Metacritic Brings Down The Hammer On "Review Bombers"

The Wooster

King Snap
Jul 15, 2008
15,305
0
0
Metacritic Brings Down The Hammer On "Review Bombers"


The popular review aggregator Metacritic is giving users who "bomb" titles with unreasonable zero point scores the boot.

"Review bombing," for the uninitiated, is the act of posting very low score user reviews on sites like Metacritic or Amazon in order to bring down the review average. It's an oft used tactic in the ongoing war between the console fanbases, with platform exclusives, particularly in the more competitive genres, getting hundreds of negative reviews from grumpy fans or iconoclasts who deem a title "overrated." While this causes bigger publishers to simply tut, roll their eyes and light up another cigar with a flaming fifty, it can be a devastating blow to a smaller developers. Both Supergiant Games and Signal Studios saw the Metacritic scores of their latest games, Bastion and Toy Soldiers: Cold War respectively, drop sharply overnight, without a clear reason why.

Metacritic seemed content to let the reviews, many of which were straight zeroes with no written content whatsoever, stand, at least prior to an editorial on Giant Bomb [http://www.giantbomb.com/news/power-to-the-people-until-the-powers-out-of-control/3670/]. Metacritic has since pulled some of the negative reviews, and banned the users responsible, returning Bastion and Toy Solidiers: Cold War's Metacritic scores to something more in line with the opinions of sane people.

"A publisher of a different game let us know that he noticed that his game had been 'bombed' by a bunch of zero ratings in an unusually short period of time," said Metacritic co-founder Marc Doyle. "While investigating those ratings, we noticed a group of user accounts and activities that were clearly illegitimate and violated our terms of use."

It isn't clear if Metacritic is going to review their review system to prevent other titles from being bombed in the future, but Signal Studios president Douglas Robert Albright III thinks it wouldn't take much to make the system bomb proof.

"The way to fix Metacritic user reviews is to simply require a written review and verify user accounts," he said. "If it was just some random blog I'd say whatever. But this is a major news review aggregator that should have better oversight and some standards."

Source: Industry Gamers [http://www.industrygamers.com/news/metacritic-bans-review-bombers/]

Permalink
 

Hisshiss

New member
Aug 10, 2010
689
0
0
That's nice to hear, Bastion was a fantastic game, so it's nice to see them not have to go down for some random trolls on the web xD.
 

lord.jeff

New member
Oct 27, 2010
1,468
0
0
A good way to do it would be force the person to write something in order to give a score.
 

lacktheknack

Je suis joined jewels.
Jan 19, 2009
19,316
0
0
genericusername64 said:
But Dragon Age 2 deserves A 4.2
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dragon-age-ii
No, it doesn't. If it did, then it would have gotten it without review-bombing it. Besides, it's still better than most RPGs.

I shouldn't even need a flame shield, seeing how we all understand how opinions work, right?

ANGRY GLARE
 

WaysideMaze

The Butcher On Your Back
Apr 25, 2010
845
0
0
I understand review bombing certain games (spore with the horrific drm a few years back) but just doing it to Bastion for seemingly no reason? Yeah, those guys can fuck off.
 

Saviordd1

New member
Jan 2, 2011
2,455
0
0
lacktheknack said:
genericusername64 said:
But Dragon Age 2 deserves A 4.2
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dragon-age-ii
No, it doesn't. If it did, then it would have gotten it without review-bombing it. Besides, it's still better than most RPGs.

I shouldn't even need a flame shield, seeing how we all understand how opinions work, right?

ANGRY GLARE
Your wasting your time, a lot of people are still thinking "OMG DA2 WORST GAME EVARRRRZ"
 

kebab4you

New member
Jan 3, 2010
1,451
0
0
Can't we just say fu to the point system and go with more of a "excellent,good,average,bad,awful" kind of system? With a written review below saying why they thought as they did.

Besides what sad sap use a 50 to light his cigarette? Didn't know hobos was designing major games these days.
 

Rawne1980

New member
Jul 29, 2011
4,144
0
0
Never trusted the average 'user' review.

And i've never listened to Metacritic.

When you read through 'review' sites (and I use the term 'review' extremely loosely) and see "dis gam sukz" with a score of 1 (and that's one of the better written reviews on some sites) then i'd much rather live with slapping myself in the face if I buy a shit game.
 

jakko12345

New member
Dec 23, 2010
321
0
0
genericusername64 said:
But Dragon Age 2 deserves A 4.2
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dragon-age-ii
Honestly, they should just remove every 0 or 1 rating on there. 99% of them are probably totally worthless
 

rsvp42

New member
Jan 15, 2010
897
0
0
I hate when this sort of bullshit happens. It happened on DA2 and it's downright confusing. But I guess it's the last recourse for disgruntled gamers when trolling forums no longer satisfies them. Poor games industry; the type of customers that buy their products are also the kind that sit around on the internet and ***** every time a game underwhelms them. Give it a reasonable score that matches its quality? Naah, I'll just slap a zero on it and accuse them of destroying all my most cherished gaming memories.
 

LTK_70

New member
Aug 28, 2009
598
0
0
I struggle to believe that metacritic user reviews have the slightest bit of credibility. It's bad enough that they water down critical reception of a game to a 100-point scale, but doing the same with random people? Please.
 

Adam Jensen_v1legacy

I never asked for this
Sep 8, 2011
6,651
0
0
Metacritic reviews are bad, but the good thing about it is that they were never in any way censored. My opinion is that censoring reviews, no matter how idiotic they might be, can only lead to bad things. As long as it's limited to 0.0 reviewers I guess it's OK. But let's hope it doesn't spread to other "non-desirable" reviews.
 

adamtm

New member
Aug 22, 2010
261
0
0
Thats cool.

Will they also do something about blatant sockpuppets of publishers, hired to give their titles "unwarranted" 10/10 reviews?

Wait no, because that would mean banning 90% of reviews in existence...
 

Sonic Doctor

Time Lord / Whack-A-Newbie!
Jan 9, 2010
3,042
0
0
It is about time. Considering many of the worthless reviews I have seen with 0 and 1 bombs to go with them, I will be nice for game to have proper natural scores.

They have a lot of work to do if they want to pull this off properly, definitely a lot of work considering the outrageous 0 and 1 bombs of Dragon Age 2. I would say when at least the 0's are removed, that the user score will be at least a 7.5 or higher.

genericusername64 said:
But Dragon Age 2 deserves A 4.2
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dragon-age-ii
No it doesn't, it was a fantastic game that had one flaw, and that was that it had too few dungeons. Though I didn't notice it until I was over halfway through the game and people harped on it on here. I probably not have noticed if it hadn't been pointed out, I was just having so much fun with the game.

lacktheknack said:
No, it doesn't. If it did, then it would have gotten it without review-bombing it. Besides, it's still better than most RPGs.

I shouldn't even need a flame shield, seeing how we all understand how opinions work, right?

ANGRY GLARE
Agreed.

jakko12345 said:
genericusername64 said:
But Dragon Age 2 deserves A 4.2
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dragon-age-ii
Honestly, they should just remove every 0 or 1 rating on there. 99% of them are probably totally worthless
Double agreed.
 

Therumancer

Citation Needed
Nov 28, 2007
9,909
0
0
I have to disagree with this practice because in order for this to stand Metacritic has to sacrifice it's neutrality by making a determination of what is a "fair" review, rather than itself being a neutral party that just collects the data.

So called "metabombing" has been around for a very long time, and hasn't been a factor until fairly recently when some companies wound up getting metacritic scores they didn't like, especially at a time when they are finding most paid reviewed sources to be being met with skepticism by their followers. Overall coordinated bombings have always been part of the process up until this point.

It should be noted that even during a bombing, people need to actually care enough to be following the source discussing the target, and agree with it enough to go through the trouble of acting to lower it's rating. That right there makes it fairly legitimate on something like Metacritic. Especially when you look at the opposite side, with fanboys who will do the same thing to lavish praise on a product that doesn't deserve it. You don't hear game producers complaining about users lavishing unqualified praise on a product. You also don't see Metacritic removing perfect 10 scores that don't include any justification... largely because no companies are going to complain about things that work towards making
them money.

Basically, Metacritic needs to remain neutral of everything for it to work. I'll also say that GiantBomb itself runs advertising and such on it's site, and also pays it's writers (or so I believe) which means that you have to take it's complaints with a grain of salt since like most sources that comment on gaming nowadays, they are dependant on the guys they are supposed to be watchdogging for their own livelyhood. The whole "Gerstmann scandal" kind of became the end of any illusions of journalistic integrity on the part of those covering gaming in a professional manner.

The way I see things is pretty simple, Metacritic lets people rate as long as they are users, and not connected to the industry as employees or in the media (they have a seperate ranking for professionals). Any title is going to have both it's lovers and haters, and then people in the middle. If more people show up voting a 0 than a 10 it tells you something right there, more people are motivated to bomb the game, likewise if more people are voting 10s then that also tells you that there are more people fanatically in love with it.


Dragon Age 2 was a huge mess, and I think brought a lot of this to a head because it showed a HUGE differance between paid-off reviewers, and actual fan reception. It was a case where the people who hated the game outnumbered the fanboys by a substantial number. I think this shocked "big money gaming" which is why you have it working through sources like "Giant Bomb" to pressure the independant rating systems to become biased in the favor of the industry.

While games like Bastion might be good (haven't played Bastion yet), you have to understand that just because some people REALLY like them does not have anything to do with popular response. If more people are motivated to say they don't like a game than feel they need to praise it, that results in a negative score. I'm guessing Bastion just didn't appeal to everyone that played it, and many really hated it, even if it also developed a dedicated following.

Overall I think Metacritic is pretty fair (or is when they aren't singling out reviews for removal) because "bombers" and "fanboys" tend to balance each other, especially when it comes to big titles.
 

Madmanonfire

New member
Jul 24, 2009
301
0
0
This is understandable, but there's still the problem of games getting higher scores than they deserve. Ex: FFXIII.
How do they plan on fixing that?
 

Sonic Doctor

Time Lord / Whack-A-Newbie!
Jan 9, 2010
3,042
0
0
LTK_70 said:
I struggle to believe that metacritic user reviews have the slightest bit of credibility. It's bad enough that they water down critical reception of a game to a 100-point scale, but doing the same with random people? Please.
Removing such random scores is a good thing. I for one won't miss the zero bombs of fanboy wars of game franchises, consoles, and the PC master race as well as nostalgia ridden people that bomb a game sequel because it wasn't a carbon copy of the beloved first game.

"Boo change is bad! ...(incoherent rant about developer fixing problems from the first game that said people complained about before but now said problems are gold) -zero-"

Zeros are for games that are literally broken, meaning glitched up so much that it isn't playable, not for games where people happen to not like and to them it is unplayable, because of some new features that the developer saw as new and/or better.

Zeros aren't ammunition for people to use to in their poo flinging rants against some developer that has "done them wrong".
 

Idocreating

New member
Apr 16, 2009
333
0
0
Therumancer said:
Basically, Metacritic needs to remain neutral.
The problem is that Metacritic's system can be abused. The site is taking an effort to get rid of the reviews that do no actual reviewing at all, empty posts or one sentence reviews.

It can still be neutral, but it is in dire need of a team of bitchslappers to go "No, don't fuck about guys. Write a proper review about why you disliked this product or you can fuck off"
 

Pandabearparade

New member
Mar 23, 2011
962
0
0
genericusername64 said:
But Dragon Age 2 deserves A 4.2
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dragon-age-ii
Yeah, that's the most honest, reasonable score for that turd I've seen in any review.

5/5 my aching ass. You still fail for that, Escapist.