Metacritic Cuts Ties With Videogamer After Fake AI Reviewer Exposed
The latest Resident Evil controversy has nothing to do with zombies, viruses, or Umbrella’s questionable HR policies — it’s about a review. A single, suspiciously shiny 9/10 review for Resident Evil Requiem that Metacritic just ripped off its platform after discovering it wasn’t written by a critic at all, but by a ghost. Or more accurately: a ghostwriter stitched together by AI and corporate cost‑cutting.
Videogamer.com, once a recognizable UK outlet with real writers and real reporting, has spent the past few months quietly transforming into a content mill powered by fabricated personas and AI‑generated gambling sludge. And when those fake writers started “reviewing” video games, the whole thing finally blew up.
The Fake Critic Behind the 9/10 Score
The review in question was credited to “Brian Merrygold,” an “experienced iGaming and sports betting analyst” whose profile picture literally contains a URL pointing back to ChatGPT. Merrygold does not exist. His social media presence is a barren shell created the same month Videogamer’s human staff were laid off. His byline has been slapped on dozens of AI‑generated gambling articles — the kind of SEO chum designed to catch desperate bettors, not inform players.
Then, suddenly, Merrygold was reviewing Resident Evil Requiem.
The 543‑word “review” is still live on Videogamer’s site, and it reads exactly like what it is: a machine remixing marketing copy, trailers, and whatever scraps of Resident Evil lore it could scrape from the internet. No insight. No specificity. No sense that a human being actually played the game. Just a slurry of generic praise and stitched‑together metaphors.
And for a moment, that was enough to influence Requiem’s Metacritic score.
Metacritic Steps In — and Sounds the Alarm
Metacritic confirmed to Kotaku that it has now removed the review, along with several other Videogamer pieces from 2026. Co‑founder Marc Doyle made it clear that the platform has a zero‑tolerance policy for AI‑generated criticism:
“Metacritic’s policy is to never include an AI-generated critic review… if we discover that one has been posted, we’ll remove it immediately and sever ties with that publication.”
That’s a strong statement — and a necessary one. Because the problem isn’t just one fake review. It’s the entire ecosystem that allowed it to slip through.
Doyle acknowledged that when a publication is sold or its staff is replaced, the risk of plagiarism, fraud, and AI‑generated content skyrockets. Videogamer is the perfect example: a once‑legitimate outlet gutted by new ownership, replaced with AI personas, and repurposed into a content farm.
And Metacritic knows this won’t be the last attempt to sneak AI slop past its filters.
A Symptom of a Much Bigger Crisis
Games journalism is in a freefall. Outlets are shutting down. Writers are being laid off. Search traffic is collapsing as Google pushes AI summaries over actual reporting. And into that vacuum steps a wave of AI‑generated “content” — cheap, fast, and utterly hollow.
Videogamer’s transformation is what happens when owners decide that real writers are too expensive and readers won’t notice the difference. But people did notice. And the fallout is now public.
The danger isn’t just that AI reviews are bad — it’s that they erode trust in the entire critical ecosystem. Metacritic still influences player decisions, publisher bonuses, and even studio morale. If AI‑generated reviews can infiltrate that system, the consequences ripple far beyond one website.
Meanwhile, Real Critics Are Still Doing the Work
While Videogamer was busy pretending its imaginary gambling analyst had deep thoughts about survival horror, actual critics were publishing real reviews. IGN’s human‑written take praised Requiem as a hybrid of two survival‑horror strains — “like the result of an experiment conducted in an underground Umbrella Corporation lab,” as their reviewer put it.
That contrast — real criticism versus AI‑generated filler — is the entire story. One is journalism. The other is a content mill wearing a trench coat.
The Future of Review Aggregation in an AI-Dominated Landscape
A fake writer with an AI‑generated face published an AI‑generated review on a once‑respected outlet, and it made it all the way to Metacritic before anyone caught it. That’s not a glitch — it’s a warning.
The industry is vulnerable. AI slop is getting bolder. And the platforms that shape public perception are now forced to play defense against fabricated critics and corporate shortcuts.
The question now is whether this is an isolated embarrassment — or the first of many cracks in the foundation of game criticism.
