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The story
Sony’s new action game Wolverine has seen another big swing in its Metacritic user score. According to the thread’s original poster, roughly 300 reviews were mass-deleted, dropping the score to 6.6. Post #48 in the thread compiled an independent timeline of the score’s rise and fall — 6.4 → 6.7 → 6.3 → 7.1 → 6.6 — and some are now pointing out that the total number of deleted reviews has topped 1,000. Behind the story is talk that the game carries a 6-million-unit sales target tied to keeping its Marvel license, and opinions were split on whether it still makes sense to keep manipulating the score this long after launch.
What people said
What's the point of a 90-point score for this 'Fart-verine' (a mocking nickname for the game) anyway?
Come on, man… that's exactly what it is.
It's the scammer's playbook — con the clueless to keep the lifeline going.
That's more than the total review count of some niche games put together.
For a game nobody's paying attention to like Wolverine, you can manipulate it all you want.
· When the manipulation gets deleted, the score goes down ↓
■ Nintendo games
· When the manipulation gets deleted, the score goes up ↑
Funny how the trend runs exactly opposite, huh (sarcasm)
There's still a 6-million-unit quota though?
They've got no choice but to keep trying.
They're desperate lol
Might as well just drop that shackle already.
A Marvel game isn't going to sell well regardless.
Add in the ones that haven't been caught and who knows how many there really are 🥺
Actually, the total of all reviews deleted so far is already over 1,000.
There've been about four separate rounds where hundreds got wiped at once.
That's such a different order of magnitude I can't even laugh.
What even is this.
Topping 1,000 is genuinely chilling.
Put that money into making the game instead of this.
They're spending $300 million on Wolverine though.
Whatever budget 'Director Kojima' (a nickname for Hideo Kojima, known for lavish game budgets) would ask for is actually reasonable if you're making a AAA title.
A creativity crisis, is it?
Back for Death Stranding 1's launch, Sony reportedly spent an amount in that single launch month equal to Nintendo's entire annual US marketing budget — so their manipulation budget is probably on a different scale from everyone else's too.
*Note: the Metascore shown already reflects manipulation
6.4
↓
6.7 (SONY starts bombing with 10/10s from new accounts)
↓
6.4 (SONY's manipulated scores get deleted)
↓
6.3
↓
6.8 (SONY angrily bombs with 9s and 10s from new accounts)
↓
7.0 (the instant it hits 7.0, new accounts posting 8s and 9s increase)
↓
After hitting 7.0 and a brief trickle of new-account 8s and 9s, the new-account 10/10 bombing pauses for about half a day — the first time that's happened
↓
7.1 (new-account 10/10 bombing resumes)
↓
6.8 (about 300 reviews deleted, Metascore also drops by 1)
↓
6.7 (another roughly 200 reviews deleted)
↓
6.8 (SONY angrily bombs with new-account 8-10s)
↓
6.7 (reviews drift slightly up and down)
↓
6.8 (new-account 8-10 bombing ongoing in real time)
↓
6.6 (roughly 300 more reviews deleted again, and the new-account manipulation is still going)
This is hilarious, I can't.
Without the manipulation it'd probably be sitting at 6.3 or even lower.
Looks like there'll be another deletion round coming too.
Keep this up and even the NDNB crowd is going to snap.
There's already been a lot of foreigners pissed off at PlayStation this year.
I'd love for the idiots who go on about 'NBP' to explain that one.
Probably because they're throwing money at overseas 'journalists' (wink wink).
Toward Japan they seem to have mostly given up and let it slide, though Tane occasionally pushes back.
What was all that effort on Spider-Man even for, then?
It's probably a different dev team working on it in parallel over a long stretch.
It started before they could absorb the other team's know-how, so this is the result.
Everything gets weird the moment Sony's involved.
I'd like to believe nobody actually predicts sales figures off of a store's review count.
You don't actually think the people doing this manipulation have played the game, do you?
I think honest, likable PlayStation users like this one disappearing is exactly why PlayStation's been struggling.
It's been mocked to death already, but I quit right at the opening scene where you pop both claws with R2+L2 — it felt way too childish.
The system is way too kiddie for the tone and visuals it's going for, it's a mess.
Why do they need to hype this up so much anyway?
Probably the Marvel contract.
Maybe it's the same logic as a scam — if even a few people fall for it, it's a win.
Not something a legitimate company should be doing, though.
Then again, part of the blame is on a system that lets this slide even temporarily.
but there's also a ton of trash that gives Microsoft's games low scores without exception.
https://www.metacritic.com/user/hp1709/
Gears E-Day: 4
Wolverine: 10
SAROS: 9
Kiln: 3
Marathon (PS5): 10
Marathon (PC): 10
Returnal: 10
The Last of Us Part II: 10
Guess even they couldn't bring themselves to give SAROS a 10, lol
Background and Points of Debate
Metacritic’s user score system lets anyone post a review, which makes it prone to “review bombing” — a single person using multiple accounts to dump a batch of extreme scores at once. Because the operators detect unnatural posting patterns and delete them in bulk, scores swinging up and down over a short period isn’t unusual on its own, and some point out that similar mass deletions have happened with Nintendo titles too (post #13). What split the thread wasn’t the number swings themselves, but whether to focus on the “scale of the manipulation” or on “the game’s actual content.” The timeline in post #48 is just one user’s manual tracking of events over time, not an officially confirmed record. It’s also worth noting that the 6-million-unit quota and the terms of the Marvel contract are only hearsay within the thread — not information Sony or anyone involved has officially disclosed.
※This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch Hardware/Industry board (commonly called “Geha”) thread “[Sad News] Sony’s Wolverine Has Another Mass Review Deletion, Score Drops to 6.6 😭“.
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