Wild Games Studio has become a source of controversy after being accused of creating fake Metacritic use reviews to boost the score of their recent game.
The user score section of Day One: Garry’s Incident has so far mostly had negative reviews, ranging from 0 – 4. Dispersed between all of these terrible to below average scores, positive reviews using similar key phrases have appeared. Specific fragments such as “I like the concept of the game“, “I like the game“, and “the graphics and gameplay were pretty good“. While this is not very damning by itself, all of the accounts used to post these supposedly bogus viewpoints were recently created and have never posted on anything else.
Image Source: MightyFlame via Reddit
When asked by a Steam user named “[Emp’G]Vermacian55“, Wild Games Studio replied:
“Wild Games Studio has not encouraged employees to write reviews nor did we hear of someone in the company doing that. However, I have received a message of one of the reviewers telling me he wanted to help and gave us a good review. We do not want people writing reviews that do not express their opinion only in the purpose to help as it is not representative of their experience.
After taking a look at some of the reviews mentioned, they look so similar that I believe that they might have been planted by someone to try to call for a rise to lower scores. We encourage you not to write reviews to “help” if it does not represent your opinion.”
The same studio also had the TotalBiscuit wtf is… about the game removed from Youtube as the studio didn’t take kindly to his criticism. While there is no absolute proof that Wild Game Studios has done anything wrong, things aren’t looking good.
It is understandable why the studio would want to improve how their game was perceived, especially after possibly spending years pouring your life into it. It is sad however that a studio might resort to such tactics, as it makes things much worse for them in the long run. It also isn’t helped by the game industries focus on Metacritic scores to prescribe bonuses.
What do you think? Are they guilty or are things conspiring against them? Let us know in the comments.