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KUNAI is the latest to catch a review bomb from a disgruntled Metacritic troll

Metacritic User Ratings on KUNAI took a short plummet after a troll review bombed the game and several others just to try to make a point.

TJ Denzer

February 20, 2020 8:07 AM

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It seems Metacritic’s user review system is the center of some toxic attention in the last few days, and now indie title KUNAI has been caught in the fray. Review bombs aren’t isolated to the site by any means, but it has been at the center of some malicious recent attacks on several games. KUNAI developer TurtleBlaze recently went on record to say that they were a recent victim of such a malicious misuse of the Metacritic systems.

TurtleBlaze reporting the wrongdoing on Gamasutra via a community post on February 19, 2020. The indie dev claimed that their game, KUNAI, had suddenly taken a plummet in User score from an 8.1 to a 1.7 on Metacritic. What’s more, they discovered that there was someone taking full credit for the sudden drop. Indeed, the user seemed to have posted on reddit their entire rhetoric for the review bombing of both KUNAI and another game, Insurgency Sandstorm from New World Interactive. Though the post was deleted by the user, it was noticed by a few people and a screengrab of the review bomber’s post was allegedly taken before the delete.

What’s pretty vile about it is that the troll wasn't mad at KUNAI or even Insurgency Sandstorm, but rather was angry over a completely unrelated character in Pokemon, and just decided to review bomb KUNAI and Sandstorm Insurgency because they were “angry” and “high.” Though they try to legitimize it with claims of wanting to expose how weak and manipulable Metacritic's User Reviews can be, it boils down to the point that they were just mad and chose to try to attack several games in a place a lot of developers and publishers care about.

A similar review bombing took place at the expense of AI: The Somnium Files recently for the same reason that the user claimed to want to show flaws in Metacritic, but was really just more angry about a character in the game, though that matter and KUNAI’s have seemingly been resolved by Metacritic since the culprits went and outed themselves on public forums.

Unjustifiable toxicity or not, these trolls have shown a little something. Metacritic seems to be a little too loose in allowing trolls to manipulate User Review scores for games. It’s good that KUNAI and AI: The Somnium Files have seen action to restore their good names, but something more may need to be done sooner or later to keep these instances from occurring.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.