Trump's Attacker Developed Video Games: His Game on Steam Flooded with Political Reviews

Cole Tomas Allen, the 31-year-old Californian arrested on Saturday, April 25, after opening fire outside the Washington Hilton during the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner, was also an indie video game developer. On his Steam account stands a game published in 2018: Bohrdom. Within hours of the incident, the title's page became the stage for a massive review bombing with dozens of political posts in the discussion forums.

The attack occurred around 8:30 PM Eastern Time: Allen, armed with a shotgun, pistol, and knives, forced his way through the Secret Service checkpoint outside the ballroom, where Trump, Melania, and much of the cabinet, including Vice President JD Vance, were present. An agent was injured but saved by his bulletproof vest. Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed to CNN that the likely targets were administration members, and that Allen was subdued almost immediately after firing.

What is Bohrdom?

Allen described Bohrdom as a "skill-based, non-violent asymmetrical fighting game loosely derived from a chemistry model," a hybrid between a bullet hell and a racing game where the player controls an electron or a nucleus in a gamified version of atomic chemistry. It supports up to 13 players in multiplayer, was priced at $2, and for its entire history on Steam, it peaked at one or two simultaneous players. The suspect’s LinkedIn profile also lists a second title in development called First Law, which has apparently never been released.

Allen describes himself as a developer and engineer, and the game reflects this imprint: more of an educational-experimental tool than a true commercial product. A digital relic that would likely have remained buried in the Steam catalog indefinitely, had it not been for the echo of Saturday night’s attack.

The Review Bombing

The news of the connection between Allen and Bohrdom spread rapidly on Sunday evening. Prior to the incident, Bohrdom had only 2 total reviews; within 24 hours, it accumulated over 120, with an average status and 10 pages of threads in the forums. On SteamDB, the peak of simultaneous players shot up to 22, still minimal numbers overall, but completely anomalous for a title that had never surpassed one or two users online until that point.

Almost all the reviews come from users with less than 30 minutes of playtime, who used the page as an arena for political debate. The reviews can be positive in support of Allen, negative as a condemnation, or follow a third thread of pure shitposting. The highest-rated review states: "When you participate in the 'strangest way to promote your game' contest and your opponent is this developer." Other reviews read: "The attack was guerrilla marketing" and "It's nice to finally see these forums so lively." Meanwhile, the option to purchase Bohrdom has been disabled on Steam.

A Familiar Script

This is not the first time that a suspect of political violence in the United States leaves significant traces on Steam. During the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the alleged perpetrator Tyler Robinson had amassed over 2,000 hours on Sea of Thieves and even used "Donald Trump" as a nickname—details that quickly came under the scrutiny of U.S. intelligence services. The Allen case adds a new variant: not just a user account, but an entire developer page, complete with a store page, forum, and review space now transformed into a political debate area.

Whether Valve will intervene with its anti-review bombing tools already introduced in previous years remains to be seen. Meanwhile, Bohrdom has become something very different from an indie experiment based on Bohr: an involuntary mirror of an ongoing American political crisis that continues to cross, among other things, the borders of gaming culture.