What just happened? Shadow of the Tomb Raider has only been out for five weeks, yet Steam has put the game on sale already. Those who had paid full price are understandably annoyed about a discount being applied so soon, and that anger has led to SotTR being review bombed on Valve's platform.

When it launched on September 13, the latest Tomb Raider cost $59.99 on Steam---a standard price for most big releases. Reviews have been mostly positive, and many people bought, or pre-ordered, Eidos Montreal's title.

But those who paid full price for the game got an unpleasant surprise last week when Shadow of the Tomb Raider was temporarily discounted by 34 percent, knocking its price down to $39.59. The special Croft edition was reduced even more: down 47 percent from $109.96 to $58.78.

On October 16, the game was suddenly hit with a high number of negative reviews, most of which came from disgruntled buyers angry at paying full price just a few weeks ago. These comments aren't related to the game itself, of course, but review bombs are often the result of external factors. Firewatch suffered a slew of negative comments after developer Sean Vanaman filed a DMCA takedown against PewDiePie for his racial slur last year.

Back in September 2017, Valve introduced its histograms as a way of tackling review bombing. These note when a high volume of negative reviews are detected, but they don't really do much to address the problem.

The number of negative reviews has slowed down but remain unusually high. Shadow of the Tomb Raider's sale ends today, so those who haven't already done so might want to grab it while they can.

It's not known exactly why the sale arrived so soon, but the obvious answer would be that the game hasn't been selling as well as expected.

In other Shadow of the Tomb Raider news, Weta Workshop, the New Zealand special effects and prop company best known for its work on the Lord of the Rings movies, has unveiled an $800 polystone model based on a scene from the game.