Metacritic itself explained the situation to IGN, stating, 'A number of user generated reviews for Death Stranding were flagged for suspicious activity and have since been removed.' Metacritic went on to say that it has moderators that regularly remove reviews and user scores that don't match its guidelines, but it's unclear how exactly it determined certain reviews would stay up while others were given the axe. They noted that after Metacritic removed many of the Death Stranding reviews and scores, the game's user rating went from 5.1 to 7.4. Of course, not all of the negative Death Stranding user reviews were legitimate, and Metacritic has since removed many of those as well as many of the negative user scores, causing its overall rating to jump overnight. Death Stranding's divisiveness extended to fans as well, seeing the game review bombed on sites Metacritic by those who labeled it a 'walking simulator' and who were unhappy with the game for various other reasons.

At the time of its release, it earned perfect scores from many publications, whereas others were far more critical of the game. Death Stranding is easily one of the most divisive video games released all year.

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