97% Positive Reviews Help Bunny Garden 2 Push Back Against Controversy

On August 1, the free Steam campus-life story game Damn! I'm Surrounded by Male Classmates, made by the Nanchang high school team Game Society, quickly took off. At the time of reporting, it has 3384 Steam reviews, a 97% positive rating, and an Overwhelmingly Positive label, even as controversy over jokes accused of being discriminatory toward LGBTQ people continues to spread across Bilibili and other platforms.

The dispute has centered on a narrow set of pressure points. On one side, this is a free game with no in-app purchases, made by five high school students who pooled 675 yuan out of pocket to cover the Steam release fee. On the other, parts of its writing have been criticized as hostile to LGBTQ people, with some bloggers calling for a boycott. In practice, the argument has played out mainly in three places: Steam reviews, Bilibili fan videos, and Douyin topic pages.

The numbers, however, have barely shifted during the argument. Before the controversy broke out on August 7, the game's Steam positive rating was 98%. At the time of reporting, it is 97%, down by only 1 percentage point. Its Simplified Chinese review section tells the same story: 3070 reviews, also at 97% positive. The boycott has been visible, but its measurable effect on Steam scoring remains limited, and new negative reviews remain sparse.

Recent player feedback shows a clearer divide. Some users praise the game's sense of youthful campus life, arguing that its unpolished teenage energy is exactly the appeal. Others focus their negative reviews on the discrimination claims. At the same time, some positive reviews with very short playtimes look more like gestures of support for the developers than ordinary appraisals of the game. The review section has also produced replies along the lines of, "Do these people not even have Steam?" At that point, the review page is also measuring the backlash to the backlash.

The broader reach explains why the debate has not stayed small. The game is free, has no in-app purchases, and had around 100,000 downloads less than a week after launch. Bilibili creator videos based on it have passed 8 million views. Related Douyin topics have exceeded 55 million views.

The cleaner way to judge it is simple: because Damn! I'm Surrounded by Male Classmates costs nothing, play it on Steam instead of relying on second-hand summaries of the controversy and the writing. This is not a polished commercial product from a major studio. It is closer to five high school students turning everyday campus material into a playable project. You can support that creative drive, and you can criticize specific lines or choices, but the fairest target is the actual content rather than the argument happening around it.