Outbound was one of the surprise winners of Steam’s February Next Fest, racking up positive endorsements from people who played its demo and recently earning over 1.5 million wishlists on Valve’s storefront. But the full version of the Early Access cozy sim has left some players disappointed, and that was before the developer started asking some users to change their negative Steam reviews.
Out May 11, Outbound is a co-op survival sim that trades a grim and dangerous wilderness for the cozy and colorful fantasy of modern van life. Unfortunately, its Early Access journey is off to a rough start on Steam. Mixed reviews immediately started pouring in about the game’s abbreviated length and its survival mechanics feeling shallow. Some were miffed by the $25 price tag, while others simply felt “meh” about the whole thing.
That familiar launch reception would have put Outbound in the company of thousands of other Steam games if not for what the developers at Square Glade Games did next. As shared in a screenshot on the Steam subreddit, the studio at one point responded to one of the negative reviews with an offer to refund the player’s purchase and a request that they delete their negative review from the game’s Steam page.
“Sorry to hear that Outbound is not your cup of tea,” the response read. “But that is of course totally understandable. No hard feelings. Feel free to send a support request to the Steam support to get a full refund on your purchase. If you do so, we would appreciate if you would update or remove your negative review. Thanks a lot.”
That request rippled through the Steam community until players started writing additional negative reviews on Outbound‘s page precisely because of what the developers had done. “Negative reviews exist for a reason. It’s not a good look when developers ask players to change or remove criticism instead of addressing the actual issues being raised,” one read. “Reviews help consumers decide what they’re spending their money on, and trying to silence criticism only damages trust. It’s also frustrating to see the developer mainly respond to negative reviews while largely ignoring the people leaving positive ones. If you want a strong community, show appreciation to everyone supporting the game, not just the people you want to convince to change their opinion.”
Now Square Glade Games has tried to de-escalate the situation by apologizing for its original breach of Steam etiquette in the game’s discussion section. “First and foremost, we truly apologize for how our recent replies have come across,” the developers wrote. “We understand that our communication has felt wrong to many of you, and for that, we are genuinely sorry.”
They continued:
To be completely honest, the 24 hours since the launch have been incredibly overwhelming. While we started with a lot of excitement, the reality of a launch brings a lot of pressure and intense emotions. Looking back, we realize that the way we communicated was not the right approach, and we didn’t handle the situation with the care it deserved.
We’ve been working around the clock to investigate the issues you’ve been reporting and to get fixes out as quickly as possible. Regarding the comments that we claimed an issue was fixed when it wasn’t: please know that we have been replying based on the best of our knowledge at that moment. In many cases, we believed a fix was fully deployed and functional, and it is never our intention to misinform our players.
Square Glade Games said they would no longer ask anyone to change their negative reviews and will focus on addressing the complaints raised in some of the reviews instead. Over 40,000 people played Outbound in the 24 hours since it released, and the team said it’s prioritizing multiplayer stability, UI improvements, and bug fixes for its next patch.