With “Dragon Age Veilguard’s” release a few days ago, the gaming community has been quite hostile. After nearly a decade, the game is finally out, but it hasn’t completely lived up to the hype. This is fine, as expectations were ridiculously high. What’s most important is that it has been well received. Despite the doom and gloom mindsets prerelease, “Dragon Age” made it.

You would think that this would be cause for celebration, but the gaming community is anything but positive about anything anymore. All the life in the community is being sucked out by “grifters” who continue to find new ways to complain about positive representations of people of color, and LGBTQ+ people.

For reference, grifters are “content creators” or generally toxic fans that try to earn internet clout with more far-right audiences. There are grifters that cater to leftist audiences as well, but they’re considerably rare and mostly irrelevant.

Despite its success, these people continue to call DA:V (“Dragon Age: Veilguard”), a failure of epic proportions. Denial is in full effect, and to spread that agenda, they’ve even invaded the game’s subreddits and Steam Community forums with hateful rhetoric. Discussions and debates have been going on ever since release, but this wouldn’t be the first time.

Even though “Baldur’s Gate 3” won many awards and earned many nominations, its success is still debated by said grifters. Some call it a bastion of anti-woke awesomeness (for some reason), while others revile it as the beginning of the end.

Neither have played the game for long, if at all. Those that do, have taken some extreme measures to make it more “compatible” to their worldview. Based on these two games alone, though there’s more where that came from, these people aren’t judging on logic, but a crooked mindset that is desperate to put down others.

I’m all for combating these awful viewpoints, but this only serves their agenda. They say not to debate fools as they’ll drag you down to their level. I completely agree, as these people will not listen to logic. If they did, I wouldn’t be here talking about them. They want attention to spread their viewpoint to the impressionable kids who might see it.

Instead of arguing pointlessly with people who won’t listen, they should be ignored. The gaming community has become too obsessed with everyone’s opinions and video essay reviews that are an hour too long. Gaming is meant to be fun, yet people don’t just have fun.

I’m guilty of this myself of course. It’s hard to not get swept up in the drama sometimes. But a conscious effort must be made regardless, otherwise nothing changes. Something however, must be done about the power these hate groups have. Right now, DA:V is being review-bombed (much like Star Wars: The Acolyte was), and it’s hurting its ratings.

With the way Steam works, games can be bought and reviewed as long as you play the game for five minutes. Yes, only five minutes and you can judge an entire game, no matter its length. There are dinners that take longer than that. Steam does have defenses against review bombing, but none are preventative. Their advice is to grit your teeth and wait it out.

While sound, Steam should do more than give basic advice that anyone can give. The review bombing is taking place on their platform after all. Why is that the best they can offer? Steam however, is not the only place review bombing is taking place. Metacritic is having the same issue, yet despite their response, they’ve been unable to fix this issue.

DA:V isn’t the only game to be plagued by this issue. “Helldivers 2”, “Baldur’s Gate 3”, “Horizon: Forbidden West”, “God of War: Ragnarok”, and many others have faced this issue. Unless better requirements are put into place, the problem will remain. Unfortunately, preventing review bombing is a minor solution that doesn’t solve a bigger problem.

Entitlement and negativity infest the gaming community, to the point where it’s hard to even call it one. Developers are disrespected by their fanbase for doing their jobs, and players are berated and bullied for not understanding game mechanics when it’s their first time playing. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a majority that does this, but it’s not a small group either.

Just like in real life, there are good and bad “gamers”. It’s not all bad though. Despite their widespread rhetoric, grifters are being left in the dust as more and more games ignore their complaints and continue doing what they do best. Just like any other community, respect and kindness must be fostered, or harmful rhetoric will prosper.