Review-bombing campaigns are often motivated by half-baked culture war "controversies" about trans characters, queer developers, or supposed mafias of liberal writing consultants bending multi-million dollar companies to their will. Last May, though, we saw a great example of the review bomb's utility in pushing back on a genuine consumer grievance: Helldivers 2's PlayStation Network sign-in requirement.
To be fair to Sony and Arrowhead, it was communicated from the start that such a requirement was meant to be implemented eventually, and at the time, the stakes didn't seem all that high. Many players pointed to the galling exclusion of gamers in countries that can access Steam but not PSN as a reason to resist the imposition, but Sony has largely surrendered its PSN on PC ambitions while still weirdly excluding those countries in Helldivers 2 and its other releases, and players in the global north don't seem too bothered these days.
The truth is that Sony has to win us over. There are too many good games on PC to acquiesce to being shackled to a service whose founding principle is charging players extra to go online with games, internet connections, and consoles they've already paid for. One that, 14 years ago, suffered one of the greatest cybersecurity disasters of the 21st century so far. We don't even know what happened to the PlayStation Network between February 7 and 8 yet or how thoroughly it may have been compromised—Sony still won't say. But after reporting on this absolute cluster as it happened, it's clear to me that mandatory sign-ins to extraneous "services" like the PlayStation Network aren't just an annoyance. They are an odious imposition to be avoided at all cost, with genuine risks to the consumer.
