Metacritic Removes Individual Developer Scores, Still 'A Work In Progress'

Following an outcry from the online gaming community, the gaming press and featured developers, review score aggregator Metacritic has removed career scores from the pages of individual developers. Last week, news emerged that Metacritic had begun offering listings for individual game developers, providing a profile page with a career score for all the work each developer had been credited on. In the latest post on the Metacritic site, Metacritic games editor Marc Doyle explained that "users’ feedback has indicated" that the latest addition to the scoring site is "a work in progress." As such, individual scores have been removed, although the developer pages are still available. Doyle said, "As part of our relaunch of Metacritic in August of last year, one of our goals was to make the site much more dynamic and to allow our users to discover new products by exploring other titles by the creative teams behind the movies, games, TV shows, and albums our users enjoy." "In our games section, we encourage our users to click on the publisher or developer (development company) of a game they enjoy to learn more about other games those companies have produced, the Metascores of those games, and the companies’ overall career scores," he said. Regarding the individual developer pages, Doyle noted, "In addition to creating dedicated pages for corporate publishers and developers, on a given game’s 'Details & Credits' page, Metacritic displays those individual people who contributed to the games in our database, including designers, programmers, producers, voice actors, and artists." "In turn, we have produced dedicated pages for those individuals featuring their games and associated Metascores, and, until today, their individual career scores." Doyle admitted, "Although our credits database (which is powered by our sister site GameFAQs) is growing, as our users’ feedback has indicated, it is a work in progress and is not nearly as comprehensive as it needs to be to accurately provide a career score for these individuals." He noted that, while career scores have now been removed, Metacritic "are still very much committed to building a credits database, and welcome your participation in that process."