War Thunder Devs Revert Economic Changes After Community Feedback and Review Bombing

mmorpg.com:

War Thunder’s community has responded with a wave of negativity to Gaijin Entertainment’s proposed economic changes, including mass review bombing. The developerreverted the changes but promises that the next attempt will incorporate community feedback more closely.

The list of changes would have made certain vehicles cost more, tie things like free repair time to economic rank, change requirementsfor certain research, and otherwise, make it very hard to be successful without paying. Tying something to economic rank meant that it would be the vehicle rank and its position in the tech tree that determined cost fort free repair time and also crew replenishment and additional changes.

While it's true that every free to play game has to make money for everything from  paying the developers to running the servers, many thought that these changes crossed the line. Response was quick, with many review bombing the game on Steam and sending its overall reviews Into the mostly “negative category”. W ar Thunder devs responded to the situation, saying that:

“We have been following the feedback closely and we see that whilst some players generally agree with us, we also see that there are players who feel that these changes are not helpful to them. For this reason, we have decided not to implement the economy changes from the 16th of May.”

The team followed with two devblogs, one explaining how progression in F2P games needs to work, and on “review bombing as a method of communication”. Instead of doing that, they are asking that people share their feedback directly, or in forums or other spaces since some don’t read  review texts and just look at that rating. The second blog discusses plans for a next, more transparent