Dota 2 Gets Review Bombed Again, This Time For Racist Comments From A Pro Team

Remember when the reveal of Artifact caused such a review-bombing of Dota 2 that it made Valve add charts to Steam pages so people could see if games had been recently review-bombed? Now Dota 2 is getting hammered again -- for acts that, while worse than an unwanted game, are something Valve has less control over.

Last week, two pro Dota 2 players used racist language to describe Chinese players. While GamesIndustry doesn't mention the specific slurs, they were apparently strong enough for at least one of those players to receive a "formal reprimand, as well as a maximum fine" from his team.

On Saturday, Valve issued a statement regarding the incidents. It states that "Valve will not tolerate racist language between pro players in any form," calling such language "damaging" and that it "belittles and demeans entire groups and makes them feel like they are not as important."

That hasn't been enough to stop the biggest review-bombing in Dota 2 history. As you can see on the game's Steam page, things really started picking up on Nov. 6, with 150 negative reviews, and peaked on the 10th, when 2,026 negatives were lodged. Overall, there have been 8,183 negative reviews of Dota 2 in November, and the month's not even half over yet. It's already more than the 7,826 negatives the game received in August 2017, the month Artifact was announced.

We're left to wonder if Valve will implement another new measure to try and "fix" user reviews, as it did back then. In any case, one thing's for sure: As much as we Westerners can band together to hoist the torches and pitchforks when we're upset about something gaming-related, the Chinese still outnumber us and can raise a whole lot more hell.