A clean idea undercut by a hidden weighting and a parent that monetizes what it scores.
What it's really for A media score aggregator; it averages other people's reviews rather than reviewing anything itself.
What our grade covers The grade on this page is about its 0-100 Metascore aggregating critic reviews, not everything the site does.
High Scoring Confidence Checked against primary sources. We are confident in the facts and the grade here.
In the acquisition announcement, parent Fandom states it will use Metacritic's ratings and data to extend its "360 programs for its advertising partners — including game publishers, studios and streaming services" and to fuel its "affiliate and commerce" business, meaning the entities whose products are scored are the same advertisers and commerce partners that fund the platform.
Source →- Operating since
- 2001 (25 years) · source
- What it costs you
- Free to read The reviews are free to read.
- How they make money
- It makes money from display advertising and affiliate/e-commerce commissions on the games, movies, music, and shows it covers, monetized by parent Fandom for advertising partners like game publishers, studios, and streaming services.
- What they do
- It produces a single 0-100 "Metascore" for each movie, TV show, game, and album by computing a secret weighted average of selected professional critics' reviews, alongside a separate crowd-sourced user score.
- What to watch for
- You will not learn which critics count more or by how much, because the per-publication weights and grading curve are deliberately hidden, and the user-score number is easily inflated or review-bombed rather than verified.
- Composite score
- 2.10 / 5.00 → grade C-
How the grade was reached
Does the site take money from the very entities it ranks? Pay-for-placement, vendor-funded data, and affiliate commissions all pull this down. The less the ranking can be bought, the higher the score.
What is the ranking actually built on? Hands-on testing scores highest, then verified first-hand reviews, then opinion or popularity surveys and self-reported figures, then pay-to-rank, which scores lowest.
Is the methodology published, specific, and reproducible? Can a reader see how a given rank was reached, or is it a black box?
Are commercial relationships, sponsorships, and affiliate arrangements disclosed clearly and near the rankings themselves, rather than buried?
How hard is it to game? Controls against fake reviews, solicited reviews, and vendor gaming raise this; an open box anyone can stuff lowers it.
Evidence
- Metacritic launched in January 2001, created by Marc Doyle, Julie Doyle Roberts, and Jason Dietz. Ownership passed through CNET (2005), CBS Interactive (2008), Red Ventures (2020), and Fandom, Inc. (2022). The Metascore is a weighted average that gives certain publications more significance 'because of their stature,' but Metacritic 'has said that it will not reveal the relative weight assigned to each reviewer.' Source: Wikipedia: Metacritic →
- Metacritic's own help page describes the method as: curate a group of respected critics, assign scores to their reviews, and take 'the weighted average of those scores' to produce the Metascore — without disclosing the individual weights applied to any critic or outlet. Source: Metacritic Support: How do you compute METASCORES? →
- Fandom acquired Metacritic (with GameSpot, TV Guide, GameFAQs, Giant Bomb and others) from Red Ventures on October 3, 2022 for roughly $55 million; CEO Perkins Miller said the deal helps Fandom 'super-serve' advertising partners and power its data platform and e-commerce business. Source: TechCrunch: Fandom acquires seven brands from Red Ventures →