metacritic review bombing

The Last of Us Part II May Have Encouraged Metacritic to Address Its Review Bombing Problem

Review bombing has been somewhat of an issue on Metacritic for a long time. However, it arguably hit a new low once The Last of Us Part II released last month. Within hours of the sequel’s launch, people who hadn’t even played the game were overwhelming Metacritic’s user reviews with absurdly low scores. Now it seems the review website is taking matters into its own hands by not allowing users to review titles on launch day.

A post on ResetEra notes that user reviews for Superluminal, which just came to PS4 on July 7th, are not available at present. “Please spend some time playing the game,” reads a tag on the Superluminal Metacritic page. That note is followed by another that tells visitors to “come back to review it starting at 12:00PM PST on July 9.”

Below is the screenshot as it appears in the aforementioned ResetEra thread:

metacritic review bombing

Will this solve the review bombing issue at-large? It seems unlikely. Trolls probably don’t mind having to wait a couple of days. This certainly appears to be a step in the right direction, however.

Review bombing isn’t all that plagues the discourse surrounding The Last of Us Part II. The title’s cast and crew have been the subjects of online abuse for the last few weeks. Laura Bailey, who plays Abby, has received death threats, for example. Naughty Dog openly addressed the issue earlier this week, outright condemning the behavior in a message to its community.

The Last of Us Part II is in stores now for the PlayStation 4.

[Source: ResetEra via PlayStation Universe]

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