Sounds like in Bethesda’s case it’s a vain corporate attempt to manage the games reputation. Having a mixed rating definitely hurts their sales; it gives you pause before deciding to spend $90 on a game. You’d hope that the next step for them would be to retrospect on why people are finding the game meh, but that rarely seems to happen.
“Am I out of touch? No, it’s the players who should enjoy landing on an empty planet.”
If steam were owned by anyone other than Valve (not to say they’re perfect), I’d be expecting reviews to soon go the same way that dislikes did on YouTube for similar nonsensical reasons.