

User reviews were not affected, as players may submit ratings without writing a review.ĭeath Stranding was a prime target for review bombing, due to its high profile as the latest game from legendary video game designer Hideo Kojima. It should be noted, however, that Metacritic only deleted number ratings. “Metacritic takes issues of potential score manipulation seriously and has a number of policies in place to maintain score integrity,” the spokesperson told IGN, adding that moderators regularly go through user ratings and reviews, as well as those flagged by other Metacritic users, and removes those that violate the website’s terms of service. However, it was widely believed that the move was made to address the issue of review bombing, which is when people gather together to post negative ratings and reviews against a game in order to push an agenda.Ī spokesperson for Metacritic later confirmed that the negative user ratings were removed because they were flagged for suspicious activity.

Metacritic did not make an announcement before removing the negative user ratings for Death Stranding. The deleted negative user ratings significantly increased the game’s score from 5.1 to 7.4.Īs of the time of writing, there are 8,809 positive user ratings and 3,186 negative user ratings for Death Stranding on Metacritic, with a score of 7.3. In comparison, positive user ratings over that same period increased from 8,368 to 8,446.

Between December 4 and 5, argandg found that negative user ratings for Death Stranding on Metacritic had decreased from 9,335 to only 2,906.
