Following Review Bombing Campaign, War Thunder Removes "Steam" Icon From Game's Webpage

It's been a week or so for War Thunder. The strategy warfare title had announced changes to the game's economy by instituting what they called a "rank-based economy."

Now, not to get too into the weeds here for non-War Thunder players, the short version is while some of the changes planned by Gaijin Entertainment were fine, a few drew the ire of the fan base. In particular, the shifting of a few items to be purchasable by "Silver Lions", an in-game currency which can also be exchanged for using the game's cash shop currency "Golden Eagles."

Players took this as a massive shift (arguably yet another shift) towards pay-to win and took to review bombing the game on Steam...and I mean PUMMELING it.

Gaijin, for its part, tried to explain how important changes to the economy in the F2P title were, commented on how review bombing can hurt a game to the point that it closes, and said that review bombing wouldn't cause changes.

Short version: It did. As the overall score sank (and it now sits at Mixed overall), Gaijin rolled back the changes but promises they will still need to implement economy changes and wants player feedback on that via a survey.

Here's the last interesting bit now that you're caught up. Here's the War Thunder website today.

Here's the site just a month ago.

Notice anything? Wait, you probably read the headline, so yeah, you knew right what to look for here. Yep, Gaijin Entertainment went ahead and removed the Steam logo from the list of platforms thus ensuring the Streisand Effect would go into, well, full effect... I mean, here we are writing about it. Note: Those aren't hyperlinks on the official site, it's literally just a list of available platforms and the Steam logo was wiped.

Funnily enough, it was only a few years ago that War Thunder's CEO was bemoaning the game being available on Steam and said they wouldn't have launched War Thunder on Steam in its "current condition" at the time.

Obviously the game is still playable via Steam and while some players think it could leave the platform, I think that's highly unlikely. This just seems like a marketing thing. If a prospective player comes to the game's actual site and you can download the game from the site itself, why include an icon that could cause people to go to Steam instead and see the massive amount of negative reviews?

Not saying I agree, just saying I can see someone thinking along those lines.