{"id":12898,"date":"2011-07-13T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-13T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T22:00:00","slug":"metacritic-speaks-out-on-corrupt-game-reviewers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/business\/12898-metacritic-speaks-out-on-corrupt-game-reviewers","title":{"rendered":"Metacritic speaks out on corrupt game reviewers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Speaking in a podcast<\/a>, Metacritic founder and games editor Mark Doyle has confirmed that the aggregating site has recently had to remove a publication from its network due to it committing what was deemed corrupt editorial practices.<\/p>\n

Doyle would not reveal the name of the publication in question, most probably because there is not sufficient evidence of corruption to make a public allegation.<\/p>\n

When discussing the list of criteria which Metacritic uses to choose which publications may contribute to the Metacritic average, Doyle said “there are many reasons why I would drop somebody [from games review listings]. There’s corruption – people can be bought, absolutely.”<\/p>\n

“[That means] are they going to give [a game] 4\/5 and say it’s one of the best of the year, and then give another game 4\/5 and say it’s really a letdown. I’ve got to see that they’re being responsible internally with that scoring. If they’re not – if they’re being irresponsible, or being contrarian or ridiculous, which happens all the time – I won’t pick them up.”<\/p>\n

And it’s not just a matter of reviewers being bought out by publishers that’s a problem. More common it seems, is certain publications with run contrarian reviews to attract hits, and Doyle has numerous times had to contact such publications and say “Guys, you’re going down a bad path here. We’re going to rethink our partnership.”<\/p>\n

Metacritic scores have become a barometer in the games industry for determing the quality of a game. Publishers such as EA and Take-Two have admitted that internal bonuses are often linked to Metacritic scores, as a low score can “really hurt your ability to sell the title” said Take-Two big cheese Strauss Zelnick in March.<\/p>\n

Discuss corruption in games reviewing<\/a><\/strong><\/span> in the forums<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A publication has been removed from Metacritic due to corrupt editorial practices <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}