Despite its fair share of pre-launch controversy, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 has debuted to impressive success and decent review scores, drawing in over 160,000 concurrent players on Steam and maintaining strong reviews from critics and audiences alike. Even many of the “anti-woke” voices in the gaming sphere, such as SmashJT, have praised the game, brushing aside previous concerns over optional same-sex romance options in favor of recognizing its strong RPG mechanics, narrative, and historical depth.
A screenshot from Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 (2024), Warhorse Studios
But while players seem to be celebrating the game’s success, game director Daniel Vávra appears to be on a different path, turning his frustration toward journalists and reviews that haven’t been as favorable as he’d like.
Vávra Lashes Out at Negative Review
One of the more notable incidents occurred when GamesHub writer Jam Walker published a Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 review giving the game 2.5 out of 5 stars. Walker barely touched on the game’s representation controversy, giving it only a passing mention toward the end of the review. His criticism primarily focused on legitimate issues with the characters, narrative, and mechanics. His Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 review was thoughtful, measured, and in line with the review scores of many other major releases.
However, this didn’t sit well with Vávra, who took to X to attack Walker’s Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 review. Sharing a screenshot of the score on Metacritic.
A trusted news source. Mission accomplished. We no longer have 90% Metacritic score. Be proud of your excellent journalistic standards! pic.twitter.com/HBeoGRLoRV
— Daniel Vávra ⚔ (@DanielVavra) February 4, 2025
“A trusted news source,” Vávra said, mocking the writer. “Mission accomplished. We no longer have 90% Metacritic score. Be proud of your excellent journalistic standards!”
The post immediately backfired, with many players—including those who actually enjoy Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2—calling him out for the unnecessary outburst.
A user named TearyBoi responded, saying, “Bashing journalists for not giving you the score you want isn’t a good look and I love this game.”
Bashing journalists for not giving you the score you want isnt a good look and I love this game
— Pasta Weed (@tearyboi) February 4, 2025
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Another user, Endthusiasm, called for Vávra to focus on actual customer reception instead.
Dude, this is not it.
Obviously you can be unhappy that you’re not getting glowing review numbers, but this is silly. Focus on your actual customers reviews.
You know, the ones you didn’t chase off.— End, Thus I Am (@endthusiam) February 4, 2025
“Dude, this is not it,” he said. “Obviously you can be unhappy that you’re not getting glowing review numbers, but this is silly. Focus on your actual customer reviews. You know, the ones you didn’t chase off.”
Update: This games save system is complete garbage. Why they kept the Savior Schnapps system I have no idea but it’s actually horrible. The only reliable way to save your game is to save and quit to main menu then immediately hit continue and load the game again.
This is the…
— Endymion (@EndymionYT) February 5, 2025
Walker’s criticism falls in line with others who haven’t enjoyed the KCD2 experience. YouTuber Endymion took a lot of issue with the game’s mechanics when discussing his overall impressions on X in the thread detailed above.
Steam Reviews Are Strong—But Censorship Concerns Loom
While Metacritic scores fluctuate based on aggregated critic reviews (the game still has an 88% favorable score as of this writing), Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is holding strong on Steam, where 90.37% of over 7,000 reviews are positive. However, concerns over possible review censorship have emerged after Pirat_Nation shared a screenshot showing Steam allegedly banning negative reviews that criticized the game’s inclusion of “woke” elements.
Steam has started to ban negative Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 reviews that call out the co-founder for misleading and “woke” stuff in-game pic.twitter.com/nalypVMe13
— Pirat_Nation 🔴 (@Pirat_Nation) February 5, 2025
Regardless of where someone stands on the issue, reviews are subjective opinions—and no matter the reasoning behind that opinion, it remains valid to the person expressing it. If someone believes that certain content elements negatively impact their experience, they have the right to say so. By silencing negative reviews that call out specific ideological or creative choices, platforms risk misleading potential buyers who might otherwise have avoided a game that doesn’t align with their preferences.
If someone dislikes a game because of mechanics, story pacing, or difficulty, their review is welcomed. But if a player dislikes a game due to representation choices or political undertones, should their review be dismissed? If platforms start curating reviews based on why a player dislikes something rather than what they dislike, it creates an unbalanced, manipulated review environment that does not properly inform customers.
Vávra’s PR Nightmare Continues
This latest controversy follows a string of self-inflicted PR wounds by Daniel Vávra over the past few months.
A screenshot from Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 (2024), Warhorse Studios
For Example:
- Vávra previously lashed out at YouTuber Rev Says Desu, calling him a “grifter” over a video discussing preorder cancellations. This attack was widely criticized, especially since Rev’s video actually defended the game against accusations of being “woke.”
- Major content creators, including SmashJT, Vara Dark, and Grummz, turned against him after he continued to lash out at the gaming community instead of focusing on constructive dialogue.
- His feud with Rev led to more preorder cancellations, completely undermining his own marketing strategy and causing rifts in the very audience that once supported the game.
The Bigger Picture
Despite the undeniable commercial success of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Vávra’s repeated public tantrums are needlessly creating negative press for his own game. Instead of basking in the strong launch, he has chosen to attack reviews, alienate content creators, and fuel online feuds.
A screenshot from Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 (2024), Warhorse Studios
His complaints about Metacritic scores are especially hypocritical given that the game is still sitting at a high rating, proving that many reviewers and actual customers are enjoying it. If Vávra focused on that rather than waging war against the press, his game’s reputation would be in an even better place.
At this point, the biggest enemy of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 isn’t critics, YouTubers, or “woke outrage.” It’s Daniel Vávra himself.
How do you feel about Daniel Vávra attacking a critical Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 review? Do you think Steam is censoring reviews based on the reasons behind them? Sound off in the comments and let us know!
I think he hit awkward point, too much gay for some and not enough gay for others.
I don’t really have problem with gay option if it’s an option, it’s RPG after all.
Also, Endymion’s gripe with Saviour Schnapps is silly, plenty other games with restricted save system.
You can never be woke enough to satisfy the woke, but it’s very easy to be too woke for the fans.
As such, your best bet is to have zero woke.
Just an inch, they wont ever take a mile.
Now that game is out the gay scene is truly a CHOICE? Or forced? I never preorder anymore even if game looks good, just this bait and switch is the new meta for the lunatics devs
I would almost be okay with putting it as a paid add-on for people who do want it, but why should I pay extra for a scene I have no intention of going through?
I say almost because I know it’d never stop there. You let the woke give that the tip and suddenly you’re knocked up and have gonorrhea.
It doesn’t matter. The “optional” cope is just an excuse. They still put it in retconning 2 characters from the previous game, because they wanted to have that gay scene. It’s like saying that the rainbow flags in Spider-Man 2 are optional because you may never swing over that street.
I agree “optional” is not an argument, it’s just copium. And to see if you really believe in stuff being ok as long as it’s optional, try to think about something worse. Like when they would have added an optional romance with a 12 year old. Would you still say it’s ok because it’s optional?
I don’t think it’s about if stuff is optional or not. It pretty much depends on if you think the stuff is moraly ok or not.
The content being optional just helps people to make excuses to play games with content they disagree with. Which ultimate supports just that content they disagree with. And you can be sure, that you have to ignore more of the same in the future.
Just look how they all say: “Well you ignored it in Mass Effect, so you have to ignore it now too.” It just became normal because we chose to ignore it. That’s why I’m not going to ignore any of this anymore, optional or not. It’s not normal in my opinion and I don’t want this in games.
Vavra is a thin-skinned clown. He couldn’t accept that people may not like his propaganda game. I wouldn’t be surprised if he asked Steam to ban negative reviews.
Does steam also remove favorable reviews who praise woke stuff? I bet they don’t. So this would be just one sided censorship.
In my opinion there’s no reason ever to remove a review. It’s a customer or even potential customer who is voicing his opinions. And all opinions should be heard. Removing some of them will inevitably lead to a biased representation of the recption of the game. Even review bombing or hyping shouldn’t be filtered, because it’s by customers or potential customers, who strongly agree and disagree with the course the game took and therefore shouldn’t be dismissed.
In the end every type of moderation done on reviews only serves one purpose. To make games look better, than the audience received them. This just helps to inflate review scores and is part of the reason, why review scores only range from 60-100 nowadays and everything below 80 is seen as bad and everything below 60 is seen as unplayable garbage.
Vavra has fully evolved into a woke Karen by now.
The way he fires in all directions right now, makes it seem like he never had any moral stance at all. With KCD 1 he was just pandering to “anti-woke”, because the woke people attacked his game and he probably thought he might sell a few units more of he panders to gamers.
Now with KCD 2 he kinda decided to sit between the chairs by being just a little woke and so he gets flak from both sides. For the one side it’s not woke enough, for the other it’s a deviation from what has been communicated with the previous game.
By now I’m sure Vavra doesn’t have any moral standpoint on wokeness or free speech. His only interest is to sell the game. And he will pander everyone just to achieve this. And it kinda works out, because people criticise him and he backlashes, but this doesn’t seem to have an impact on the game. User scores are good and we’ll see how the sales will be, but I expect them to be good aswell.
Well I won’t buy this game, because I don’t want to support games with anything woke in them, but guess I’m in the minority here.
It may sound petty…but I’am not buying it simply because of the same sex inclusion. Just tired of it.
This stuff will only cease when gamers make it clear what they want outta of their games.