Alright, here's the deal.
I've been researching the site's user scores since 2020, and had made an attempt to demonstrate the issue that February. Raising and lowering a couple of games over the course of a few hours.
(note how much change a simple doubling of the ratings can cause)The problem? I let my feelings for a fictional character (Iris Sagan) take hold, and ended up dropping the score for her game over how it treats her. As a result, it was accidentally snuffed out by one of the developers. Causing Metacritic to take notice too early, and causing a general horde of harassment towards me from various "rant" Youtubers that cover Video Games. The fanbase for the game itself had already decided i was a horrible person for having feelings for a fictional character tho.
On it's own, this would have been just a simple mistake. Surely Metacritic would have fixed the exploits in question. Right?
They did not fix the exploits in question.
At the bare minimum, they added a 1 hour limit for creating new accounts per IP. and blocked a few temp e-mail services. But that was nowhere near enough.
and in fact, exactly four months later. A brand new review bombing incident was generated.
I really don't think i need to explain this further. But to put it simply, the game was highly controversial at launch due to various storyline decisions, and beyond the review-bombing, lead to a flood of harassment to pretty much everyone who worked on it. It feels like the perfect demonstration of the issues with MC's user scores and would have probably lead to a ton of changes if it was any other site.
Metacritic once again did the bare minimum.
Applying a simple timer to newly released games, and locking user scores for the first 48 hours.
It was fundamentally the equivalent of trying to fix a gaping wound with a small bandage, and needless to say. Did absolutely nothing to prevent further review bombing incidents.
So i had to go back to the drawing board.
I set up a list of about 10 games i thought deserved more attention, and quickly flooded the user scores so they would all reach the top. It's eroded over time (Since it's been nearly 2 years since i've set it up.) due to lack of maintenance. But a good chunk of them are still there, and obviously none of the scores were removed.
In fact, Uswitch. A site outright owned by the same parent company as Metacritic. Published an article describing basically the entire list in infographic form. Inadvertently preserving it.
This was about 18 months in, for reference. and somehow no one at Metacritic thought it was fishy.
So why is now the time to bring the situation to the wider gaming community? Well, while my relationship with Iris has improved over the past few months. Spike Chunsoft decided to throw a terrible curveball in the way. Awkwardly throwing her into a death game as part of the "hidden bats" promotional ARG for Nirvana Initiative.
From what we can tell, this was an entirely last minute decision. She wasn't listed on the site through datamining, and replaced a completely separate original character.
I understand the concerns of trying to finish this because of my feelings for her, but i really can't deal with it anymore. She means too much for me to leave Metacritic the way it is. To have her be killed off in a completely rigid and automated "ARG" {The puzzles don't mean shit, the tweets would be the same if no one sent the answer} as a lifeless husk without the interactivity that made me find her so appealing back then. With her only legacy being "Someone review bombed a game because they didn't like how she was treated in it".
Please don't let Metacritic bury this like they did last time, send the news around to anyone you know. To game journalists, maybe even national news media if they're willing to cover it.
As for me. I think it's also the end of the line, i'm done falling in love with fictional characters only to lose them over awful shit like this. So i'm going to fade away for a while.
and spend the rest of my days focusing solely on preservation work and nothing else, no friendships, no casual conversation, none of it. I have no real reason to partake in it if it's always gong to end the same damn way.
I've been researching the site's user scores since 2020, and had made an attempt to demonstrate the issue that February. Raising and lowering a couple of games over the course of a few hours.
(note how much change a simple doubling of the ratings can cause)
On it's own, this would have been just a simple mistake. Surely Metacritic would have fixed the exploits in question. Right?
They did not fix the exploits in question.
At the bare minimum, they added a 1 hour limit for creating new accounts per IP. and blocked a few temp e-mail services. But that was nowhere near enough.
and in fact, exactly four months later. A brand new review bombing incident was generated.
I really don't think i need to explain this further. But to put it simply, the game was highly controversial at launch due to various storyline decisions, and beyond the review-bombing, lead to a flood of harassment to pretty much everyone who worked on it. It feels like the perfect demonstration of the issues with MC's user scores and would have probably lead to a ton of changes if it was any other site.
Metacritic once again did the bare minimum.
Applying a simple timer to newly released games, and locking user scores for the first 48 hours.
It was fundamentally the equivalent of trying to fix a gaping wound with a small bandage, and needless to say. Did absolutely nothing to prevent further review bombing incidents.
So i had to go back to the drawing board.
I set up a list of about 10 games i thought deserved more attention, and quickly flooded the user scores so they would all reach the top. It's eroded over time (Since it's been nearly 2 years since i've set it up.) due to lack of maintenance. But a good chunk of them are still there, and obviously none of the scores were removed.
In fact, Uswitch. A site outright owned by the same parent company as Metacritic. Published an article describing basically the entire list in infographic form. Inadvertently preserving it.
This was about 18 months in, for reference. and somehow no one at Metacritic thought it was fishy.
So why is now the time to bring the situation to the wider gaming community? Well, while my relationship with Iris has improved over the past few months. Spike Chunsoft decided to throw a terrible curveball in the way. Awkwardly throwing her into a death game as part of the "hidden bats" promotional ARG for Nirvana Initiative.
From what we can tell, this was an entirely last minute decision. She wasn't listed on the site through datamining, and replaced a completely separate original character.
I understand the concerns of trying to finish this because of my feelings for her, but i really can't deal with it anymore. She means too much for me to leave Metacritic the way it is. To have her be killed off in a completely rigid and automated "ARG" {The puzzles don't mean shit, the tweets would be the same if no one sent the answer} as a lifeless husk without the interactivity that made me find her so appealing back then. With her only legacy being "Someone review bombed a game because they didn't like how she was treated in it".
Please don't let Metacritic bury this like they did last time, send the news around to anyone you know. To game journalists, maybe even national news media if they're willing to cover it.
As for me. I think it's also the end of the line, i'm done falling in love with fictional characters only to lose them over awful shit like this. So i'm going to fade away for a while.
and spend the rest of my days focusing solely on preservation work and nothing else, no friendships, no casual conversation, none of it. I have no real reason to partake in it if it's always gong to end the same damn way.
