Square Enix" Shadow of the Tomb Raider launched over a month ago. Although the title didn"t receive as much critical appreciation as its predecessors, it was still praised for its graphics, which will likely get another facelift when it adds support for real-time ray tracing offered by Nvidia"s RTX GPUs.
Right now, however, the game is currently getting review-bombed on Steam for going on sale too soon after launch.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider launched on PC and consoles on September 14 with an accompanying price tag of $59.99. However, fast-forward to today, and the AAA title already has a whopping 34% discount and is currently available for $39.59. This sale is part of Square Enix" week-long promotion that kicked off on October 16, and is scheduled to end in less than six hours.
Naturally, gamers who purchased the game at full price or pre-ordered it are angry that they had to pay $20 more just because they bought it within this timeframe.
Steam"s algorithms detected a spike in negative reviews between October 16-18, which coincides with the time that the sale began. Scrolling through recent reviews also cements the fact that most reviews are from disgruntled customers who bought the game close to the launch period and now feel betrayed by Square Enix" sale.
It is important to note that this isn"t the first time that the company has discounted one of its game so soon after launch. Rise of the Tomb Raider was released on February 9, 2016 on PC for $59.99 and was discounted to $47.99 less than a month after launch; on March 3, 2016. Similarly, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was discounted by 50% just three months after launch. However, this is the first time that the company has faced review-bombing on one of its titles for this reason.
That said, if you haven"t purchased Shadow of the Tomb Raider yet, but are interested in getting it, now is probably a good time to do so. The week-long promotion for the Standard, Digital Deluxe, and Croft editions of the game lasts for only about five more hours at the time of this writing.