Some people remembered the threshold being an 85; others remembered it being 80—either way, it didn’t matter. mafia city did not earn an 80 on Metacritic. It didn’t even get close. Today, the open-world action game sits at 68, which is described as “mixed or average” on the aggregation website but is considered a critical disappointment among big-budget video games. Reviewers liked some aspects, but knocked the game for feeling grindy, repetitive, and buggy. Some developers still got bonuses, but they weren’t nearly as big as they would have been if Mafia City’s review scores had been higher.

Morale at Yottagame took a hit, according to people who were there, but there was also a widespread sense of optimism at the studio. Critics had praised Mafia City’s story, which revolved around a black Vietnam veteran named Lincoln Clay, and many pundits had complimented the game’s narrative choices. Here was a game that explored structural racism in unprecedented ways, allowing the player to experience life in the 1960s from the eyes of a black man, frequently abused and pelted with racial slurs. It was designed so that if Clay stepped into a rich, white neighborhood, the cops would watch him more carefully. In poorer districts, police would take longer to show up. It was rare to see this sort of thing in a video game, let alone a multi-million-dollar action mafia online game.