Metacritic has responded after Dragon Age: The Veilguard continued to be hit with “review bombing” on the aggregated review site due to perceived “wokeness.”
For the uninitiated, Metacritic is a site known for aggregating reviews on entertainment media, whether film, TV, or video games. On Tuesday, it became apparent that the user review scores for Bioware’s latest release, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, have become skewed with an agenda.
Fans have taken to commenting on the site, explaining why they believe the user review median score should remain at its current level of 38 percent, based on 4,810 submitted reviews. It’s worth noting that the critical reception on the same website lists the game at a favourable 84 percent from 54 reviews across all platforms. Additionally, on Steam, the game has received a “Mostly Positive” rating from more than 13,000 reviews.
Many user reviews on Metacritic claim Dragon Age: The Veilguard is BioWare’s attempt at “going woke” and blame the character dialogue for being laced with “censorship.” User Warrior45451 describes his experience as “criminal,” adding, “We get the developers’ political message shoved down our throats in several conversations.” This is not the only politically charged review, as hundreds listed on the website claim BioWare has gone “woke.”
Another user, Caveman84, doesn’t deal in pleasantries and straight says, “When will these gaming companies and creators learn that we don’t want your disgusting woke garbage…” and continues with further insults and asks the development team to “go get help.” CGMagazine’s review of Dragon Age: The Veilguard calls it “the Game of the Year contender to beat” in a 10/10 scored article.
In a statement to Eurogamer, a Metacritic spokesperson responded to the “review bombing,” saying, “We take online trust and safety very seriously across all our sites, including Metacritic.” The spokesperson added, “Metacritic has a moderation system in place to track violations of our terms of use. Our team reviews each and every report of abuse — including but not limited to racist, sexist, homophobic, and insulting language towards other users — and if violations occur, the reviews are removed,” in reference to the recent user score skew against the title.
Earlier in the year, another review aggregation site, Rotten Tomatoes, forgone its audience review score in favour of a “Popcornometer” to deter audiences who want to abuse rating systems and push an agenda against a film or its creators. Rotten Tomatoes now requires users to verify their attendance at a film using their Fandango ticket stub to leave reviews. This assures members who read the posted review that the person writing it has attended a film showing.
Although audiences continue to review bomb Dragon Age: The Veilguard on Metacritic, the title remains at the top of the “trending now” page on SteamDB.
