Steam Cozy Van Life Sim Sparks Review Bombing Drama

Outbound emerged as one of the standout successes during Steam’s February Next Fest, earning enthusiastic praise from demo players and racking up more than 1.5 million wishlists on Valve’s platform. Now that the full Early Access cozy van life sim has launched, however, not everyone is feeling the wanderlust. To make matters worse, the developer compounded the disappointment by asking some unhappy customers to remove their negative reviews.

Released on May 11, Outbound is a co-op survival sim that swaps harsh wilderness for the cheerful, colorful fantasy of modern van life. But its Early Access debut has been rocky. Mixed reviews quickly flooded Steam, with players citing the game’s short length and shallow survival mechanics as major letdowns. Some balked at the $25 price tag, while others simply felt underwhelmed by the overall experience.

That kind of launch reception might have been business as usual for a small indie title, if not for what developer Square Glade Games did next. According to a screenshot shared on the Steam subreddit, the studio responded to a negative review by offering the player a full refund , and asking them to delete their critical review from the game’s page.

“Sorry to hear that Outbound is not your cup of tea,” the reply read. “But that is of course totally understandable. No hard feelings. Feel free to send a support request to the Steam support to get a full refund on your purchase. If you do so, we would appreciate if you would update or remove your negative review. Thanks a lot.”

That request quickly spread across the Steam community, prompting players to write additional negative reviews specifically because of the developer’s approach. “Negative reviews exist for a reason. It’s not a good look when developers ask players to change or remove criticism instead of addressing the actual issues being raised,” one reviewer wrote. “Reviews help consumers decide what they’re spending their money on, and trying to silence criticism only damages trust. It’s also frustrating to see the developer mainly respond to negative reviews while largely ignoring the people leaving positive ones. If you want a strong community, show appreciation to everyone supporting the game, not just the people you want to convince to change their opinion.”

Square Glade Games has since tried to calm the backlash by apologizing in the game’s discussion section. “First and foremost, we truly apologize for how our recent replies have come across,” the developers wrote. “We understand that our communication has felt wrong to many of you, and for that, we are genuinely sorry.”

They continued: “To be completely honest, the 24 hours since the launch have been incredibly overwhelming. While we started with a lot of excitement, the reality of a launch brings a lot of pressure and intense emotions. Looking back, we realize that the way we communicated was not the right approach, and we didn’t handle the situation with the care it deserved. We’ve been working around the clock to investigate the issues you’ve been reporting and to get fixes out as quickly as possible. Regarding the comments that we claimed an issue was fixed when it wasn’t: please know that we have been replying based on the best of our knowledge at that moment. In many cases, we believed a fix was fully deployed and functional, and it is never our intention to misinform our players.”

Square Glade Games stated they will no longer ask anyone to change their negative reviews and will instead focus on addressing the concerns raised in player feedback. More than 40,000 people played Outbound within the first 24 hours of launch, and the team said its next patch will prioritize multiplayer stability, UI improvements, and bug fixes.