I began playing Slay the Spire 2 shortly after my colleague wrote up a piece on how its phenomenal multiplayer makes it an early game of the year contender. Within an hour of starting it, I, too, was utterly hooked. In the time since, I have poured a whopping 40 hours into Slay the Spire 2, yet even after sinking that much time into the game, I can’t get over it. I adore how fast-paced, strategic, and immensely satisfying it is, regardless of if you’re playing solo or with friends. And that first time I hit the Spire and became aware of the greater gimmick at play? That’s definitely one of my favorite gaming moments of 2026 thus far.
However, my positive experience with the game and my colleague’s glowing words fail to reflect how Slay the Spire 2 is being received on Steam right now. Though we (and thousands upon thousands of others) are thrilled with Mega Crit’s latest deck-builder, the game’s Steam listing states its reviews are “Mostly Negative.” So, what’s going on here?
For the past month, Slay the Spire 2 has been subject to relentless review-bombing. Whereas the game sat at an “Overwhelming Positive” rating back in mid-March, with 97% of players recommending it to others, it is now listed as “Mostly Negative,” with 39% of its roughly 55,000 reviews in the last 30 days being unfavorable. Yet things get more intriguing when you look at where these negative reviews come from.
Currently, Slay the Spire has nearly 160,000 reviews on Steam across 14 different languages. Of these 160,000 reviews, around 83,00 of them are written in one of 12 languages, and all 12 of these languages are listed as having given Slay the Spire 2 either a “Very Positive” or “Overwhelmingly Positive” rating on Steam. Around 77,000 of these reviews, however, are written in either Simplified or Traditional Chinese. And while the 2,000 reviewers using Traditional Chinese to review the game are “Mixed” on its quality, the 75,000 reviews written in Simplified Chinese are “Mostly Negative.”
This is insane pic.twitter.com/73zLt9tN5H
— Garret (@Grrted) April 29, 2026
So know that we know the “where” of it all, let’s dig into exactly when this all began. The timing of this review-bombing largely coincides with the announcement of Slay the Spire 2’s first “big post-launch patch,” which was shared on the game’s Steam page back on March 19 and was revealed to focus on making “infinites harder to achieve.” Mega Crit also shared a number of balance changes being made to the game, many of which somewhat nerfed existing cards, as well as its intent to buff one of the game’s bosses, Doormaker. As many players had been calling the game far less challenging than the original Slay the Spire–and the game is still in early access and thus still trying to establish the correct level of grueling required to be fun–none of these changes unnerved me. And yet, it would seem that many players felt differently. And despite these changes only going into effect for players in the game’s beta, the reaction to this announcement was swift and brutal. And somehow, the intense pushback against these changes is still going strong.
In the weeks since, Slay the Spire 2’s Steam blog posts have taken on a different tone. Whereas previous posts felt quite energetic, newer ones have focused on reassuring players. On April 16, Mega Crit announced the game was finally getting its first major update, which would see a number of the changes first implemented in the game’s beta make the jump to the larger game. In it, the team wrote, “This is still an early access game, so just because something made it from beta to main does not mean it’s set in stone. We continue to rely on the experiences of players across both branches to eventually get the game into its final, ideal state, just like we did with [Slay the Spire 1]. Trust the process!”
On April 23, Mega Crit addressed complaints leveled at the game’s current difficulty, writing, “When it comes to general balance, the base difficulty is quite hard right now. We’re continuously adjusting this baseline difficulty to make it more accessible for a wide range of players, while also continuing to deliver a challenging game at the highest Ascensions. Similarly to the first game, completing runs of Slay the Spire 2 at the highest difficulty should feel like a monumental achievement for a fraction of players devoted to understanding the ins and outs of the game’s mechanics.” The team then specifically addressed Slay the Spire 2’s Doormaker fight, adding, “We are currently monitoring the Doormaker and looking at a combination [of] in-game feedback, social media posts, and metrics. We want to give players time to adjust a bit, otherwise we’ll be balancing around kneejerk reactions.”
Since this has unfolded, portions of the internet have been intent on figuring out why Chinese audiences are so frustrated with Slay the Spire 2. While I think it’s absolutely crucial to not generalize a massive audience or cite cultural differences without understanding said culture (and would urge others to be thoughtful and do the same), the conversations around the topic have been interesting.
On March 20, a Chinese Slay the Spire player took to Reddit to try to explain the logic behind the review-bombing, ultimately listing three factors as the most significant. According to the writer, the first issue with March 19’s update was that it “not only failed to address [issues] but actually amplified the problems,” making “people doubt whether the Mega Crit team even plays the game they developed.” The player then addressed the second issue, writing, “For Chinese players, many take infinite as their primary goal and strategy. From the start of a run, they actively thin their decks as long as they can survive the early game. For many players, infinite[s] are not just a strategy–they are the goal and meaning of the game.”
The user then concluded the post by stating that “some highly influential content creators, who are usually very friendly, have issued harsh criticisms of this update,” and that these opinions are extremely valued by the Chinese Slay the Spire community. Considering how massively popular Slay the Spire is in China, the resulting level of reach, fervor, and impact is not particularly surprising.
Another Chinese Reddit user, Alternative_Signal75, also weighed in on the topic, writing that Chinese audiences have different ideas when it comes to how players should communicate with game developers. According to this user, “If you’ve ever looked into these communities, you’d know that verbally abusing and pressuring game developers–as well as attacking other games (even ones they don’t play) and their player bases–are incredibly routine community activities.” Part of this, they speculate, is due to Chinese studios’ tendency to include gacha mechanics in their games, which fosters an “almost entirely adversarial relationship” between players and developers.
“I am not implying that Chinese players are more fragile or hyper-reactive to nerfs. What I mean is that in a pay-to-win gacha game, the publisher and the players have an almost entirely adversarial relationship,” Alternative_Signal75 wrote. “Players believe that being toxic is their way of protecting their own interests in the face of pay-to-win mechanics.” On another Reddit thread, several other users noted review-bombing was simply a common tactic for Chinese gamers; just look at what happened with PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Overwatch, and Hollow Knight: Silksong.
It feels safe to speculate that another contributing factor to this tendency to review bomb could simply be the separation between Chinese audiences and Western social media, which leaves Chinese fans unsure of where else to go to voice their frustrations with a developer. A PC Gamer interview with Slay the Spire co-creator Casey Yano gives even more credence to this theory, as Yano explained, “It’s a cultural thing. I think it’s difficult for players to feel like they’re heard from the developers. I feel like it’s kind of unfortunate that they feel like the only way to be heard is through Steam reviews.”
On April 27, a bilingual YouTube creator Wayshush uploaded a video about the situation titled “I Read Chinese Reviews to Understand Slay the Spire 2’s Backlash” in an effort to help shed more light on the review-bombing. After reading through some of the most common Steam complaints about Slay the Spire 2, Wayshush shared a few comments they found about the topic on the Chinese video sharing platform Bilibili. “When we give negative reviews, it’s just a form of communication with the devs,” one user wrote. Another then added, “There isn’t an official account, so I can only communicate via negative reviews.”
Several other comments expressed this same sentiment, with one writing, “It’s normal that there are more negative reviews from China, it’s not bandwagoning. Chinese people don’t really give good reviews, but if we think something is bad, we MUST give feedback and negative reviews.”
It would seem that this is, in part, a classic-yet-brutal case of one man’s bullying being another’s constructive criticism. Yet the fact remains that review-bombing does impact developers both financially and emotionally. So, where do we go from here?
Firstly, I think we have to ignore our gut instinct to ask, “Are these complaints valid?” The “validity” of these complaints can be endlessly argued; just visit literally any social media site and you can see these conversations play out for yourself. While I think Slay the Spire 2’s changes have been fun, if not necessary, there are clearly plenty of people who simply do not feel the same way, and that’s fine! I also think that raising the point that Slay the Spire 2 is in early access isn’t accomplishing much, as it seems like the logic for the review-bombing stems from a desire to right a still-moving ship. Complaining when a game is in early-access and still actively being worked on actually seems like the perfect time to voice a complaint, no?
Instead, I think it’s more crucial to ask, “How can we create ways for players to address complaints in a more appropriate way?” What channels need to be opened to better allow feedback, and at what point do we draw the line between feedback and player entitlement? I’m not claiming to know these answers, but I do think the single most important thing we can do is simply play a game ourselves before adopting extreme views on it.
As for how Mega Crit will proceed in the midst of all this, Slay the Spire 2 is intended to spend between 1-2 years in early access, according to its Steam page. Seems safe to say that the team will be doing a lot of working, listening, and iterating in the coming months. But despite the game’s current Steam reviews, I feel confident the end result will be every bit as engaging as the game I’m (constantly) playing now.
