7 on Steam’s top sellers chart. Twenty-three thousand people playing right now. A 32 out of 100 player score.

Welcome to BidKing.

MindSurge Network & Games, in partnership with LingZhu Tech, released their multiplayer auction strategy game on April 15 for $2.99 — cheaper than most coffees. Published under the Elegoose Games banner, it launched with full support for English, Chinese, Russian, Vietnamese, French, and Italian. Two weeks later, it’s outselling titles with ten times the budget and a hundred times the goodwill. The math doesn’t make sense until you read the reviews.

The Economy Is Broken, and Everyone Knows It

The top-voted negative review on Steam lays it out plainly: “The new player only get 2M and did not get 10M free like old player. We never gonna beat OG in this game because they keep throwing money out of window.”

That’s the core grievance. Early adopters received 10 million in starting currency. New players get 2 million. In a game built on outbidding opponents, a five-to-one advantage isn’t a head start — it’s a different sport entirely. Veterans can absorb bad bets, overpay deliberately to bait newcomers, and hemorrhage cash strategically. New players get one mistake before they’re broke.

The game’s store page tells players to “bluff others into overpaying for junk.” That’s sharp design when everyone starts equal. It’s something else when half the lobby is playing with five times your budget.

The Numbers Don’t Add Up

According to Steambase, BidKing has accumulated 9,497 total reviews as of April 30. Only 3,082 are positive — a 32% approval rating, classified as “Mostly Negative” by Steam. Raijin.GG reports a nearly identical 33% across 8,903 reviews.

Meanwhile, SteamCharts logs a 24-hour player peak of 49,193 and an all-time high north of 57,000. The 30-day average sits at 21,667 concurrent players. Raijin.GG estimates nearly 96,000 wishlists. These are numbers most indie studios would frame and hang on the wall — attached to a review score that would kill most launches dead.

So Why Is Anyone Still Here?

The disconnect between sentiment and engagement is extreme, even by live-service standards. But BidKing has a few things working for it, starting with the price of admission.

Three dollars. Low enough for impulse buys. Low enough that FOMO overrides caution. Low enough that the two-hour Steam refund window closes before you’ve fully grasped how tilted the economy is against you.

Then there’s the core loop. Sealed-bid auctions where no one can see each other’s offers. Character abilities that let you peek at rival bid ranges or appraise hidden item values. A “gradual collectible reveal” mechanic where items emerge from fog one by one, ratcheting up tension.

Psychological bluffing built around making opponents overpay for junk. Multiplayer auction strategy is a genuinely underserved niche, and BidKing found real mechanical hook potential — then wrapped it in an economy designed to punish anyone who didn’t show up on day one.

Complaints Beyond the Cash Gap

Player reviews flag additional frustrations. One reviewer with 21 hours played complained in Chinese that the game’s 0.2-second input interval feels sluggish, arguing that 0.05 seconds would be more appropriate for competitive play. Others report cheaters who “clearly see what is inside,” outbidding legitimate players on valuable items — suggesting the competitive integrity of matches is questionable at best. Earlier server instability appears to have been resolved, though the review bombing it triggered still weighs on the overall score.

The Sunk Cost Auction

A game built on the psychology of competitive bidding has produced a playerbase that can’t stop doubling down on its own sunk cost. The same logic that keeps people raising their paddle — I’ve invested this much, I can’t fold now — applies to the game itself. Players have spent real hours learning character abilities, reading opponents, building digital collections in their 3D trophy cabinet. Walking away means admitting those hours were wasted.

At $2.99, MindSurge doesn’t need everyone to love the game. They need enough people to buy it once, play for a weekend, maybe spend on in-app purchases before frustration overwhelms the novelty. The Steam page lists microtransactions as a feature. Given the starting-cash gap between veterans and newcomers, the path from frustrated to paying is short and well-lit.

BidKing isn’t the first competitive game to treat new players as second-class citizens. But it might be the most transparent — the 31% review score is right there on the store page, and 23,000 people bought in anyway.

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