User drops negative review on Starfield months before its launch

However, despite this growing anticipation, Starfield encountered unexpected turbulence when Joppsta360 submitted a negative review of the game on Metacritic.

The review, rife with memes and sarcastic commentary, chastised Bethesda for their noted issues with game performance and took swipes at Executive Producer, Todd Howard. What makes this review interesting and controversial is its timing - it was posted 85 days before the scheduled release of Starfield.

Despite Metacritic's policy that prevents the submission of reviews before a game's official release, Joppsta360's critique slipped through the cracks. It's been subsequently removed, but not before igniting a flurry of discussions across various online platforms. And while the review no longer appears on the site, Metacritic's user score distribution chart still denotes one negative review.

This incident underscores a larger issue - the constant abuse of user review platforms. Joppsta360's review, when coupled with a history of similar negative feedback for other games like Horizon Forbidden West, Returnal, and even Diablo 4, raises questions about the review process's integrity and how platforms such as Metacritic might improve to prevent misuse.

Starfield is among the latest games targeted for early negative reviews, often termed "review bombing". This phenomenon typically sees a surge of negative reviews often driven more by personal grievances, bias, or trolling than actual gameplay experience. It's a worrying trend that can harm a game's reputation even before its release, tarnishing the user review system's original intent - providing objective feedback and information to potential players.

Not to mention, it's well-known that certain companies, like PlayStation Studios, "require" their development teams to meet certain minimum scores for their projects.

Despite the controversies surrounding Starfield, it's just as teeming with positive discourse and conversations about how it could impact gaming as a whole. The extensive look at the game turned many skeptics into believers, generating a wave of enthusiasm that seems to overshadow the negativity borne out of one premature review.

Of course, the final verdict on Starfield will rest upon its launch and how it lives up to its promises. The hope is that this peculiar incident serves as a reminder for platforms like Metacritic to implement more robust verification systems to curb review bombing and improve the overall user review landscape.

For Bethesda and Starfield, the anticipation continues to build. The stakes are high, but if Starfield can deliver on its grand ambitions, it's likely that the memory of one premature review will be lost among the stars.