Metacritic Battles Review Bombing - No User Scores on Launch
Metacritic has introduced a restriction on user ratings. From now on, the website does not allow users to issue notes on the day the game is released.
The Last of Us 2 was one of the most anticipated games of the year. Unfortunately, the title became more famous for the controversy and getting review bombed on Metacritic. The latter apparently took some steps to prevent similar situations in the future. As noted by Internet users from the Resetera forum, with recently released games, users are unable to give their own rating on the day of game's release. Instead, on the game page there is a request to spend more time with the title and add a note later.
The idea that players have to spend some time with the game before rating it is easy to understand in itself. Unfortunately, in practice this will not prevent a flood of unjustified negative ratings (for example, for issues unrelated to the game itself) - users will do it a little later. There is still no obligation to confirm the purchase of a given game. However, the creators can be glad that at least on day one, their title will not receive "well-deserved" 0/10, which - as in the case of TLoU2 - will effectively lower the average rating of the game.
