Kotaku reports that Metacritic is refusing to replace a review featured on the website that has been identified by the game publisher itself as being inaccurate. Gamespot’s first review for Natural Selection 2 awarded the game a 60 / 100, but was pulled from the site after users identified factual inaccuracies in the argumentation for the score. It has since been replaced by a second review giving the game a 80 / 100, but Metacritic refuses to replace the original review on its website and states that they “only accept the first review and first score published for a given game.” More details are included after the jump.
Speaking to Kotaku, Metacritic head Mark Doyle states that the reason for refusing to replace the review is actually a measure to protect critics from pressure issued by game publishers to reevaluate or un-publish a review. Even though Doyle has been in contact with Gamespot, the review-aggregator refuses to make an exception for this particular case. As such, the pulled review remains on the Metacritic page of Natural Selection 2.
Natural Selection 2-developer Unknown Worlds stated that they were thankful for Gamespot deciding to review the game in the first place, and that they have tried to contact Metacritic over the situation as well. According to Unknown Worlds, the Metacritic ratings are used by “publishers, investors, other critics and even developers themselves to judge the success or failure of a product. Those scores can make or break dreams.”