Critically acclaimed and in sales, the game Dragon Age: The Veilguard is facing a mountain of bad player reviews on Metacritic. In question, the themes and the diversity displayed by the game.
After the closure of Firewalk Studios, gamergate, a fringe of far-right gamers, welcomed the dismissal of 170 employees at Sony. The movement was also preparing for a new battle: the release of the game Dragon Age The Veilguard by EA.
Developed by Bioware, the RPG set in a heroic fantasy world features a diverse cast of characters, and addresses themes like coming out as non-binary. Themes against which gamergate is firmly opposed and is determined to make it known.
The game received a rather good reception from the press with a score of 83 on Metacritic, representing a pleasant surprise after a complicated development of the game. It is globally acclaimed for its gameplay, its graphics, its atmosphere and generally speaking, its level of finishing which makes it a solid game from its launch.
The first estimates point to good sales for the Bioware game, without breaking records.
Le review bombing
The members of gamergate therefore used one of their favorite weapons: the review bombing. This involves publishing a negative opinion on the game on the Metacritic site. The latter does not require players to own or try the game to post a review, unlike Steam.
We therefore find many 0/10 evaluations of players with the key words of these players' rhetoric: “ woke », « OF THE » (Editor's note: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion), « political agenda », « sexual ideology », etc.
Eurogamer asked Metacritic on the subject. Here is the response from a communications manager.
We take online trust and security very seriously across all of our sites. Metacritic has implemented a moderation system to identify violations of our terms of service. Our team reviews each report of abuse (including but not limited to racist, sexist, homophobic remarks, insults towards other users, etc.) and, in the event of a violation, the comments are deleted »
A promise of moderation which seems a little light compared to the reality of the evaluations around the game. At this stage, the game has a user rating of 3.8 on average.
On Steam, where players must own the game to post a review, the average is “mostly positive”. The platform notes that 73% of reviews are positive. There are opinions from fans of Bioware games like Dragon Age or Mass Effect who find this new episode “ very solid ».
The video game industry is the largest cultural industry in the world. It is quite natural that she finds herself at the heart of the cultural battle of our generation.
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