And the irony here is that "paid" is one less letter which requires a little less effort to spell.  Being stupid doesn't... pay.

Who would have thought... I'm not surprised at all.

There is some sort of climate that makes critics score games sometimes way too high yes but none is paid off i do think,this climate is also overly accepting when you overreact in favor of the publishers but if you slightly criticice them in a negative way it is often seen as problematic.

Well this is just stupid. This is about as much BS as when people try to act like Nintendo gets special treatment. Utter nonsense...

The plot and direction is divisive (though I still have no problem thus far), but the gameplay is solid. Could maybe it be possible that as a game it deserves the 94?

Nah, makes too much sense.

What do you think about all the 100 scores by outlets that are not so known for their proffesional take on games,are those deserved you think?

And if those are deserved then what do you think about the extreme opposite and higher,lets say the 0 to 40 scores?

I've always known that there were shenanigans behind AAA game reviews, but I still find the details interesting.  Looks like Sony is both putting pressure on Metacritic and on the game reviewers themselves.  Of course I say this knowing that Sony is not alone.  It's a huge industry wide problem.  I personally feel most Mario and Zelda games are overrated.  That's why I could say that BotW is an exceptionally good game, but some people didn't believe it at first.  If you look at the reviews, all of the Zelda games are rated high.  So when an actually exceptional game comes along it gets rated the same.  These games don't look any different based on the review scores.

Why even listen to reviewers if all big budget games get good reviews?  The Metacritic score is basically pointless, and Opencritic has not solved the problem in any way.  All big budget games get high reviews, but some of these games are actually better than the others.  Reviewers just don't give any indication about which ones are authentically better.

So talking about TLoU2, I'm looking at the the user score on Metacritic, and it is 4.9 based on 104,424 reviews.  That is a hell of a lot reviews.  I was comparing it to Animal Crossing NH.  It has a 5.3 user score based on 5149 reviews.  I'm still not sure how much AH is review bombed.  I do believe that some people are upset by the one island per system thing and some of those 5149 are review bombs.  But TLoU2 has 20 times the amount of user reviews.  That is a crapton of reviews.  I think intentional review bombs are miniscule when you get to those numbers.  People are authentically pissed.

TLoU2 seems to be more of a "love it or hate it" kind of game.  I don't doubt that some people really love it.  I also don't doubt that some people really hate it.  In a situation like this a 94 from reviewers is extra suspicious.  But to me it confirms that the whole AAA game industry is suspicious when it comes to game reviews.  This game just makes it easier to notice the shenanigans.

I say professional reviewers are people, and not all people share the same opinion.  It is no different than when BotW gets a 6/10 from a lesser known site.  In both cases, they are in the minority.

As for 0 to 40 scores, clickbait is still a thing.  That does not mean Sony is putting out bribes to other sites.  Nor does it mean a 10/10 is saying a game is perfect.  It simply means the reviewer enjoyed the game enough to give that score.  Not every site follows the same metric for numbered scores afterall.

Most controversial game ever? Ridiculous.

That would be Mortal Kombat, Ya know, the main target of what would be the creation of  the ESRB.

Whats the difference between being paid or being manipulative? I don't think there is. I think the bigger question out of all this is why does Sony care so much about what others think? Isn't a 94 good enough? I think its a great score, why do they need to go out of their way to increase it even further? It only makes them look bad because if this is true, than they are basically trying to buy out the review scores without actually buying them out with cash. 

This isn't just exclusive to Sony either. A lot of journalist are saying that they have to be on the good side of these bigger companies to receive advance copies of the games etc. Some have actually come out and said it, so normally the nature of the business is leaning on manipulation which to me is no different to being paid money to say good things about a product.

I think controversial is the wrong word to use for TLOU 2. Divisive is more accurate.