Currently, STALKER 2 can boast a 73 on Metacritic. A rating that would be very respectable on Gamekult, once the proportions are applied, but which turns out to be very average on the review aggregator, where rating inflation has been rampant for a long time. “ The Metacritic ecosystem encourages developers to make boring but safe games “, explains Colantonio in a Twitter post. “ As long as a game is relatively polished upon release, you'll get at least 80, even if you're bored. During this time, STALKER 2 recovers a 73% because it is rough at launch. This is unfair and misleading. »
« On Metacritic, 70 can either indicate a mediocre game or a fantastic game that is buggy at launch and requires additional patches. I don't believe Metacritic helps differentiate between the two », specifies Colantonio. Indeed, the rating assigned at launch very rarely changes over the life of a game, and remains placed as a stigma on its page despite the developments potentially made by its developers. “ A bad game without bugs will have a better score than a great buggy game. The essence of the game is not taken into account. Three months later, when this great game is fixed, it will still have a crap rating. Do you find that logical? »
For developers, acquiring a good Metacritic score has been important for around ten years, since publishers are now used to conditioning bonuses on the critical success of titles. Writer Chris Avellone broke the story in 2012, when he explained that the developers of Fallout: New Vegas had to reach 85 on Metacritic to receive a bonus. But Obsidian's RPG was stuck at 84 on PC. This miserable point of difference was enough to sweeten the employee bonus while the title is today in the pantheon of the franchise.
« Fallout New Vegas is a superb example of an exceptional but buggy game with a Metacritic decorrelated from its true quality “, Colantonio rightly argues. For the adventurers of the Zone, in any case, GSC Game World is planning hot fixes in the coming weeks to improve the gaming experience.
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