Metacritic Announces Stricter Censorship After Negative User Reviews of Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores

The battle between critics and users continues.

Aloy and Seyka holding hands and looking into each other's eyes in Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores.

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Note: This article may contain spoilers from the new DLC Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores.

Metacritic plans new ways to censor user reviews after players criticized Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores.

The owner of the platform, Fandom, has responded to press reports about the wide discrepancy between the critics scores of the downloadable content compared to the user reviews.

The game, which was released last week, was praised for its visuals and gameplay.

However, many players, among accusations of having a thin story, have criticized the plot in which the character Aloy, who fans have played as since 2017’s Horizon Zero Dawn, meets Seyka a “marine of the Quen tribe” and includes options to allow the two women to engage in a romantic relationship.

“Stop pushing those farking woke agenda upon gamers,” one review reads.

Negative 0-score Metacritic user review by pixelsdslr calling the expansion dire and criticizing the platform.
Metacritic 0-score user review by Jaydubss calling the DLC terrible and the worst game on the PS ecosystem.
A Metacritic user review with a zero score criticizing political agendas in a game and thanking Sony sarcastically.
A negative Metacritic user review by ArmorOfFaith with a score of 2, criticizing Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores.
A zero-score Metacritic user review stating the game is not a place for political problems.

In a statement to news outlet Eurogamer, Fandom said it knew about what it called the “abusive and disrespectful reviews” and it is; “currently evolving processes and tools to introduce stricter moderation in the coming months.

“Fandom is a place of belonging for all fans and we take online trust and safety very seriously across all our sites including Metacritic. Metacritic is aware of the abusive and disrespectful reviews of Horizon Forbidden West Burning Shores and we have a moderation system in place to track violations of our terms of use.”

The company has already removed some of the negative reviews.

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