Metacritic Finds, Bans Group of Users Unfairly Scoring Games

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Hailinel

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#101  Edited By Hailinel

@SithLibrarian said:

Metacritic is often used to determine royalty and bonus payouts for developers, though its exact use varies from publisher to publisher.

Wait, what? Seriously? How awful :(

Yep. Some developers are only paid bonuses if their games surpass a particular metacritic score threshold. It is messed up.

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SeriouslyNow

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#102  Edited By SeriouslyNow

Bonuses based on review scores. Definitely not corrupt.

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Grognard66

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#103  Edited By Grognard66

Only MS titles targeted for this (and specifically XBLA Summer of Arcade) - so is this the work of immature fanboys or negative viral marketing by Sony paying their PR firms to do this?

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NcJoker

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#104  Edited By NcJoker

still sounds fishy to me. who were these people, why did they act this way, and how do we know they won't just make new accounts on Metacritic?

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Levio

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#105  Edited By Levio

@SeriouslyNow said:

Bonuses based on review scores. Definitely not corrupt.

Are you sure you know what corrupt means?

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Addfwyn

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#106  Edited By Addfwyn

@Grognard66 said:

Only MS titles targeted for this (and specifically XBLA Summer of Arcade) - so is this the work of immature fanboys or negative viral marketing by Sony paying their PR firms to do this?

Fanboys, sure maybe, doesn't seem that likely. Sony paying PR firms to do this? Yeah, that's just insane conspiracy theory shit. Sony isn't going to do something like that, they'd know that it would be found out and would blow back on them HUGELY if they tried to do something like that.

I'd put it at about the same level as the kids who hack companies with too much time on their hands, and not some sinister plot. Good on MC for doing something about at it at least.

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nunsandroses

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#107  Edited By nunsandroses

@lacke: The nature of Metacritic condones people ignoring the text of a review, and simply looking at the score. Not to mention, they have a totally messed up way of converting scores (letter grades converted on an idiotic scale). The fact that they attempt to convert everything to a score out of 100 is where they go wrong, not that they aggregate reviews.

Rotten Tomatoes does a good job of both using a simple scale ("like it/don't like it"), and highlighting outlets that are higher-profile than others. They give the user control over granularity in how it aggregates, rather than taking on the responsibility themselves. Unfortunately, this doesn't stop its users from changing "72% of critics like this" into "This movie got a 72/100", which is pretty lame. :\

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SeriouslyNow

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#108  Edited By SeriouslyNow

@Levio said:

@SeriouslyNow said:

Bonuses based on review scores. Definitely not corrupt.

Are you sure you know what corrupt means?

Oh I'm sorry, I meant corruptible. Does that please you?

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Xeiphyer

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#109  Edited By Xeiphyer
@SeriouslyNow said:

@Levio said:

@SeriouslyNow said:

Bonuses based on review scores. Definitely not corrupt.

Are you sure you know what corrupt means?

Oh I'm sorry, I meant corruptible. Does that please you?

The reviewers aren't getting the bonuses, the team that made the game is, so its not corrupt to be paying a bonus based on how well a game reviews.
 
 It is pretty disgusting though, but it makes sense. It does encourage the developers to make a good game, but honestly, anyone making games is trying to make a good game because the industry is highly competitive and everyone in it wants to be there and works hard to stay there.
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solidejake

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#110  Edited By solidejake

They should ban G4/X-Play.

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jackelbeaver

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#111  Edited By jackelbeaver

>people who complain that originality in gaming is dieing, that all that sells is big fat shooters.

and then nobody buys big original AAA games that ninja theory, platinum games, or grasshopper studios makes.

self fulfilling prophecy

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Jazz_Lafayette

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#112  Edited By Jazz_Lafayette
So Metacritic decided to fix this problem - which apparently involved ToS violations - only after gaming press pointed it out. Encouraging stuff. Thanks for the heads up anyway, Patrick.
 
@gladspooky said:

They should just ban all reviews. Problem solved.

Corrected.
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kosayn

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#113  Edited By kosayn

Metacritic is what it is, but it shouldn't be used for bonuses. I think the critical community for gaming is still too embedded and too prone to repeating sound bites as their own opinions. Needs more time to grow.

Also, what's funny is how little abuse there actually is of things like this that are basically anonymous and without consequences. Jackasses are more of a rare and valuable commodity than you might think.

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vinsanityv22

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#114  Edited By vinsanityv22

that fix sounds questionable. I mean, that system works pretty great for Gamefly, but still - it's really easy to give your game a 1 and write a terribly-written sentence like, "Dis game is teh suck Call of Duty is better only n00bs and kiddiez play dis game"

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rambostyrer

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#115  Edited By rambostyrer

This is why I more and more stick to stuff like Totalbiscuits "WTF IS" series and giantbomb quicklooks......

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creiij

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#116  Edited By creiij

It's good they ban people who give games a zero so we can get honest opinions about a game. But seriously, who really cares about Metacritit? It's not a professional review site since anyone can register and give scores (unless you give a zero then you will get banned).

I stick to sites like IGN, Giantbomb and RPS for reviews and Youtube or Giantbomb for some gameplay footage.

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Elazul

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#117  Edited By Elazul

@creiij: Well yeah, most people here probably don't care about metacritic, but for people working at developers who could potentially be stripped of bonuses and royalty payments because of stunts like this, it's kind of a big deal.

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epgpx

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#118  Edited By epgpx

The idea of Metacritic seems rather stupid and it's more laughable when you say publishers pay out bonuses/royaltie checks to developers based on metacritic scores. The system is flawed and as the article states, the system can easily be abused both ways and just imagine how many retarded developers depend on false scores just to be rewarded bonuses is hysterical. Actually, they're not stupid at all cause they're getting more money based on unreliable false scores and its the publishers who are major dumb asses relying on such stupidity that baffles me.

How does one depend on a review aggregator score for bonuses is beyond me. That's just dumb. I mean I'm pretty sure the movie business doesn't do this. Unless they somehow use the Rotten Tomatoes tomato-meter for bonuses too, then this is just one big farce.

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Hilts

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#119  Edited By Hilts

The solution is even simpler. Get rid of user reviews from Metacrtic all together. Who honestly looks at them?

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BoG

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#120  Edited By BoG

Good. However, eliminating trolls should be business as usual, not some huge breakthrough.
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doe3879

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#121  Edited By doe3879

Reading the title and half way down the article,

I thought it was about PC Leader Board Score hacking and they're doing something about it, and I go "ABOUT TIME!!!!

but no :(

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huser

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#122  Edited By huser

@EPGPX: I agree on the stupidity of using review aggregator's as a measure for bonuses, but using the movie industry as the example isn't exactly the proper analogy. Everyone knows who Spielberg, Lucas, etc are. Until game devs have that level of facetime and recognition, they have far less power to ask for 200 million dollar budgets and huge paydays up front for their work. Given that, game devs are going to have to find some metric to reward successes. Gamesales are certainly one option, but it probably has to be something.

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imotep12

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#123  Edited By imotep12

I doubt doing this will permanently stop any trolls.

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Aaron_G

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#124  Edited By Aaron_G

people need to get lives if they have time to do this.

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WilliamRLBaker

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#125  Edited By WilliamRLBaker

What the hell bastion was an amazing game...

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jmrwacko

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#126  Edited By jmrwacko

Trolls should be thrown in prison, where trolling for attention only results in unnecessary penetration.

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Example1013

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#127  Edited By Example1013

Man, some people are thick.

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AssInAss

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#128  Edited By AssInAss

Anyone got reminded of the old Gamespot user review days?

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iam3green

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#129  Edited By iam3green

well good that they fixed it. pretty weird to just have a random attack like that. usually when a raid like that happens it gets around the net.

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MindChamber

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#130  Edited By MindChamber

At first Im like... if the metacritic score is so important that it effects the success of a game then maybe these users should be charge for fraud, seeing how employees are given bonuses etc based on it.. Then again.. These trolls show just how flawed metacritic really is .. and hopefully developers will stop relying on an easily manipulated system to judge their games by.

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obinice

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#131  Edited By obinice

I had never even heard of metacritic. I wonder how popular it is in the UK.

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Meowshi

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#132  Edited By Meowshi

This sucks considering how highly-regarded Metacritic is.

Of course, Metacritic shouldn't be as important as it is.

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MeatSim

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#133  Edited By MeatSim

Nobody should be putting any kind of stock in user ratings with no text reviews.

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MisterMouse

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#134  Edited By MisterMouse

good thing they went in and banned the accounts

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gbpacker

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#135  Edited By gbpacker

Because now metacritic actually matters...

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Boopie

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#136  Edited By Boopie

it was always obvious it's Sony fanboys no mystery here at all

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big_jon

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#137  Edited By big_jon

Good, douche bags.

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MURDERSMASH

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#138  Edited By MURDERSMASH

@Hailinel:

As sad as that is, Metacritic can't be blamed for such behavior. That's the publishers who are putting so much stock in the site. In my opinion, the only thing off the top of my head that they're doing seriously wrong is using some strange weighting system to determine the overall score.

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CraigAA1028

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#139  Edited By CraigAA1028

I wish Giant Bomb could do this every once in awhile for user review ratings, but since the team at GB is small I don't expect it or blame them for not policing it. I removed almost all my user reviews and decided never to post them here again since a team of about 10 trolls would just wait for me to post a review and then bomb it with negative feedback within hours of it going up. Trolls fucking suck