Metacritic Updates User Review Process

<p>Metacritic is a site that needs almost no introduction in this day and age&period; It’s a website that allows critics and fans of various media to review products and talk about them&period; The way the website works is that these grouped scores are separated&comma; and they’re represented as User and Critic scores&period; That separation is why we’re here today&period; Recent conduct by users on Metacritic is why they’ve made a rather significant change to their review posting&period; Let’s discuss why these changes happen and what they could mean for future titles on the website&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p><img class&equals;"n3VNCb alignnone" src&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;specials-images&period;forbesimg&period;com&sol;imageserve&sol;5f119963b7b73b0007811c25&sol;960x0&period;jpg&quest;fit&equals;scale" alt&equals;"Metacritic" width&equals;"960" height&equals;"532" data-noaft&equals;"1" &sol;><&sol;p>&NewLine;<h3 style&equals;"text-align&colon; center&semi;">The New Review Process<&sol;h3>&NewLine;<p>Let’s not mince words&semi; Metacritic’s now added a 36-hour timer for users to wait before they can review games&period; What this means exactly is that for the first day and a half of a game’s public release&comma; users cannot review it&period; While it seems like this can be good for cleaning up some nasty review bombing habits&comma; it seems counterproductive to users who don’t do that&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>In a way&comma; it’s both a form of time-limited censorship and potential damage control versus people who are unsatisfied on the internet&period; The reason that’s the chosen wording is that review-bombing is a very crude way of voicing disdain towards a certain topic&period; For instance&comma; <a href&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;bagogames&period;com&sol;exploring-the-disappointment-the-last-of-us-2-second-opinion&sol;">The Last Of Us Part I<&sol;a>I had a <a href&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;www&period;forbes&period;com&sol;sites&sol;paultassi&sol;2020&sol;06&sol;21&sol;the-last-of-us-part-2-is-getting-predictably-user-score-bombed-on-metacritic&sol;&num;591c54e15c25">review bombing problem<&sol;a> just last month&period; Lots of those reviews were posted mere minutes after the game went live digitally&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Things have since evened out&comma; but at the time&comma; of the 75&comma;000 user reviews&comma; over 40&comma;000 of them were negative&period; Clearly&comma; there seemed to be a problem here&comma; so Metacritic decided to make a change to limit such negative outcry in the future&period; Not to mention&comma; it is a supposed countermeasure against people who don&&num;8217&semi;t own the game&period; Now&comma; whether or not it&&num;8217&semi;s an effective measure is up in the air&period; But&comma; we&&num;8217&semi;ll update this story as it develops in the future&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;