Take-Two Interactive, the publisher of many popular franchises, including GTA and NBA 2K, has said in a conversation with investors that "review bombing" has a negative impact on the business. This was reported by 80 Level.
According to the statement, "review bombing" campaigns can "result in additional advertising and marketing costs and reputational damage." Of course, the most important thing for Take-Two Interactive, as well as for other publishers, is that such campaigns can lose players and therefore profit.
"Review bombing" is a way for players to express their dissatisfaction with a product by publishing many negative reviews of the game on platforms. This mostly happens on Steam.
Most often, such campaigns are carried out against games that have terrible optimization and aggressive microtransactions, or, in some cases, when a certain community is unhappy with what is shown in the game.
Take-Two Interactive has also already had the opportunity to get acquainted with this practice, in particular with GTA: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition, the release of which caused irritation among almost all players who bought it.