ObiWanGurobi

My two cockatiels Oreo and Kiri preening each other

I'll happily pay these 30% if it means I get quality services for them:

• high speed download servers
• reliable cloud saves
• automatic, non intrusive updates
• discussion forums
• easy mod management
• friend networking, multiplayer services
• responsive and uncomplicated support

(using Steam as an example here)

People always act like those are to be taken as granted, but if you have ever worked in dev/devops, you would know that there's a lot of work maintaining each one of them.

Also, you can use these services for as long as you want, despite paying for them with a single one-time purchase.

Of course, if the platform doesn't provide any services or benefits, your point stands. In that case just avoid it.

The new System Shock remake. I needed to draw a map of all elevator connections because Citadel station is extremely convoluted. Also, you get codes (or parts of codes) and instructions here an there, that you'll need later on.

Metacritic's user rating system is just shit. You see the game rated higher than deserved and you can either

• give it an honest rating resulting in the total score dropping by 0.01
• give it a zero rating and have the score drop by 0.1

Of course most people chose to rate it in a way that has more impact on the total score, so it's no wonder we see 0/10 and 10/10 more than anything else.

This phenomenon will be even more exaggerated if critics ratings are undeservedly high, as is the case with Starfield.

Because my initial comment was about metacritic and my argument is that metacritic is a bad indicator of review bombing because it actually encourages it

Check the usernames, that wasn't me

The reason it's lower on metacritic is mainly due to the fact that the critics rating is too high, imo. This leads to disappointed players leaving extra bad scores (i.e. 0/10) to offset the total score. In a way that's review bombing, but only as a reaction to the inflated critics' reviews (which I often suspect to be bought or bribed).

Usually the Steam reviews are a lot more reliable. As I said, metacritic's system is shit and encourages rating manipulation.

I'm not even making it a discussion. You mentioned metacritic in your (now edited) comment and I explained why metacritic's system actively encourages review bombing. So it's no wonder you'll see a decent amount of review bombing there.