For the third month in a row, Slay the Spire 2 is getting review-bombed on Steam. But what, I hear you ask, is the reason for it this time? Is there a new balance patch? Did they buff Doormaker again or something? No, unfortunately, the reason for most of today’s 2,525 (and counting) negative reviews is somehow much, much dumber; online chuds are mad that media critic and Feminist Frequency founder Anita Sarkeesian is listed in Slay the Spire 2’s credits as a “Consultant.”
Back in 2012, Sarkeesian raised just under $160,000 through a Kickstarter campaign to fund a YouTube series titled Tropes vs. Women in Video Games. It critiqued various aspects of gaming and its history through a feminist lens, pointing out uncomfortable truths that often went unchallenged in the male-dominated industry. The series, released in 2014, became one of the three inciting triggers for Gamergate, and has engendered unhinged levels of outrage and resentment in certain reactionary pockets of gaming ever since. Â
The latest evidence of that is how, over a decade later, every Tier 3 Asmongold subscriber heard the activation phrase “Anita Sarkeesian” on X this week after it was discovered, months after release, that she is listed as a “Consultant” in Slay the Spire 2’s credits. Apparently, these people shot up in their gaming chairs like the Winter Soldier and decided the most important thing in their lives was now boycotting the deckbuilding roguelike. Â
The reheated Gamergate leftovers on X first noticed Sarkeesian in the credits around May 5. Two days later, the Steam review rating for Slay the Spire 2 is down to 61 percent positive. Unlike the two previous waves of review bombs, which primarily stemmed from Steam accounts based in China, this new round of negative reviews is actually affecting the game’s score in multiple regions since the majority of complaints are written in English.
And, y’know, for all the grief I gave folks in China for review bombing the game, at least they’d actually been playing the game. A bunch of the new negative reviews on Slay the Spire 2 from May 7 appear to be from people who only bought it in the last 24 hours, seemingly just so they could leave a negative review before immediately refunding it. That’s not an exaggeration, by the way, as you can see from the image above.
So, how much impact did Sarkeesian’s consulting actually have on Slay the Spire 2? Surely if everyone is so mad, it’s at least over how her input allegedly changed the game, right? Nope. Of course not. Nobody except Mega Crit knows the answer to that, and even the anti-woke grifters have yet to point to anything in the deckbuilder they can pretend to take issue with. Likewise, we don’t know how much Slay the Spire 2’s other two credited consultants, David Von Derau and Tony Moore, impacted the game either, yet for some reason, the losers on X don’t seem to be mad at those two guys. I wonder why (spoiler alert: it’s because they’re men).
