Steams reviews have a much higher weight in regard to a games success than any other form of review. The new Battlefront games came to Steam way later, when EA Play got introduced and a big chunk of EAs exclusive library moved to Steam. By that point the Battlefront games got all patched up and were somewhat beloved. But a native Steam release like BF2042 was met with harsh criticism, which ultimately let to the game’s failure. There is a reason why AAA studios like Blizzard, EA, Ubisoft or Microsoft prefer not to release their games on Steam and each have their own launchers. The lack of transparency is also why the Epic Games Store is an attractive alternative for publishers. I’d like to think that Steam has the most solid review system one could ask for, something that other launchers are severely lacking. An “overwhelmingly positive” status for a game is an automatic success and everything below “mixed” is nearly a death sentence. Even games that are successfull, like the recent CoD titles start out “negative” or “mixed” on Steam release. But that doesn’t matter anymore, because the publisher already got his money from their own launcher and console releases.

I have never even heard of anyone reviewing BF2 for the movies. Everything I saw and heard were for loot boxes, the levelling system, the guns, skins, or pride and accomplishment.

Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about

EA BFII released before TLJ (Nov 17, 2017 vs Dec 15, 2017). And the controversy for BFII happened before it’s release, more than a month before anybody had the chance to see TLJ. On top of that, because of the extreme amounts of negative press, all paid loot boxes were removed from BFII within like a week of its release, and all future content would be entirely free. So while sometimes review bombing may be people clamoring about ‘wokeness’ or just ineffective, BFII is not the example to use as it’s probably the singular hardest pivot in game direction in modern AAA due to player outcry.