Metacritic Under Fire: Indie Game Suffers Mysterious Review Bombing

Review bombs have become a notorious part of the online gaming ecosystem, often fueled by player outrage or political agendas. However, the recent hit on indie title Chained Echoes, a 16-bit JRPG, left the game's developer and publisher scratching their heads as they tried to comprehend the barrage of negative, textless ratings that tanked their Metacritic score.

Chained Echoes, developed by Matthias Linda and published by Deck13, has faced an inexplicable onslaught of negative reviews without any written explanations on Metacritic. This left the game's developer and publisher unable to address any specific issues that might have caused the sudden negative spike. Michael Hoss, head of product at Deck13, expressed his frustration on Twitter, questioning Metacritic's commitment to tackling such review bombing incidents.

Fortunately for Chained Echoes, Metacritic seems to have intervened to mitigate the damages, with the game's user review score rebounding to a respectable 8.6. Still, Hoss highlighted the distressing experience they faced, trying to determine who they might have offended and why. He speculated that some international players might be disappointed due to a lack of support for specific languages, but no concrete reasons surfaced.

In a conversation with GamesRadar, Hoss criticized Metacritic's continued influence on platforms like Steam and expressed his hope that such review bombing incidents would prompt industry-wide changes. He noted the particularly harmful impact of review bombing smaller indie games, which often lack the resources and buffer to absorb the damage to their sales and reputation.

In conclusion, although Metacritic took steps to resolve the mysterious review bombing incident involving Chained Echoes, the episode underscores the vulnerability of indie game developers and publishers to such unwarranted negative reactions. Platforms like Metacritic need to take greater responsibility in tackling review bombing and preventing the toxic cycle of abuse that often accompanies it. As Hoss suggested, Deck13 prefers the Open Critic platform, which implies that alternatives to Metacritic exist, but the gaming industry must do more to ensure a fair and reliable evaluation of games, especially for indie developers.