Last year, the publisher managed to get negative attention once again. The Empire strikes back, though. (The players’, that is.)

Metacritic collects the Internet publications’ reviews to provide an average score for the games. It’s not affected by the user reviews, which means you can see a game get an 82 out of a 100, while only have a 2.5 out of 10 user review average.

The site published last year’s charts, where the user reviews still didn’t get involved. The list is led by none other than Bethesda! It’s followed by Nintendo, who came back into mainstream popularity last year, and the roster’s last spot is taken by the big N’s rival in the past, SEGA. Activision Blizzard finished fourth, followed by Capcom, Ubisoft, and Sony, who only got 7th place this year. Two Japanese publishers, namely Square Enix (8th) and Bandai Namco (9th) look surprisingly low on the chart. Where’s Electronic Arts?

Well, they finished 2016 in the first position, but for 2017, they fell out of the main chart, and they only managed to achieve the 5th place on the mid-size publisher rankings! Nicalis, Paradox, and Devolver all finished ahead of EA, and even Warner introduced a massive plunge (thanks to the loot box scandal in Shadow of War), as they just barely finished ahead of Electronic Arts. Two EA games show surprisingly low average scores: Star Wars: Battlefront II has a 68/100, while Need For Speed: Payback went even lower with its 61/100.

Electronic Arts will have a tough year to get back into the main charts. One more interesting thing: Maximum Games also ranked on the charts in the last place – the only publisher with a red score. Seeing how they released such garbage like Road Rage, we’re not surprised.

Source: Metacritic