The gaming industry has long recognized that malicious negative review bombing will have a serious impact on the game and its development team.Take-Two has previously pointed out that such behaviors may not only reduce potential profits, but also damage the company's reputation.

In the latest case, Moon Studios, who created the "Original" series, publicly condemned the bad review bombing against its new work "Malicious Conscience" and warned of the serious consequences of the studio's closure.

According to Windows Central, Moon Studios founder Thomas Mahler posted on Discord that the game's recent reviews have dropped to "mixed reviews", although the overall review based on more than 30,000 reviews remains "specially positive".

"I think everyone will think I am joking when asking for good reviews, because in everyone's impression, there is always a big publisher responsible for the cost behind the scenes... Everyone, if you speak here, like "Malicious" and are full of expectations for future updates, but don't leave any good reviews, then we may no longer exist in a few months, and we will not be able to do anything by then. This is because we were bombarded with bad reviews, which leads to everyone not buying games. This means we can't make money and have to close the door. If our business does not rely on this, I will not ask you. I never write any reviews, but if you want to see that we really finished "Malicious", then it is very unfavorable for us not to raise the review score."

In addition, he also made a comment on X: "Everyone, please give a friendly reminder. If you like "Malice", please give a good review on Steam. We are now an independent studio, which has helped us a lot; and it can prove that you are a good person."

The head begged players to “help restore ratings”, emphasizing that “every bad review that asks us to improve – even though we are always listening to feedback – can be the last straw that crushes the studio.”

It is interesting to note that this incident is different from the malicious negative review bombing of traditional cognition.Some negative reviews on the Steam platform did make reasonable criticisms: "Although the art style and story are amazing, the semi-finished system design, obscure mechanism and excessive punitive settings have made me constantly confused 'why do you have to do this?' during the game."