Fandom has responded to the recent review bombardment of Horizon Forbidden West Burning Shores on Metacritic.
please note, will Spoilers for Horizon Forbidden West Burning Shores Below
Horizon Forbidden West’s DLC Burning Shores was released last week, with many praising its visuals and smooth gameplay performance. However, one plot point has bombarded the game’s reviews on Metacritic, where the DLC currently sits with a 3.2 user rating. Prior to this, Horizon Forbidden West Burning Shores had seen its user rating as low as 2.7.
During the events of Burning Shores, Aloy meets Seyka, “an ambitious Marine from the Quen tribe who has stepped up to help her people survive”. Prior to the release of the DLC, Seika was touted as a character who would be Aloy’s equal, with actress Ashley Burch also stating that “Aloy may have met her match”.
At the end of Burning Shores, there is an option to make this match more romantic, and players can select a dialogue option that will cause Aloy and Seika to share a kiss. And for this reason, many ‘critics’ of Metacritic have expressed their displeasure.
One review said, “Alloy Lesbian! What are you really doing Sony and Guerrilla? Stop doing it to your characters.” Adds another: “Stop pushing those weird agendas on gamers. We just want to play games, not politics or homosexuality.”
Now, in a statement to Eurogamer, Metacritic’s Fandom confirms that it is aware of the “derogatory and disparaging reviews of Horizon Forbidden West Burning Shores” and that it is “currently in development”. [its] procedures and equipment to introduce strict moderation in the coming months.”
Here’s Metacritic/Fandom’s statement about Horizon Forbidden West Burning Shores’ review bombing in full:
“Fandom is a place for all fans to belong and we take online trust and safety very seriously across all of our sites, including Metacritic. Metacritic is aware of abusive and abusive reviews of Horizon Forbidden West Burning Noise and we have a moderation system in place.” Track Terms of Use violations.
“Our team reviews each report of abuse (including, but not limited to, racist, sexist, homophobic, insults to other users) and if violations occur, the review is removed. We are currently updating our processes and are developing tools to introduce stricter moderation in the coming months.”
While Fandom hasn’t gone into detail about what these new tools and processes will look like, it’s reassuring to know that it’s taking review bombing on its site seriously, and how its reviews are moderated in the future. Will try to improve it. Meanwhile, several Burning Shores ‘reviews’ have already been removed from the site for violating its terms of use (something that hasn’t been missed by many users).
Elsewhere in the news, Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West developer Guerrilla casually confirmed that Aloy’s story isn’t over.
In a management update yesterday, the company said it has “full confidence [its] New leadership “as a team”[steers] Guerilla towards a bright future, expand the world of horizons with Aloy’s next adventure and our exciting online project.”