Assassin's Creed Origins Metacritic Swarmed by Spam

Assassin’s Creed Origins came out recently, and from what I hear, it’s a pretty solid game. While it’s still mired in the usual problems that make Assassins’ Creed “Assassin’s Creed,” it’s added some new dimensions to its gameplay, included a loot system that most argue is pretty fair and fairly interesting, and added RPG mechanics and floating numbers whenever you deal damage, really amplifying the “gaminess” of proceedings.

Ubisoft should be reasonably proud of what it’s accomplished, considering how past Assassin’s Creed games have done, and yet, something unusual is happening over on Metacritic, the conglomerate site that finds and averages a game’s score across multiple review platforms. While it currently enjoys a Metacritic score of 82, which stems from the reviews of 42 professional critics, the User Score is sitting at 80.

That’s not weird within itself. But as Kotaku pointed out, most of these positive reviews are, for lack of a better term, absolute nonsense. And not just in the usual “internet” way. In a “there are dozens of completely identical reviews posted by people with absolutely nonsense usernames” kind of way. You know, spam-bots and the like.

For example, one commonly repeated review is:

“ways better than assassins creed unity and assassins creed syndicate, it I more mature and bayek is interesting character, and de historical characters are handled well”

Metacritic is aware of the spam and has promised that it’s currently in the process of fighting it, but what’s more interesting is what could be the cause of this sudden burst of spam. It’d be easy to blame it on Ubisoft, but then, they don’t really have a history of doing this and of all the games that would need the boost, this one most certainly isn’t. If I had to guess, it’s actually the work of some fan who, despite the positive reviews, actually wants to see the game get in trouble by setting up this convoluted review scheme. Or, it could be the work of pirates who want to make their bootlegged copy of the game more enticing.

Either way, it’s happening. Be aware out there, kiddos.