Massive Bot Negative Metacritic Reviews Deleted for Death Stranding But Leaves Bot Mixed and Positive Reviews

Review bombing is nothing new. People will tank a game's user score for various reasons ranging from dislike towards the company making the game, certain decisions, and even exclusive releases without ever playing the game. Some companies have implemented solutions to this issue such as Valve's Steam showing how long an individual played the game and only can write a review for games they own. However, sites like Metacritic don't have such as system and as such titles usually get review bomb, such as Astral Chain which released as a Nintendo Switch exclusive because Nintendo funded and published the game

Now it seems the opposite is happening with Death Stranding. A polarizing game from Hideo Kojima that has seen massive acclaim leading up to its release. With clear bot negative scores meant to lower the game's score being wiped but leaving the positive or mixed reviews.

The news broke on Reddit with user argandg who showed that the user score has changed from a 5.1 to a 7.4 in a day, which is a massive shift. The score currently sits at 8,659 positive, 533 mixed, and 3,073 negatives. The December 4th numbers read as 8,368 positives, 522 mixed, and 9,335 negatives which is a massive decline.

It's easy to pick on the positive bots reviews. With these reviews having usually 1 review being Death Stranding and including 1 short sentence about the game.

It's unclear what is going on here. After all, negative review bombing does happen more frequently than mass positive reviews. Such as with Assassin's Creed Unity positive review bomb back in May. With Valve unable to determine what to do with the situation on Steam. Leaving mass positive reviews is just as misleading as mass negative reviews.

It's likely that Metacritic has a system in place to look through negative reviews but not positives. It's unclear why this is happening for only negative reviews but seeing that it happened with Astral Chain it's likely it has happened with other games featured on the site. 

Rotten Tomatoes had a similar issue with Captain Marvel and implemented a system where users had to watch the movie before a review can be submitted. Perhaps Metacritic should have a similar system but it would add another layer of issues such as used game purchases, games purchased or given outside of authorized retailers, or borrowed games.

Adam Siddiqui,
Senior Editor, NoobFeed
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