WWE 2K26 is Currently Being Review Bombed

WWE 2K26 is currently being review-bombed by fans largely upset by the Ringside Pass and the monetization present in the title. It’s not unlike the franchise to introduce new features, with WWE 2K25 adding The Island as an example, but fans were wary of WWE 2K26‘s Ringside Pass when it was announced and are clearly angry about it now.

For context, the Ringside Pass can be summarized as a Battle Pass-like system for WWE 2K26. It contains a free track and a premium track, with the latter requiring players to buy and then grind. What makes this worse is that the rewards are essentially what players would previously gain immediate access to, with purchase, via standard, premium DLC. There’s a combination of buying and having to unlock what you’ve bought that has rubbed many fans the wrong way.

WWE 2K26 Update 1.04 Patch Notes Revealed

WWE 2K26 patch 1.04 makes changes to the Ringside Pass, altering the different ways wrestling game fans can rack up seasonal rewards.

On top of that, WWE 2K26 patched out an RXP exploit that was being used to grind through the tiers more quickly than intended. This upset many fans because you can purchase Skip Tiers at $1.99/pop (or $80 bucks to skip all tiers, on top of previous purchases). And the Ringside Pass has largely contributed to the review bombing that WWE 2K26 has experienced on Steam. Right now, the title sits at Mixed, with only 51% being noted as “positive.”

WWE 2K Game Steam Reviews

Mixed isn’t as bad as Mostly/Very/Overwhelmingly Negative, but there are two important factors to consider. First, it had a week of early access for certain special editions, but was just fully released on March 12. Sites like Metacritic are not even open to user reviews yet, indicating some fans may not have left a review yet. Secondly, this makes WWE 2K26 the lowest user-rated WWE 2K game since WWE 2K20, and it’s closer to the disastrous buggy title than it is the better-reviewed, recent titles.

Who’s That Character?

Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.

Who’s That Character?

Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.

Easy (7.5s)Medium (5.0s)Hard (2.5s)Permadeath (2.5s)

Game	Steam Review Standing
WWE 2K22	Mostly Positive (71%)
WWE 2K23	Mostly Positive (76%)
WWE 2K24	Very Positive (83%)
WWE 2K25	Mostly Positive (79%)
WWE 2K26	Mixed (51%)

WWE 2K26, at the lowest, falls short 20% of reviews for WWE 2K22; from WWE 2K24, it falls short a whopping 32%. According to Steam DB, WWE 2K20 only had 42% positive reviews, meaning WWE 2K26 is currently only 9% better in terms of reviews. WWE 2K20 is essentially a stain on the franchise, and it’s certainly not a good thing that its current user review numbers are closer to it than the latest run of WWE 2K games.

As I wrote in my personal review of WWE 2K26, it falls short of the benchmark established by WWE 2K22-2K25 in its creative content. Combined with more aggressive monetization, it’s completely understandable why its users’ reviews have fallen so much. These numbers and percentages could continue to fall, and user reviews on Metacritic will be interesting to watch. But ultimately, it’s uncertain how the community and the studio are going to settle on this issue.

It remains to be seen how Visual Concepts and 2K Games respond. The response to the RXP exploit being fixed isn’t what fans wanted either, and it’s increasingly clear that the Ringside Pass is not appreciated by fans. Perhaps there will be ways to make it less predatory or to adjust it more here and there, but it’s unlikely that the Ringside Pass/WWE 2K26 DLC line-up can be changed at this point. And as an annual series, there’s little doubt that the Ringside Pass was introduced with the idea that it would become a mainstay. Whether or not 2K Games and Visual Concepts reconsider the feature remains to be seen, but it’s clearly not popular.