My guess is that they'll only budge if the Washington Post contacts them and asks for the correction. Even then, it's not guaranteed, if I remember correctly MetaCritic refused to change the values of reviews when they went through multiple revisions (during the SimCity launch fiasco for example).

And they shouldn't. However, if a score was given to a review incorrectly, then they should at least address that issue.

It is not a joke review, there is no score on the article, unclear where the metacritic one came from. There is no mention of gameplay, mechanics or technical elements. There is no mention of other games in the genre or where Uncharted fits into that genre and the review cites other reviews and what the box art suggests..... (there are several different boxes).

He has tweeted comparing Uncharted to a toilet... 

Why do people care so much about Metacritic?

Its methodology was wonky and arbitrary to begin with. So what if one measly score slightly messes it up? Why does it even matter in the first place if Uncharted gets a 93 vs. a 94? It seems so petty...

First things first, I'm not sure how Metacritic can even be a thing without standards.  The whole framework is moonlight and cat wings.  It's like adding grams and pounds together then using that to get an average.

They also need some form of quality control.  I'm not even sure why criteria they use but it's definitely odd.

I certainly wouldn't have a problem with extreme outliers being listed but not counted.

Of course, the best thing would be to get rid of scores completely but I can't imagine that happening.  Number scores are completely subjective.  It would be nice if they were replaced with descriptive labels.

Edit:  I want to add, with regards to outliers, that review websites grading so close to 10 really has screwed everything up.

It sets a precedent for future games. Games shouldn't be affected by informal reviews

Why not just make a petition to take down metacritic? It isn't exactly helping all developers, on the contrary hurting a lot them in their sales. It also seems to be influencing the user score, either in agreement of the critic score or in rebellion of it; usually in rebellion of it. A lot of people, including critics if I had to guess are getting butthurt that other critics aren't reviewing the games they liked higher and have a soft spot for. As a result, they're all pissy and take it out on other games that have been getting praised. The movie industry critics are already in a crazy flux. Do we really want that to happen to games too? The difference here is that game reviews are far more important than movie reviews. For $60 you can bet that people want to see good reviews or good user reception before buying a game.

I think reviews are getting to a point where they're not very helpful or useful anymore, but are still influential only because of the price tag of games vs. movies or any other medium.

So I read the other review posted on their website, did no one else notice it was written and copyrighted by an AP member? This means it's not actually content generated by the Washington Post. It's an AP article, which any news outlet can then post and credit to AP. You can actually find that exact same review posted word for word on other websites.

Here it is on the Denver Post.
Here it is on some random ABC news affiliate website.
Here it is on some Massachusetts news website.

So why would Metacritic accept this review as a review from the Washington Post? It's not their review. That would be like them accepting and posting some review as a Kotaku review when it's really just Kotaku linking to some random article on another website.

Then you get into why MC would accept the review with no score, and why they gave it a 4/10 score. Well, it's the policy of the Washington Post that their reviews have no score. I've read other reviews on there, none of them have scores. Yet, you check Metacritic, WP has lots of reviews on there with scores attached. When MC contacted WP for a score, a 4/10 was the score the writer gave the game. It's not included in the review because that's just how WP does things. Does this mean it should be excluded from Metacritic?

Also, the person who started the petition has updated it, but the update is a joke and just further cements the fact that the only reason it exists is because the guy disagrees with the score of the game and the reviewers opinion on it.

"I want to make clear that the purpose of this petition is not to silence the reviewer and strip away his freedom of speech." - By removing his review from Metacritic, you actually are silencing him. And you are stripping away his freedom of speech.


"All we are asking is the removal of the review from the metacritic , not the Washington post." - But why does it need to be removed from Metacritic? Because it's scored lower than the lowest score you say you can accept, an 8/10?


"A game review when the reviewer does not even mention gameplay and complains about the detail of the game , is not a game review , its a personal comment. And it should not judge a final product." - Different reviewers have different styles of writing. But um... aren't ALL game reviews personal and subjective? They are ALL someones personal opinion about a game. We already know this guys personal opinion, 8 out 10 is the absolute lowest Uncharted 4 should score. Anything lower, and apparently the review should not count. And since when are reviews not judgements on final products? lol

"He can express his opinion but it should not be taken into account. He is not a critic." - His opinion should not be taken into account. But remember, we are not trying to silence him or strip away his freedom of speech. But he should really just be ignored. lol


"This guy butchered Red Dead Redemption. Why is he considered credible by Metacritic again? He just exist's to cause buzz , and im ok with that but it should not be taken seriously by metascore." - More irrelevant whining about how the reviewer should be silenced because his opinions differ than the guy who started the petition. But remember, we are not trying to silence him. Just you know, remove his work.


This thing is becoming laughable.

I would sign that.

Metacritic is such a clusterfuck assigning arbitrary weights to publications and arbitrarily including and excluding scores on a whim.

Their scores are incredibly meaningless and we collectively should stop caring about them.

And that would stop the asinine in-fighting over which review "matters" and which review "shouldn't have been included."

This Washington Post nonsense is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the thousands of problems with Metacritic. 

You are forgetting that the 4/10 review also is written by an AP member, so Metacritic, if they followed their own rules, should not have counted that review as well...