Days Gone director John Garvin has responded to discussion regarding PS4 and PC reviews of the game, seemingly citing the average critic reviews on the PS4 due to tech issues like bugs, reviewers who "couldn't be bothered to actually play the game," and "woke reviewers who couldn't handle a gruff white biker looking at his date's ass."
John Garvin's comments come in response to Twitter user GermanStrands expressing their love for Days Gone on PS4, using a screenshot of its Metacritic score that shows a 71 Metascore from 109 reviews and a user score of 8.4 from 10K ratings. Someone else followed up by suggesting they don't forget the PC score, posting another screenshot showing its 76 Metascore from 47 reviews and a user score of 8.8 from 1.2K ratings.
Garvin responded to this 5-point difference in Metascore, coming from reviewers, and stated that nothing he and another dev were responsible for (gameplay, missions, and story) changed between the two versions. He points to the code team who cleaned up the game between releases, putting the blame on bugs and that team working on Days Gone. When someone expressed surprise the game didn't get universal praise, that's when Garvin pushed all the blame onto the tech team and reviewers.
The thing is, while 71 does fall in the average territory on Metacritic and 76 falls into the good area, it's a minor change of five points—while the PC version also had less than half the number of reviewers than the PS4 version did. There is some implication that a 71 is a bad score and a 76 is a good score when that's not, by definition, the case. It means average, and in context, Days Gone wasn't received as well as other PlayStation exclusives, but that's a high bar for any game.
It is clear fans love the game and it has a solid following, with many still hoping for a Days Gone 2 someday (as unlikely as that is), and that's reflected in the user scores. However, the distinction between critic reviews on PC and PS4 is so small that it is hard to understand exactly what Garvin is getting at. Many have been quick to point out the poor taste of Garvin's response to fans showing their love for Days Gone, including Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier. Not only does he point out the ironic implication of "games with gruff white guys" not getting good reviews when games like Gears of War exist, but he also points out how it's a bad look to throw engineers under the bus.
John Garvin is currently the Vice President of Creative at Liithos, which was formed earlier this year. Liithos is currently working on a web3 game called Ashfall, where Garvin is credited as creator, writer, and director.
Days Gone is available now for PC and PS4.
