While Middle - earth: Shadow of War mostly escaped the intense scrutiny and
anger directed at two of 2017's biggest loot box / microtransaction cautionary
tales, those being the much - maligned Destiny 2 and the even - more - widely - detested Star Wars: Battlefront II, the game was nonetheless «review bombed» on platforms such as Steam and Metacritic by gamers who were unhappy
about Middle - earth: Shadow of War's monetization system, and it thus went on to become a popular example among pundits of the dangers behind poor implementation of microtransactions and loot box economies in triple - A video game releases.