Highlights
- NBA 2K24, the latest installment in the basketball sim franchise, has received overwhelmingly negative reception on Steam due to lack of new features and an increase in microtransactions.
- The game has become the lowest-rated on Steam, surpassing Overwatch 2, with only about 8% of players recommending it. It currently holds the top spot in Steam 250's "Hall of Shame" list.
- Complaints from players include the game being a "copy-paste" of the previous year's version, lack of next-gen performance on PC, absence of crossplay, glitches, crashes, and a storyless MyCareer mode. Console versions also received mediocre scores on Metacritic.
The recently released NBA 2K24 is now the lowest-rated game on Steam, a title previously held by Overwatch 2. Released last week, it seems safe to say that the newest 2K Sports sim hasn't seen the reception the publisher might have hoped for.
Developed by Visual Concepts and published by 2K, NBA 2K24 is the last installment of the long-running basketball sim franchise. The game was released on September 8, with the developer boasting that it is the most aesthetic game in the series. NBA 2K24 is also the first game to feature crossplay, though not on PC. However, many players felt that wasn't enough to compensate for the lack of new features in other areas or the significant increase in microtransactions.
Pushback against the new NBA 2K game has been intense, especially on Steam, where the game has a rating of "Overwhelmingly Negative." The game's Steam user reviews recently plunged to an incredible low, with only about 8% of players recommending the game as of this writing. This is enough to replace Blizzard’s Overwatch 2 as the platform's lowest-rated game.
Launched in 2017, the website Steam 250 tracks the user reviews for every game on Steam. While the website is best known for its list of the 250 best games on Steam, it also maintains a "Hall of Shame" listing the least-popular games on the platform. NBA 2K24 is currently sitting at the top of that list. It is only slightly worse than Overwatch 2, which has an overall rating of about 9% on Steam. They also have the dishonor of being among the only three AAA games in the bottom 10, alongside the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 remake.
Browsing NBA 2K24's Steam Reviews, the lack of new features and the lack of next-gen performance on PC seem to be the most common complaints. One player described it as a "copy-paste" of last year's game, and many felt that 2K and Visual Concepts had done the bare minimum on the PC version. The PC port of NBA 2K24 also lacks crossplay, which is one of the game's main selling points on consoles. Other criticisms included the MyCareer mode lacking a story, hackers in multiplayer, and the increase in microtransactions. NBA 2K24 also has a severe glitch problem, and multiple users report experiencing crashes.
Some of these problems are unique to NBA 2K24's PC release, though not all console players are having a great time either. The PS5 version has an unimpressive Metacritic score of 68, while the Xbox Series X version has a rating of 61. Meanwhile, Metacritic user scores are not that much better than its Steam reviews, with players giving NBA 2k24 2.4/10 on PS5 and Series X.
NBA 2K24 is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: Steam 250
