The new installment in the NBA 2K series has been released, and this time player reception is extremely negative. Let’s take a look at the game’s launch and why it is currently one of the worst-rated titles on Steam.
Launched on September 8, NBA 2K24 quickly made a lot of players angry. On Steam, it has an “Overwhelmingly Negative” rating, with only 10% of the 3,413 user reviews being positive.
Players mostly complain about the fact that developer Visual Concepts and publisher 2K once again didn’t release a next-gen version on PC, not to mention cross-play limitations and the lack of new features and improvements compared to previous installments in the NBA 2K series.
“As a PC and Steam player, my experience with this game has been nothing short of disappointing, plagued by inequality, mistreatment, bugs, and server issues,” one user wrote, adding that “it’s disheartening to see a franchise with such potential stuck in a never-ending cycle of repetition.”
Based on its user reviews, NBA 2k24 has become the second worst-rated game on Steam250’s Bottom 100 list, which takes into account titles with at least 1,000 reviews. It only trails Overwatch 2, which was bashed by thousands of players (including angry Chinese users) after its recent launch on Valve’s platform.
According to SteamDB, NBA 2K24 is currently the third worst-rated game on Steam of all time at 13.94% positive reviews, behind War of the Three Kingdoms (13.01%) and Overwatch 2 (10.94%). It is worth noting that SteamDB uses its own formula to estimate the score, so it may differ from the one displayed on the store (to see how it works, check out this detailed description).
Top 10 lowest-rated Steam games of all time, according to Steam250
Looking at player interest, NBA 2k24 peaked at 11,552 concurrent users (CCU). Right now, it ranks as the 8th game in the series by that metric on Steam. NBA 2K23 remains on top, with 59k peak concurrent players, followed by NBA 2K20 (48k CCU) and NBA 2k22 (46k CCU). But it is worth noting that most NBA 2K titles reached their peak long after launch, so things may change for NBA 2k24 in the future.
Top 10 games from Visual Concepts on Steam by peak CCU, according to SteamDB
It is not the first time players have been left disappointed with a new NBA 2K title, as previous games have also been criticized by users. However, a negative reception had little to no negative impact on sales of NBA 2K 24, which debuted at #7 on the UK boxed charts.
The franchise is still doing great commercially. According to Take-Two’s latest quarterly report, the NBA 2K series has reached 140 million units sold globally, of which 13 million are NBA 2k23. The latter also received criticism from players, but its sales exceeded the publisher’s expectations. So it doesn’t seem like 2K will change something about its approach as long as people continue to purchase new titles every year.