Metacritic wants people to actually play a game before reviewing it, so the site now requires users to wait 36 hours from the launch of a new game before leaving a score. The intention is to avoid review blitz campaigns, where people leave negative ratings on a title sometimes as a way to punish the developer. Going to a review page for a recently released title on Metacritic will now display the message “Please spend some time playing the game,” with a specific date and time a user can post a review of that game on the site. .
The new policy change has blocked the opinions of users of two great games that came out today: Ghosts of Tsushima and Paper Mario: The Origami King. Users have to wait until July 18 at 12 p.m. PT to review them. The new policy was first discovered by PlayStation Universe last week but Forbes got attention today.
Review blitz, when a large group of users go to a digital storefront or add a review aggregator to drop scores on a product, is done to retaliate against a company or public figure for perceived disagreements. The last of us, part II He was targeted on Metacritic after its June release in part due to his story and inclusion of LGBTQ + characters.
Metacritic is not the only platform that addresses a patch bomb problem. Valve’s gaming distribution platform Steam has also been the subject of review blitzes. In 2017, Valve added a bar graph to show positive and negative scores throughout the life of a game. Last year, Valve said it would investigate the Steam games that were being bombed and hide criticism off the topic.
