After the most recent round of hateful and malicious review bombing, which targeted Horizon: Forbidden West and its Burning Shores DLC, the parent company of Metacritic, Fandom, has vowed to take action against people who use its platforms to preach hatred and write ‘disrespectful reviews.’
To combat review bombing, it has announced that it will be “evolving” its methods and tools, resulting in improved moderation across the board. In recent years, this idea has become significantly more problematic.
The Bombing in Review Has Exploded
Dissatisfied video game players have been taking to the airwaves for years to share their thoughts and complaints about video games that, for one reason or another, did not meet their expectations. However, for some time now, airing these frustrations has taken place in the form of review bombing. Review bombing is when a user purposely scores a game as low as possible on any platform, pushing down its total rating and frequently leaving an unpleasant or rude comment.
This is exactly what has been going on over the past few days with Horizon: Forbidden West and the Burning Shores downloadable content for the game.
Warning, there will be spoilers ahead for Burning Shores.
The fact that Aloy, the game’s protagonist, is allowed to share a kiss with another woman at the game’s conclusion is the sole reason why so many players have gone on a rant on gaming websites like Metacritic and reviewed bombed the game.
It was a situation comparable to The Last of Us II, which received negative reviews due to similar circumstances. A few days ago, the remake of Resident Evil 4 received negative reviews for, according to those who gave them, the game being too woke was cited as the reason. In addition, the person who provides the voice of Ada Wong, Lilly Gao, was subjected to severe scrutiny and harassment after she replaced the person who had previously provided the character’s voice acting.
Review scores for Fallout 76 (2018), Metro Exodus (2019), and Mass Effect 3 (2012) were all below average, and at one point in time, even Skyrim received poor review scores. Enough is enough, and Fandom, through Metacritic, is now taking action to address the issue, or at least making an effort to do so.
It has been reported that:
We take the trust and safety of our users across all of our sites, including Metacritic, very seriously because we believe that Fandom should be a place of belonging for all fans. The derogatory and offensive reviews of Horizon: Forbidden West: Burning Shores have been brought to the attention of Metacritic. We have a moderation system in place to keep tabs on users who violate our terms of service.
After that, the group explained, saying that they were striving to introduce stricter moderation’ in the following months; thus, a project is underway.
We want to thank Eurogamer for publicizing the first remarks made by Fandom over this issue.
