest skins on YouTube by the larger creators. They do everything they can to create new "whales".

 

You can bet if everyone was just playing for "free" they would be doing more obviously shady stuff. 

Also keep in mind that if epic was behind the fashion show stuff then that youtube content would have to have #ad in the title and other types of disclaimers or they could be in serious trouble with the FTC. And yes obviously for a free to play game to work you need people to be willing to buy in game items otherwise the model doesn't work. Ideally you make a game compelling enough with cosmetic items that are nice enough that people who like your game will buy them to not only get the cosmetic item but also support the game. I think the nice thing about these types of free to play games is it allows people to play the game and figure out if they like it or not before spending anything in game and you don't have to worry about not being competitive just because you didn't spend money. Also you dont have to spend money if you dont want to either. I play quite alot of valorant and havent spent a dime and same with league of legends but thaf is ok because there are people who do which keeps the game running for everyone to enjoy. Compare that to all of the 60 dollars half baked AAA games that come to you in what looks like an alpha state rather than a finished product with the dev team that they will "fix" it post launch and you can see why that free to play model is so popular. 

[OhioYJ]

9 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

So you are upset because they use sales tactics and advertising? I'm sorry but if that is the extent of what is in the game and there are no predatory pay to win or lootbox gambling mechanics then I would say they are doing pretty good. To tell a company to not use advertising and sales tactics to sell its cosmetics is sorta insane. I don't like these sales tactics as much as the next guy but to say that a company is predatory because they use them is sorta crazy tbh. Can fomo help make sales? Yes but that is under the assumption that you actually want what is being sold to begin with. It means you wanted the product but were going to wait until later to get it but now that you see it's going to be limited time you have a bit of sense of urgency which I get can make people make poor purchases but I wouldn't really call that predatory especially when looking at all the other tactics other games have like loot boxes and pay to win mechanics. 

I'm not knocking them necessarily, I'm just not saying they aren't innocent here either. I just wouldn't call them the good guys.  They "win" when people become "addicted" to their product. No different than a Casino. You have to "want" the product, but the win big if you are "addicted". 

[Shreyas1]

Its a shame because there really isn't anything else like warthunder either. If I want to play a somewhat arcade style vehicle combat game that allows you to play with aircraft and land vehicles there really isnt a good substitute right now.

13 hours ago, AquaUselessGod said:

Hopefully this round of review bombing can change them, but something tells me that wont happen anyway

Its not going to because ultimately there is no competition in the specific niche that warthunder occupies so they can do whatever they want

[Arokhantos]

Im shocked they did not remove it for review manipulation yet, they reward you for a positive review i believe, there was a topic for it on steam subreddit.

[Brooksie359]

5 hours ago, OhioYJ said:

I'm not knocking them necessarily, I'm just not saying they aren't innocent here either. I just wouldn't call them the good guys.  They "win" when people become "addicted" to their product. No different than a Casino. You have to "want" the product, but the win big if you are "addicted". 

I am not sure what you want them to do? Make a mildly enjoyable video game so that people won't get addicted? Also you can't compare this to casinos because there is a clear psychological reason why people get addicted to gambling and fortnite doesn't do loot boxes currently. At that point you could compare basically anything to a casino because basically anything can be addicting. I mean I knew someone who was addicted to running. 

[OhioYJ]

3 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

I am not sure what you want them to do? Make a mildly enjoyable video game so that people won't get addicted? Also you can't compare this to casinos because there is a clear psychological reason why people get addicted to gambling and fortnite doesn't do loot boxes currently. At that point you could compare basically anything to a casino because basically anything can be addicting. I mean I knew someone who was addicted to running. 

This whole comment is fair. I'm not a fan of the free to play model, live service, etc,  to any degree. I'd rather buy the game be done with it. Just charge upfront cost and be done with it. However, it likely wouldn't be as popular either.  Then again, look how many people buy the new COD every year..

[Brooksie359]

15 minutes ago, OhioYJ said:

This whole comment is fair. I'm not a fan of the free to play model, live service, etc,  to any degree. I'd rather buy the game be done with it. Just charge upfront cost and be done with it. However, it likely wouldn't be as popular either.  Then again, look how many people buy the new COD every year..

I don't see the issue with live service or free to pay models when done right. I do see an issue with one's that are pay to win or have loot boxes though. The saddest thing is I don't see many if at all games that you simply pay 60 bucks and get a good quality game. It's more like 60 dollars for a game that isn't done or of very poor quality because companies just want to spit out games even if they clearly could use extra time in the oven. Honestly the only games that I have bought that were of a decent quality and done were indie games as of recently. AAA games have been disappointing other than elden ring. 

[Birblover12]

3 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

fortnite doesn't do loot boxes currently.

Pretty sure in the "Save the World" gamemode they have a loot system where you can pay to open "pinatas" which drop an assortment of random loot items, unless they removed that recently (haven't touched the game in a LONG while).

[Brooksie359]

2 hours ago, Birblover12 said:

Pretty sure in the "Save the World" gamemode they have a loot system where you can pay to open "pinatas" which drop an assortment of random loot items, unless they removed that recently (haven't touched the game in a LONG while).

They removed that from the game for it being gambling which is a good thing. 

[AquaUselessGod]

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