The problem with metacritic is that so many triple A publishers put it on such a high impossible pedestal to begin with. Giving bonuses just for arbitrary reasons. Oh you were just one point below a 85, no bonus for you then. But us bosses will happily suck up all the money we know we don't need. Even if the game sold gangbusters numbers, but the review scores weren't high enough. They only matter because the ones in charge make them matter just to be bullies or a sense of self empowerment. Selling essence, while metacritic can be useful, it doesn't matter for a good amount of things; especially for those that abuse the system.
I think most games get pretty high reviews for free nowadays so if anything the issue is that review scores are too high as opposed to being too low and endangering bonuses.
I mean it's pretty ridiculous to assume that just because a game has a high metacritic score that it's any good since games keep getting inflated scores left and right, and it's more of a point of pride by pathetic people who need others to validate their taste in games because they lack the confidence to be secure in the tastes whatever others may think of them.
It's the other side of the coin with the people who attack reviewers for bringing scores down. Both are equally pathetic and are more caught up with what other people think about games and forget that they're supposed to focus on what they think about these games personally themselves. You're not supposed to play games to earn status or acceptance or mainstream validation, if that's what you're looking for go work for the red cross. Games are only just supposed to be enriching, entertaining, fun, cool, sexy, funny, that sort of thing.
The moment you begin to play games in an effort to be an upstanding member of society with acceptable tastes like you're some wine snob you've already lost the plot.