(Naughty Dog / Metacritic)

Metacritic appears to have tweaked its user-review score system in order to combat review bombing. A Resetera user noticed the change this morning when looking at the page for the Switch puzzle game Superliminal, which was released yesterday. Users can't review it until tomorrow, and In the top corner of the page, Metacritic has added a note reading "Please spend some time playing the game."

(Metacritic)

"Review bombing" refers to the practice of giving a piece of media negative reviews without having experienced it. This is often done as a response to a piece of media that is surrounded by controversy leading up to its release. Most recently, The Last Of Us Part II appeared to be the victim of review bombing, at one point sitting at a 3.4/10 user score with a 95/100 critic score.

Metacritic has not made an official announcement regarding user reviews and there's no guarantee that delaying the eligibility date for user reviews will stop review bombing altogether. However, in the case of The Last Of Us Part II, the user score has improved to a 5.3 with time as more players who actually played the game submitted their ratings.

Review bombing has plagued aggregate rating sites like Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb for years and has led to significant backlash from various corners of the internet for the toll it can take on creators. Enforcing a user-review rating delay may be an imperfect solution to Metacritic's system, which does not require a user to verify that they played a game before reviewing it.

Others have thought of other potential ways to combat the issue. Spieltimes suggested, "One way Metacritic can fix User Scores once and for all is to make it mandatory for users to link their game accounts for verification of ownership of the game. And a 'Verified Player' tag beside their usernames would help people decide if a review is rational or purely for bombing purposes."


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Comments 5 total

Braneman

You know how I would make a critic service reliable? I would make an AI that is designed to take snippets of reviews that are relevant to summarize them down and let people judge those on their own merits. That would sneak around review scores.

0

Woooinion

To be honest, it doesn't really make sense for users to be able to score a game they couldn't possibly have played yet.

It's fine to decide it's bad after seeing leaks, or reviews from people with advanced copies, but if I'm looking for a review, I would like it to come from someone who experienced the product personally.

I'm not one of those people trying to go full "Gamers are Over." over this game's reception. I think it deserves its flack. The story seems pretty badly botched, in a very story driven game.

But honestly, it probably still deserves a 7/10 on its technical merits.
0/10 reviews are just as useless as 10/10 reviews.

If Metacritic wants to be a useful service, and Critic Game reviewers continue to be perceived as unreliable, then they need to take some steps to improve the reliability of user reviews.

A single day's delay on posting a reviews isn't terrible.
If you hate it that much, you can remember to drop the review on day 2.

I don't have much faith in the integrity of Metacritic's motives, but the proposed policy is not inherently bad.

1

StormCall

Honestly, I don't think it's that bad. I think it's silly that people didn't even bother giving tlou2 a chance because of the leaks. I understand that people were angry and disappointed because of them, but they're not enough to base your judgment on. Play the game for a while, then rate it.

0

Uboa

you can't put a score on your scoring website unless you are a shill. Rotten Tomatoes 2.0

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