Steam Game 'Domina' Review Bombed After Dev Includes Anti-mask Rant In Patch Notes

Patch notes can be the lifeblood of a video game, as when the game gets stale or an aspect of it is broken, developers can communicate to players exactly what they're doing to change up their game. Or … they can essentially ruin whatever goodwill their fans had for the game by tweeting the patch notes as their personal soapbox.

Such was the case when Domina, an indie "gladiator management sim" game on Steam, released an update on March 8th and a developer included a rant about protective facemasks to prevent COVID-19 in their patch notes. The message read:

“TAKE OFF THE FCKN MASKS – Next time you’re at the grocery store, try showing a woman your face. Be confident, unafraid of the LIES -- you might get a girlfriend. Women like confidence. Women don’t like dudes who cover their faces in fear. What are you afraid of? Getting laid? Grow up.”

As goes without saying, these patch notes will do little to improve the Domina player experience, and will likely not improve the romantic lives of Domina's heterosexual male player base.

Once the notes were discovered, gamers began the process of review bombing Domina, which, until last week, had received largely positive reviews on Steam.

"Devs are childish, using patch notes as twitter. People like that are why we can't kick this covid ♥♥♥♥, they legit said that you can't get laid if you wear a mask, but it seems to just be projection," wrote one user. "I certainly think more women are smarter than that, and if you, the dev, are going to supermarkets to get laid, that's just sad."

Another user wrote, "Was a cool game to stream / watch but I guess that was thrown out the window by a dev who thinks he has to push anti-medical propaganda guised in a change log.

While getting the Steam equivalent of ratioed, the Domina dev doubled down on Twitter, claiming he was merely suggesting "courage" and those review-bombing him did so because they thought "courage is bad."

DOMINA

dev: suggests courage

woke mob: UHM NO, COURAGE IS BAD ACTUALLY
and thErEs nO suCh THing aS CAnCEL CULTURE ALSO

😂🤣🤡🤡🤡 pic.twitter.com/zWKrYqWEf1

— DOMINA (@DominaGame) March 13, 2022

Once again, Twitter users tapped the sign reminding the site that freedom of speech is not freedom from facing consequences.

Once again, suffering consequences for being publicly stupid is not cancelling.

That's called taking responsibility. https://t.co/PqD6V4L2TD

— H.P. LiveLaughLovecraft ⬛🟥 (@leastgoodwizard) March 14, 2022

Imagine being so braindead you think spreading misinformation is “suggesting courage” https://t.co/XgrnjDuccT

— CummiezTMZ 👾 (@GummiezTMS) March 14, 2022

Courage is doing something that endangers yourself for the good of others. There isn't one reason for not wearing a mask during a global pandemic that can be viewed as for the good of others. The game dev doesn't offer a courageous reason, he offers a selfish one: to get laid. 1/ https://t.co/xvcsg0cbzG

— Packy Anderson (he/him) (@PackyAnderson) March 14, 2022

This isn't the first time the Domina dev has used the game's patch notes as his personal blog either. In the 1.2.89 patch for the game in May 2021, he offered his players his thoughts on pornography:

some men still wont fight. they're weak. there's no accounting for weak men. weak men lack character. strong moral fibre is hard to come by. it's earned through hard work and sacrifice and it cannot be had via onlyfans or pornhub. no, those fuckin' things are demonic posessions waiting to show you a succubus tiddy in the hopes you'll waste a load on her instead of spending that energy studying how to weld or grow a potato or learning a new language or how to program a computer.

At this time, it is unknown if any Domina players have learned to grow a potato.