Stalker 2's Lower Review Scores Are 'Unfair & Misleading', Says Arkane Founder

I think it’s yet another example of the ‘Xbox tax’, yes the game has a few bugs but nowhere near CP2077 back at launch as some reviewers were saying, also they’re being very picky with the game itself complaining about even the smallest of things, I expect the very same thing to happen with Indiana Jones (might even score below 80) but when the PS5 version launches it’s gonna be “GOTY”.

Sorry a game should be good to go day 1. - bar a few minor issues - that’s not just stalker that’s everything.

No other product do we stand for broken/half finished things.

Everything should be taken into account, but when there are issues they rightly should be marked down. And if they aren’t, where is the incentive for a dev to release a quality game.

There is plenty of goodwill for stalker to succeed, people are supporting the devs, willing to wait for updates.

But at the end of the day people also go to work 40hrs a week (or whatever) and choose to spend their disposable income on gaming, so it’s only fair that Consumers get a finished working product. Or else they will spend their money on a different hobby. - or as is happening wait for it to hit a sub.

@IOI see. Nonsense. It’s rated lower on PC than Xbox.

Oh and then let’s not mention the fact it isn’t even an Xbox game.

He's not wrong but allowing games to be released - clearly before they are ready is going to lead to this happening. Are all the professional reviewers out there now responsible for a 'three months in' review? YouTube is great for this but it shouldn't be the norm. Developers and publishers should be doing better QA testing and releasing games that only need minimal patching after release.

He sounds like a kindergartener complaining to the teacher.

@IOI Disagree. See for example Days Gone. It's on a yellow score on Metacritic because it was full of bugs.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner The mere fact it’s not available yet on PS5 leads to higher scrutiny from reviewers, whether they’re playing on PC or Xbox.

So Stalker 2–a game literally developed in the middle of an ongoing war—is a bit buggy, and it gets slammed. Meanwhile Slob Howard and Bethesda churn out broken trash on a conveyor belt and they get unending, unwarranted praise. To this day I cannot play Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim/Fallout 3/4/76 for more than 20mins straight without falling through the floor, getting stuck in the stairs, crashing to the dashboard or encountering any one of an infinite number of game breaking bugs. Most overhyped studio that ever existed bar none.

@IOI so how do you feel about the guys that have rated it 10/10 or 100? Clearly ignoring the issues that the developers themselves have come out and acknowledged.

Or the fact that Xbox tax is changing to ‘games not on ps5’ which doesn’t account for good ratings for things like age of mythology aoe2 etc. or the fact that hundreds of pc and switch games don’t come to ps5 and do perfectly fine in reviews.

@IOI Who said that? The voices in your head don't count.

@IOI mess me with that bullcrap. Reviewers were given a busted version for review so of course reviews are going to be low. “Xbox tax” is a hawt load of crap. It’s pretty clear the reviews are pretty accurate based off of what they played. At least for players GSC had a better version ready to go day one and they are finding success.

@IOI keep on stuffing Xbox down your throat bud lol

I can't agree. It has been a fantastic experience and vying for top spot in games for me this year.

Even with the few bugs I've ran into, still somehow a better than most I play.

I actually had few issues on launch day playing on my Series X. That day one patch did wonders it seems and wish reviewers had been able to review it with that. I expect it would have gotten higher scores.

AFAIK it is getting a lot of love on PC and I am enjoying a much more convincing post apo rpg here than Fallout by Todd Howard.

The review score system is flawed. 6 months from now those scores will not represent the game and will never be updated. In this case, it was day 1 that they fixed many of the issues reviews dinged them for. So users never saw a lot of the negatives from reviews. Many, many games evolve over their life and are shackled to a score given to it in a pre release state.

I think you will find a better sense of the game looking at recent user reviews on steam.

Sea of thieves is a good example of a game that was designed to transform over time and is stuck with its 69 metacritic that is based solely on the launch window.

The game is not good. I tried playing it and was very surprised how bad I thought it was. I agree with Purexbox - a four is a good score. Starfailed started off rocky and now it's much better, but the game is still not good.

Taking risks with a game shouldn't mean releasing them in a broken state.

I'm prepared to give Stalker 2 a pass on this given the circumstances but everyone else needs to get their act together here.

I really want to see things that are new and exciting, I really want devs to push the boundaries and I'm happy to accept a bit of jank to get there but too many games are not doing enough to target platform specs and many are releasing in such a shambolic state they never recover.

The industry needs to reset itself before it buckles under this mountain of horse s*it publishers are trying to feed gamers.

“It’s unfair to rate our vehicle badly at release. Yes, the collision detection wasn’t working, the gear shift wouldn’t let you go above second, and it got 10 MPG. But we’re working on all that! These low reviews are just not warranted!”

-Complained no car manufacturer EVER, but somehow expected from software devs these days.

As for the whole ratings three months later thing..if it takes three months to fix the freaking bugs, maybe…and this is a crazy statement, I know…don’t release the game in a rough buggy state and MAYBE hold off for three months? Releasing a finished product is difficult, I know, but somehow other companies and industries seem to manage it…

@BacklogBrad you're right but at the same time reviewers can only review the version they've been given. Many games have been marked down over the years for being buggy so it's really on the devs to send it out when it's truly ready (though obviously I sympathise with the unique challenges they've faced).
By all accounts the game seems to have sold quite well and the steam reviews are positive so I don't think the metacritic score has actually done much harm this time.

@awp69 some reviews did wait, PX and EG among them.

There’s still issues and no one can dispute this, because the devs themselves have acknowledged there are.

Two completely different issues. You can’t get a good review if the product is buggy… the review is based in the current version and not the potential… the second issue of safe ideas getting better scores is totally inaccurate. The third issue not raised is that if the game is not 60 fps the game seems to get a lower score….

I agree with Colantonio here, I'm now around 20h in and love Stalker 2 . Sure it has its issues, but once invested in the survivalist and atmospheric adventuring the game offers, it's a great.

@BacklogBrad I rely on everyone here giving their thoughts on games over time more than any one review…

Same story with every xbox exclusive... Xbox tax is real and reviewers prove it with every release.

@Llamageddon there is room for improvements to how websites handle reviews. IGN for example, could go with more of a game profile instead of an article approach. If someone with reviewing capabilities happened to be playing an older game like cyberpunk right now in their free time they could post a 2024 score to the game profile that would affect the sites aggregate score. This way there is at least a path for a review score to evolve along with the game even if the sites cant afford the time or resources to get around to updating it.

With dev times often being well over 5 years (more like a decade in this case) it's not really realistic to just wait longer to release something that is costing a lot more than past games and not making any money at the moment.

@GeorgeKal good job it’s not Xbox exclusive then eh?

@AlwaysPlaying that's a good practice. I like the steam reviews because it also gives the playtime of the person reviewing it. Not only does it prove that they played it, but also gives it a little more perspective if it's a dislike after 2 hours played or 30 hours played.

@themightyant

I suppose PJ gave it a 4/10 on an XBOX SITE because he's biased, bought and paid for too, right?

I personally think PJ gave it a 4/10 because the game its not set in the Arkham Verse,or made by Rocksteady😉....

Having watched DF about this too, especially as the Day Zero patch seemingly made quite a big difference, I can see their perspective that the reviews are 'misleading' and not representative of the 'Day 1' experience.

However, I also believe that they shouldn't have sent out review codes if the game was in that bad a state. Its not the reviewers fault the game was in that state and I see it more as a Dev/Publisher issue to ensure the reviewer has the 'Day 1' code at the very least to give a 'fair' review. It's their fault the reviews are 'misleading' if they don't ensure the game is up to standard before shipping (and I include to reviewers too). The reviewers cannot assume the Patch will come Day 1 and/or that it will fix issues so its a 'fair' reflection of the Game at the time.

If they had a Day Zero Patch, maybe they should have released it sooner or not released the Game to reviewers until it was patched for a 'fairer' review that better reflects the Launch state.

What’s gonna make matters worse for the
XDL. Xbox Defence League.
Is when it releases on PS5 and Pro it will have a lot of issues patched and will probably get a higher review score.
Additionally the PS5 Pro will also get an up tick of best console to play on.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner it is and that why it gets bad reviews

@GeorgeKal xbox bought steam?

@BAMozzy DF has one of the few very balanced views on the whole situation & one of the few to acknowledge what they reviewed was different to what consumers got day 1. The whole launch & review code was a mess all around.

However I do hope folks give Stalker 2 another shot after a few patches as there really is a superb game under all the issues. Diamond in the rough is certainly apt.

Here's my take on gaming reviews today.

If a low score is awarded due to story or technical issues, that's fair. If story is bad, do better. If due to technical issues, then why was it released? The days of release it now and broken and plan to patch later, is just unexcusable and unacceptable.

If any lesson is to be learned from this, it's to ensure the game is solid out of the gate rather than continue this trend of release now and patch later.

Now, I will give this developer a little leeway. It's had to deal with tanks and bombs outside their homes, move studio operations to a whole new country, lose teammates to war, etc.

It's essentially had a troubled development for reasons outside of its control.

I'd say they did the best they could under the circumstances and perhaps couldn't afford to delay the game any longer after already delaying the game multiple times.

Perhaps the developer felt that it would have the day 0 patch ready before review time, but missed the mark.

It does seem like the community is also more forgiving than the reviewers because they got to play a game that, while still "rough around the edges" was much more playable than what reviewers had access to - it was enough to get the game 1 million sales in 2 days.

The good thing is, the game isn't going anywhere. On PC it can be played indefinitely. And as long as consoles makers continue to support backwards compatibility from here on out, it can be played indefinitely there, too.

I feel like the scoring is uneven depending on the game. Cyberpunk 2077 should have had a lower MC score than Stalker 2 because it was so broken on Last gen playstation refunded everyone regardless of playtime and removed it from the store.

I think that PX review of 4/10 was unnecessarily harsh.

Since they rated Cyberpunk 2077 5/10 based on technical performance this should have been a 6/10.

It deserves bad scores. Release a broken game, get bad scores. I'm still ticked people have decided to give cyberpunk a pass cause they "fixed it". BS. Either get the game working before release, or delay it. Stop making beta testers out of your paying audience. And if you really need to get it out the door, make it an early access release, and be honest about what people are getting.

This " everyone's against xbox, the Xbox tax "has been a thing for 10+ years. I hope you all have bought the tinfoil hats in bulk to save money...

Defending games with bugs? If it has bugs, it ain't great. Come on now (Jaffy voice),
Can't judge Stalker 2 since I'll wait a bit more and didn't buy it.
In no universe it's okay to pay for bugs unless you're on a fishing trip.

Sales on the PC don't agree with the reviews and that's what counts, over a million sales in two days even though they could of bought a month of cheap PC Gamepass to play it day one speaks for itself.

The dev of the company that made Red Fall is giving his opinion on low scored games?

Excuse me if I dont give a f*** what he has to say

The issue here is not the review score, it is when do you review a game?

PJ played a version that no user will play because of the day one patch (or day -1 maybe, not really sure when the patch came out). So the question is should the review be a week after release to truly represent the game a user will play or the extremely buggy pre-release version that no one except reviewers will play.

Personally I'd rather wait for a "released to the public review" than get a review of a game that I will never play anyway as that version will not exist by the time it is released.

I don't play early access games as I have far to many released games to play, but STALKER 2 would have been a perfect candidate for early access. The devs start to get money coming in, the die-hard fans get to play it ASAP and the curious but not that bothered (and reviewers) can wait for version 1.0. Win-Win.

Giving this a score of 4/10 was out of order in my view, the review should have been delayed by a week to take into account the actual game that the public will play.

I'm with him with this one. In an age of excess video games the worst thing someone could do is throw something bland out there. I'd rather play something broken with heart.

It's one of those things that's rough in the modern era of games. Back in the Cartridge and CD era of gaming once it shipped then that was it pretty much. If you had a buggy game then that was that. Now this can be fixed, and a broken game with solid foundations can get patched, and work out great. Cyberpunk and No Man's Sky are two case studies there.

HOWEVER if a game comes out with serious bugs you can't just assume they'll be fixed any more than you could assume they'll fix any gameplay issues. You've got to review what's in front of you.

If we stop ignoring bugs, etc. in reviews then companies will release more buggy games than they already do.

@NostromoXP PJ waited and played some with the day 1 patch. Eurogamer also waited for day 1 patch and didn’t score it much higher.

When do we wait till? A year after release when everything is sorted? 4years to re review cyberpunk now it’s done?

@BacklogBrad It’s more of an issue with modern day gaming industry where releasing games unfinished and unpolished has become the norm.

Yes this game in particular has a unique situation regarding developers personal situation that warrants some slack being cut, but that doesn’t apply industry-wide.

If you want good reviews then release a polished, competent game on release day. It’s that simple. It can be done, just look at Astro Bot and most Nintendo games.

The continued nonsense about an Xbox tax is utter nonsense, The game was rated low by an xbox reviewer, on an xbox fan site.. He is hardly biased to Sony. Starfield was also rated higher by a chunk of reviewers than it should have been based on averages.. or was that an Xbox tax rebate? If you look at multi plat games I find this site is often 1 point higher than their sister sites for reviews. So no the Xbox tax is not real, its just copium for fans.

As for games being marked down for being broken on launch, good they should be. If you want us to accept games being broken on launch and fixed later fine, but sell us the game at £40 and only raise the price to £70 once you fixed everything.

The 4/10 Stalker 2 received here has only served to make it so that I don’t take Pure Xbox reviews seriously anymore.

Solution: put it down as a “review in progress” and at least check elsewhere. A lot of us, myself included, have yet to experience a single bug - lucky me, I know - but it’s a great game and I can’t help but think this is all just clickbait at this point.

@NostromoXP Your assessment of Eurogamer is 100% on the money.

I now never even consider "professional reviewers" for their opinions to really matter. To me I would more tend to look at gamers reviews which give a unbiased opinion of the games. I don't consider reviews that give 10/10 and say almost nothing or reviews that give it perhaps 2 or 3 out of 10 and again say almost nothing. I want to know what someone's honest first impression of the game. For most professional reviewers they likely have played the game less then 5 hours but then they write a review.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner that would be nice if everybody didn't layoff their QA/QC testers. It's getting cheaper & more common to occasionally outsource the testing to market research departments/partners who dole out little doodad rewards to surveyed regular joes, who then subsequently perform the closed alpha & beta tests.

@Rodimusprime13 no, they don't tend to be unbiased and tend to be nonsensical.

Can we please pare back a bit on using "higher" and "lower" for scoring and remember that "greater" and "lesser" descriptors not only exist as well but carry more umph?

@NostromoXP You ostensibly have low constitution if you think Eurogamer is near exemplary of whiny-ness, and that you imply yourself to be exempt of any degree of it.

@Jark It's a good job it's Black Friday, you'll be needing a new keyboard after vomiting on the one you have now with that last post.

@Cakefish it's really not that simple though. Development budgets are out of control and the time to make a game is too long. You can't just wait to release a lot of the time. Publishers and devs would run out money without a product to sell. Then you have things like the holidays where releasing before them can mean millions more sales, so publisher/shareholders will go that route no matter what.

Sony and Nintendo aren't really a good example since they only make games for their own single device (sony puts out an ass pc port later that gets patched into competence like every other game.) And to pick on the Nintendo point. They released mario tennis and everyone complained that it was lacking in content at launch. It ran fine but there was nothing to do, they added free content and the game got much better but the scores never changed to reflect the improved game.

All I'm saying is a troubled game at launch will almost always get better but the current review system is outdated and does not reflect the gaming industry today. Most review scores are worthless by the time they are read because that version of the game is no longer the same as what is being played. Review scores need to be reimagined to fit this reality.

Can see most posters here had no idea these poor ***** had to move studios due to being in a ***** war, cut them some slack and not only that patches went in BEFORE launch to fix a lot of *****, most reviews should be re-done with current patches.

This isnt even an Xbox title it will be on PS in a few months, so I suspect the articles then will be "STALKER 2 fixed on PS, MUST BUY"

The lack of empathy is pathetic

@NostromoXP and my last post is succinct, whereas yours is just crude and off-base. Can't be both.