Major video game review platform Metacritic announces a big change to user reviews in order to combat review bombing. The change comes after The Last of Us 2 was review bombed by Metacritic users who gave the game a score of 3.4 out of 10 compared to the 95 out of 100 that it received from critics.
Today, Metacritic officially announced that it would be making users wait 36 hours before posting a review about a game. This waiting period will "ensure our gamers have time to play these games before writing their reviews," said a Metacritic spokesperson, who added that the change "was based on data-driven research and with the input of critics and industry experts." The spokesperson also stated that the 36-hour waiting period wasn't made "in light of any particular game."
The Last of Us 2 is far from the only game to have seen its Metacritic user score take a hit shortly after release. In October 2019, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was also review bombed with many of the negative reviews citing the game's portrayal of Russians as the antagonists as the reason. These reviews also criticized the game as being American propaganda.
In this case, the negative user reviews seemed to have been published and were reported on October 28, a full three days after Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's release. This means that a 36-hour waiting period is unlikely to have had any effect on the game's early user score. Other games to have been review bombed are Death Stranding, which was criticized as being a "walking simulator" by some Metacritic users, and Astral Chain, which was criticized for being a Nintendo Switch exclusive.
Some gamers feel that there is more Metacritic could do to tackle this, with suggestions put forward by Forbes writer Paul Tassi having gained some support. Tassi spoke of a solution where users have to connect their PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, or Steam accounts to confirm that they do own the game. This solution would be complicated but given the number of subscribers that the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, and Steam have, it could be effective.
Another idea is to bar gamers from posting a review of a game until they've hit a playtime threshold. If a game takes around 40 hours to complete by the developer's own tests, then a Metacritic user may have to have played the game for a quarter of that, or 10 hours, before they can publish a review. This also has its issues as some games, like Ghost of Tsushima, can take much longer to complete if players choose to look for every collectible, and gamers may not want to spend much time in a game if they truly find it unenjoyable.
Metacritic isn't the only platform that has faced the issue of review bombs. In 2019, Steam rolled out a new feature to tackle review bombs, though this has only partly worked. It's unclear what will work, but those looking for better critiques, that have been qualified, want the industry to do more.