Nintendo LifeHotfix bombardment has become a serious issue on the Metacritic hotfix aggregate website. In recent years, we’ve seen user scores for various high-profile Nintendo Switch games plummet at launch.
This happened to Pokémon: Come on, Pikachu! and come on, Eevee! in 2018 Astral chain in 2019 and more recently Animal Crossing: New Horizons at the beginning of this year. Most of the time, these zero scores of 10 users are distributed by people who have not yet played the games.
Apparently, Metacritic is fed up with this and has decided to take action against these disgruntled gamers by implementing a 36-hour delay in all video game reviews written by users, after seeking the advice of research experts, critics and experts on the industry.
Here’s a statement about the new “waiting period” from a Metacritic spokesperson (via GameSpot):
“We recently implemented the 36-hour waiting period for all user reviews in our games section to ensure that our players have time to play these games before writing their reviews. This new waiting period for user reviews it has been implemented in the Games section of Metacritic and was based on research based on data and with the input of critics and industry experts. “
As Eurogamer pointed out, this new waiting period started earlier this week. Before user reviews open, there’s now a message asking players to “spend some time playing”
It is hard to say how effective this will be against the revision blitz. New release from Nintendo Paper Mario: The Origami King It is one of the first games to test this new system, and at the time of writing this article, its user score is 6.1 out of 10.
What do you think about the delay that Metacritic has put in the user reviews? Do you think this will be enough to stop the review blitz? Share your thoughts below.
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