The launch for much-buzzed-about multiplayer battle royale game Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout has not been smooth. Game developers had to shut down servers early on launch day, Tuesday, August 4 because of overload, which caused a deluge of review bombs from unhappy players and happy players alike.
Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, developed by Mediatonic and published by Devolver Digital, was a surprise hit on Twitch this summer with two different betas, so there was a lot of attention for its launch, especially since it’s a free game on PlayStation Plus in August.
Problems started early on launch day, with the game’s official Twitter account relaying some bad news in the morning.
“We’re going to switch off matchmaking for 30 mins so that we can BEEF the servers up to MAXIMUM BEEF. We’ve basically skyrocketed right past our ‘absolute highest number of expected players for the entire day,'” the account said. “We just need 30 mins to brace ourselves and we should be [fine].”
This news did not sit well with fans, who commented more than 1,000 times on the news on Twitter.
“I played my first round and ended up winning my first round and I was so proud of myself, but the servers went down and it ended up not counting. Please reward me with a win. I didn’t even get any XP…” Twitter user Zache40484642 said.
Players were so angry that they went to Steam to express their displeasure. The game’s official Twitter posted again.
“We’re currently being review-bombed on Steam… We’re working really hard to get running smoothly for SO MANY players! We know it’s super frustrating, but if you could hold off from negatively reviewing – Until you get chance to play the game, it would really help us out,” the company tweeted at 1:30 p.m. ET after continuing to deal with server issues.
A lot of the reviews on steam mentioned the connection error, with one going as far as calling the game a “connection error simulator.”
“… I literally tried for over and hour to play a game I COULD’NT EVEN JOIN 1?! Trash game, if you thinking of buying it don’t do it and buy something else or spend it on robux. Trust me you won’t get into a single game,” one reviewer said.
It seemed like the bad review bombs were going to overwhelm the game’s score, but then something else happened. About an hour after the tweet with the review bombs, the company tweeted again.
“Wow, you are seriously the best! You’ve positive-bombed our review score back to Mostly Positive! I didn’t know that was a thing? Thank you so much for your belief in what we’re building here! Hopefully server issues will continue to improve! Community of The Year 2020.”
As of this writing, there were about 1,500 negative reviews and 3,000 positive ones.
