When a launch goes sideways, what turned sentiment — and how early was it visible?

HELLDIVERS™ 2 · 886,850 Steam reviews · 8 Feb to 5 Nov 2024

The answer is no — nothing led. Both sentiment collapses were triggered by dated developer actions, so complaint themes and the review score moved on the same day. You cannot get early warning of an announcement from reactions to it. What the data does support is same-day diagnosis: within hours the theme mix names the cause.

Daily review score and volume

7-day positive share daily reviews (log scale) official patch

Volume is drawn on a log scale: quiet days carry ~120 reviews, 6 May carried 78,185.

What people complained about, as a share of each day's negative reviews

Composition, not volume — this asks what the complaints were about, independent of how many there were. Smoothed over 7 days.

The two events, day by day