Formerly known for gaming giants like Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill, Japanese developer Konami has massively scaled back its console gaming production to focus on other avenues like mobile games and pachinko machines. The company did actually recently release a new title, a soccer simulation called eFootball 2022, on September 30th.

eFootball 2022 is a free-to-play rebranding of Konami’s long-running Pro Evolution Soccer series that was first released in 2001 for the PlayStation and PlayStation 2. While the franchise has often lagged behind EA Sports’ high-budget FIFA titles in terms of graphics, team licensing, and UI, Pro Evolution Soccer has always had its diehard fans that preferred its more deliberate pace and simulation approach. This newest eFootball 2022 version and its corresponding rebranding have players simply scratching their heads, however.

RELATED: Pro Evolution Soccer Series Renamed to eFootball, Goes Free-to-Play

Moving away from Konami’s in-house Fox Engine it had previously used for the Pro Evolution Soccer series and other titles like the excellent Metal Gear Solid 5, eFootball 2022 instead is built on Epic’s popular Unreal Engine. While switching engines isn’t uncommon for franchises, it seems this engine change has brought about a multitude of problems. Steam players and Twitter users have reported a number of serious issues with the soccer-sim, such as poor AI, lackluster ball physics, and various graphical oddities like disfigured player faces, elongated limbs, and more.

All of these problems have led to eFootball 2022 becoming the lowest-rated game of all time on the Steam platform according to Steam250, which is a website that uses an algorithm to determine rank order based on the number of player votes and the game’s approval rating. At an approval rating of 9% over 13,500 reviews, eFootball 2022 is currently beating out other abysmal titles like Umbrella Corps and Flatout 3: Chaos & Destruction for the worst game on Steam. Konami has even issued an apology regarding the current quality of eFootball 2022.

While bugs certainly hurt a game’s playability, there is more going on in eFootball 2022 than just glitches. The various negative Steam reviews are criticizing the title for its unreadable menus, lack of content, and terrible player and ball movement. It seems everything that was enjoyable about the previous franchise has regressed horribly, leaving players wondering why they should even bother playing, even at the low price of free.

Of course, eFootball 2022 isn’t the only game to launch with terrible bugs and problems. Cyberpunk 2077 infamously had so many issues at launch that the game was even pulled from the PlayStation digital storefront for a while. Still, eFootball 2022 must be in a particularly poor state to be crowned the lowest-rated game on Steam. At the very least, the game is planned to be an ongoing, live-service game with plenty of updates, so Konami may correct the issues eventually.

eFootball 2022 is available on Android, iOS, PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

MORE: 5 Reasons Why Pro Evolution Soccer Is The Best Soccer Game Series (& 5 Reasons Why It's FIFA)

Source: Cultured Vultures