Metacritic Refuses To Remove Inaccurate GameSpot Review

Metacritic has refused to remove a factually inaccurate review from GameSpot after editors removed the piece from the website, according to VG24/7.

Metacritic has stated that it will publish the first review from a website for any given title. Even if the source decided to nix the write-up and issue a new one, Metacritic isn’t overly interested in swapping out reviews on a regular basis.

Unfortunately for the video game Natural Selection 2, GameSpot’s factually inaccurate review is being displayed on Metacritic despite the fact that editors have removed the offending piece and replaced it with new one. The exchange effectively transforms GameSpot’s score from 60 to 80.

GameSpot reviews editor Kevin VanOrd has issued an apology for allowing a freelancer’s error-laden review to find its way onto the reputable website. He’s hoping that Metacritic will make an exception for the article since it was loaded from top to bottom with a wide array of inaccuracies.

“The review had multiple factual inaccuracies that cast a shadow over the entire piece, so we chose to pull it and reassign, which is a rarity, of course,” VanOrd explained.

Marc Doyle, head of Metacritic, explained the situation to the folks at Kotaku:

“Yes, the critics we track know—and I spoke to the GameSpot team about this this week – that we only accept the first review and first score published for a given game. I’m explicit about this policy with every new publication we agree to track. It’s a critic-protection measure, instituted in 2003 after I found that many publications had been pressured to raise review scores (or de-publish reviews) to satisfy outside influences. Our policy acted as a disincentive for these outside forces to apply that type of inappropriate pressure.”

Do you feel that Metacritic should replace the old GameSpot review since the information it contained was factually inaccurate?