It's been 15 years since the first 'review-bomb', when, in 2008, the anti-piracy protection applied to alien life-sim Spore saw it blasted by a wave of negative sentiment on Amazon. That coordinated backlash has set the tone for dozens, if not hundreds of similar efforts in the intervening decade and a half. Every protest draws from the same playbook, the backlash almost always centered around the same few points of contention: performance issues, unpopular business practices like paid mods or DRM; 'politics'.
Almost every review-bomb follows these same patterns – so why has it taken so long for some of the biggest review sites in the world to do anything about them?
