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[–] [deleted] • 2 pts 5y (edited 5y)

To expand on this story, I'd been a MetaCritic user for about a year after running into censorship on another gaming forum that allowed reviews. My account was clearly not a troll account, as I reviewed some movies and music albums on there, too. So, imagine my surprise when I hear that MetaCritic, right before last year's game awards, decides to have the user score for Death Stranding shoot up like 25% (maybe more, can't remember right now). So, I go back to look and my review has been outright deleted for calling it a walking simulator, non-game movie (my opinion, which I felt had the right to be voiced).

Not taking kindly to this, I go and repost my review and mention that it's sad MetaCritic is deleting unfavorable reviews of this game and questioning if they are being paid off to do so. I check my review after work - it's been modified, with no footnotes or anything, to remove the attention being drawn that MC is censoring opinions that they disagree with or are being paid to destroy. I update my review a second time and say stop marking up my reviews without notice. Next thing I know, my account is suspended/banned. I get the e-mail in the post topic.

After that, I told them to delete my whole account, as this is exactly why I left that first gaming forum and took down hundreds of my reviews over the years. Bonus added: since I believe these asshatsare located out in CA, my final email to the mod team was that I can't believe what a bunch of 'fascists' they are censoring reviews like 'de GNATZEES burned all those Jewish books.' So why post this story now?

Within hours of the new, somewhat controversial Final Fantasy VII Remake, I'm already seeing reviews similar to the ones I had deleted by the mod team. 'Hey MC, stop deleting reviews you disagree with!' ( https://pic8.co/sh/7ivqar.PNG) I saw the user score move 0.2 points upward just since this morning. My guess is if people keep an eye on it over the coming months, you'll see it do the same thing as Death Stranding to manipulate consumer confidence and push more game sales. Thanks for reading my wall o' text here.

[–] • 1 pt 5y

Thank you for sharing your story. I will look into it in a moment.

[–] • 1 pt 5y

Reminds me of the TwinGalaxies scandal.

[–] [deleted] • 1 pt 5y

Found a couple entries from around 2008, but I am unfamiliar with this scandal. ED does not seem to have an entry, either. What was this all about?

[–] • 1 pt 5y

There are plenty of videos about it on YouTube.

Some long-haired guy (I forgot his name) tried to manipulate the score to stay the king of kong in some Donkey Kong arcade game.

[–] [deleted] • 1 pt 5y

Just watched someone go through it in detail. I think my favorite example of that guy's cheating was the Barnstormer world record where they stripped out all of the obstacles and the dude's score was still like 4 seconds faster than technically possible.

[–] • 1 pt 5y

The E-Mail claims you have insulted their moderators.

Which alleged insults were those?

[–] [deleted] • 1 pt 5y (edited 5y)

'Please stop selectively deleting portions of my reviews.' This was embedded within my review, btw. Simply the act of calling out poor moderation was too much of an insult to the mod staff, it seems.

[–] • 1 pt 5y

They are now on the list.

If you have any suggestion for improving the description, please let me know. Thanks.

[+] [deleted] • 0 pt 5y
[–] • 0 pt 5y

You can help reaching more people with this message by sharing your post here and /s/ModAbuseto other users of corrupt communities.