If there's one thing we know about online user reviews, it's that they often little resemblance to the actual quality of the product in question. Today's evidence: the user reviews section for Dota 2 on Steam , which in recent days has been flooded with people complaining not about Dota 2 directly but about Valve's refusal to work on Half-Life 3.

PCGamesN was among the first to notice the review bombing this weekend, and the timing of this coordinated online "protest" may seem odd, considering that over 11 years have passed since Half-Life 2: Episode 3 was first announced. It seems likely that former Valve writer Marc Laidlaw's recent publication of a "fanfic" potential plotline for Half-Life 3 may have spurred some of the newfound backlash against Valve. The announcement of a microtransaction-powered Dota 2 card game earlier this month also seems to be spurring at least some of the ire against the company's priorities.

A few choice quotes from the hundreds of recent negative reviews:

"Dota killed Half-Life 3. Nuff said." (Link) "HL3 died for this." (Link) "This game is derivative trash, bring back real story driven FPS games, which are the reason you are here" (Link) "Newell ♥♥♥♥ you (please dont delete my steam account)" (Link) "Valve is a blood sucking company that doesn't care about it's User's [sic] and refuses to make Half-Life 3." (Link) I really don't care about Half Life 3, but you know, making Left 4 Dead 3 would be pretty nice (Link)

We'd also be remiss if we didn't point out this review written in pseudocode.

The most ironic thing about this effort is that many of the negative reviews come from Steam accounts with dozens or hundreds of hours logged on Dota 2, suggesting these people haven't been willing to boycott the game to send a message about Half-Life 3 or anything. More than that, the wave of astroturfed negative attention hasn't really affected Dota 2's public reputation. The game still has an 89% positive reception among over 775,000 user reviews on Steam, the same ratio it had a couple of weeks ago with about 768,000 reviews. The trolls are going to have to work hard to make a real dent in numbers like that.