From time to time, eyes turn towards Metacritic, a platform that collects the ratings of series, movies and video games. However, it is the latter category that consistently causes controversy. Metacritic have a very serious problemand it is that it does not verify that the public opinions have been shared by people who really enjoyed the playable experience.
This has caused, on countless occasions, certain groups of people to take advantage of open Metacritic reviews to attack a game, thus hurting its rating. You might think it doesn’t matter because they’re a bunch of misfits in need of attention—they often are. However, it cannot be denied that this type of situation affects the image of a title and the possibility that other people buy it.
The most recent victim of this practice has been Burning Shoresthe DLC of Horizon Forbidden West. It turns out that the downloadable content has an optional sequence where Aloy has an affair with another female character. The narrative proposal, therefore, confirms that the protagonist is gay.
That simple situation triggered many “people” to go to Metacritic to start a review bombingwhich is basically when you publish a considerable amount of negative reviews of a video game, series, movie or other type of product.
Eye, this it’s not the first time that Metacritic lives a similar situation, and surely it will not be the last. As mentioned above, the fact that there is no filter so that only those who have already played it are allowed to share opinions makes it easy for anyone to vent personal frustration that has little or nothing to do with the video game.
While it is true that Metacritic is receiving more and more criticism in this regard, they have never acted to stop it. Because? Although they do not recognize it, the review bombing It surely generates a lot of traffic.
With the negative reviews towards the DLC of Horizon Forbidden WestHowever, it can also be observed hate comments against the LGBT community, and that has set off the Metacritic alarms. The least they want is to be recognized as a speaker of hate speech.
Fandom, which owns Metacritic, accepted that many posts on the fan page Burning Shores they have “abusive and disrespectful” messages. They also point out that for them the trust they transmit on the internet and the security of their visitors are issues that they take very seriously —not even they believe it.
to attack the review bombing,ppromise to be improving their review and moderation processes around public reviews, although they do not specify the changes that we will see implemented soon. “Our team reviews any and all reports of abuse (including but not limited to racist, sexist, homophobic comments, insults to other users, etc.) and if violations occur, reviews are removed,” they told Eurogamer.
It will be interesting to see if, this time, Metacritic really intends to address the root problem. Otherwise, it will continue to be a hangout for internet misfits.