Following its first week of release worldwide, NBA 2K20 has already earned the honor of being the second worst-rated game on Steam. The achievement of sorts is highly unsurprising, seeing how the latest installment in the basketball simulation franchise was dealing with controversy days before launch. 2K Sports should have known better than to fan the flames in this day and age.
According to the fan-run Steam 250 club, NBA 2K20 took just six days to fall down to the second-last rung of the Steam ladder. Flatout 3: Chaos & Destruction, a destructive racer released back in 2011, is the only game ahead at this moment. If the graph continues to dip on the same pace in the coming weeks, NBA 2K20 may even become the worst-rated game on Steam in history.
For clarification, the votes from players on Steam determine the rank of games on this third-party website. Every review (thumbs-up or thumbs-down) is recorded on a daily basis, which can only be submitted by those who own the game on Steam and have played at least five minutes after logging into their accounts.
NBA 2K20 currently has an “overwhelmingly negative” review average on Steam, with only 16 percent of players seeing the game in a positive light. There are several things wrong with the game. You can often find players complaining about bugs and gameplay issues on public forums. However, it’s the whole gambling debate that has ultimately trashed NBA 2K20.
For whatever reason, 2K Sports decided to pair loot boxes with slot machines and roulette wheels. Microtransactions are fairly common these days, but literally giving a casino feel to your game is a big no. Despite an outcry when the trailers were being released, the publisher just didn’t seem to care. Perhaps it will now with the second worst-rated feather in its cap.
As a consolation prize, players have fallen back to NBA 2K19, raising it a few places in the worst rankings of Steam. NBA 2K19 currently sits at 32, while NBA 2K18 sits at 18. Someone at 2K Sports needs to figure out why players are spitting so much venom at the franchise. NBA 2K20 having assets stripped directly from NBA 2K19 that were not even renamed is probably something to look at in this process.
Should you be still interested, NBA 2K20 is now available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
