Metacritic deletes Resident Evil Requiem review written by AI, issues warning to other sites

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Once a respected site, VideoGamer has begun publishing AI-generated reviews. Its Resident Evil Requiem write-up has now been deleted by Metacritic. “You can trust VideoGamer,” a blurb reads on the long-running site’s reviews pages. “Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you’re reading the most comprehensive guide ... Metacritic deletes Resident Evil Requiem review written by AI, issues warning to other sites

Once a respected site, VideoGamer has begun publishing AI-generated reviews. Its Resident Evil Requiem write-up has now been deleted by Metacritic.

“You can trust VideoGamer,” a blurb reads on the long-running site’s reviews pages. “Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you’re reading the most comprehensive guide possible.”

Except, as of a week ago, this statement no longer appears to be true. According to Kotaku, VideoGamer, a British site launched in 2004, fired all of its human staff. An unknown percentage of the site’s output has now been generated using AI – including its recent review of survival horror game Resident Evil Requiem.

That review has since been deleted from the aggregation site, Metacritic, which has since emailed around a message to other sites and editors warning them about using AI-generated reviews on their pages.

“Our policy is that we will never include an AI-generated review on Metacritic,” an excerpt shared by Alex Donaldson on Bluesky read, “and that if we subsequently discover that one has been posted we will remove it immediately and sever ties with that publication upon an investigation.”

It remains to be seen whether Metacritic will stop adding VideoGamer’s reviews to its site altogether.

There are clear signs that VideoGamer’s Requiem review is written by AI. Aside from the bland, robotic writing in the review itself, there’s its author – one Brian Merrygold. Claiming to be an “experienced and sports betting analyst,” Merrygold has almost no online footprint at all. A quick look at the filename of his profile image reveals that it was created by ChatGPT – whoever generated it didn’t even bother to change this.

VideoGamer and several other sites, including The Escapist and Esports Insider, were acquired by a company called Clickout Media. According to Insider Gaming, the decision was then made to fire editorial staff on those sites and have them run by ‘AI editors’ paid to produce reams of AI-generated bilge.

The Requiem discovery highlights yet another problem in this grim new age of AI. Aggregation sites like Metacritic are meant to provide users with some sort of guide to what’s buying and what isn’t. If an aggregate score has been swayed in one direction or another by gen-AI reviews, then it’s essentially worthless. It goes without saying that a chatbot can’t evaluate the quality of a videogame, and if a writer can’t be bothered to jot down their honest opinions on a game without the help of software, it’s highly unlikely they bothered to play the game either.

There’s also the question of whether anyone actually wants to read slabs of AI-generated text that reads like a bland press release. And when it isn’t bland, it’s nonsensical. Here’s a snippet from the Verdict section in VideoGamer’s ‘review’:

“A Gilded Grave Resident Evil Requiem is the sheer, unadulterated peak of Resident Evil Review history.”