Most game portals are catalogues without a filter. A distributor feed pushes hundreds of titles at them, all published automatically, with "reviews" either absent or copied from whoever uploaded the game. The result is a site where nothing is genuinely recommended and everything is equally foregrounded — the problem that gets portals rejected by advertising networks as low-value or replicated content.
MayGame is built the other way round. Every title in our catalogue has been looked at by a person, scored against the same six criteria, and written up in our own words. This page sets out exactly how that works, including the standards that cause us to reject a game outright, so you can judge how much weight to give a MayGame recommendation.
What we are trying to achieve
Our aim is not to be comprehensive. It is to be trustworthy. A portal that lists ten thousand games tells you nothing about any of them; a portal that says "these sixteen are worth your time, and here is why" is making a claim you can check. We would rather host a small, defensible catalogue than a large one padded with filler. That is also why we write original text for every game rather than repeating the developer's own marketing description.
Where our games come from
We acquire titles from three places: licensed distributor feeds (the largest source — these are HTML5 games that developers publish for portals to embed), direct submissions from developers, and manual discovery when a title is genuinely interesting and its rights holder permits embedding. In every case, the game itself is streamed from its distributor and remains the property of its rights holder. We do not re-host game files, and we do not claim authorship of any game we list.
Screening: what gets rejected before it reaches you
Every candidate title passes a screening stage before anyone scores it. A game is rejected outright if it fails any of the following rules. These are hard rules, not preferences.
- It does not start reliably. If a game fails to load, or loads only intermittently, it does not go live. A dead play button is the fastest way to lose a reader's trust.
- It requires a download or a plugin. We host browser games only. Anything that asks the player to install software, enable a legacy plugin, or leave the page to continue is refused.
- It infringes third-party rights. Titles that make unlicensed use of clearly protected characters, brands or other copyrighted work are refused, regardless of how popular they are.
- Its monetisation is deceptive. We refuse games that hide the play button behind misleading overlays, that require a "download" to proceed, or that buries the actual game under fake ad close buttons.
- Its content is unsuitable. Graphic violence, sexual content, and any mechanic that resembles real-money gambling are excluded. We keep the catalogue appropriate for a general, all-ages audience.
- It is broken on a whole class of devices. A game that simply cannot be played on a phone is not automatically rejected — but only if that limitation can be stated honestly. A game that is silently unusable on a common device is refused.
We also reject on a softer basis: even when a game clears the rules above, a low score in the criteria below is a reason not to publish, not merely a reason to publish with a warning.
The six criteria we score every game against
Scoring happens in a controlled browser session in which we load the title, confirm it starts, exercise its controls, resize the window, and check how it behaves on a mobile viewport. We record what we observe and reason about the rest from documented genre conventions and the developer's published information. Each criterion is scored out of ten.
| Criterion | What it measures | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Gameplay | Does the core interaction feel good and fair? Is the difficulty curve sensibly shaped, and does the game teach its own rules? | 30% |
| Presentation | Do the art, sound and interface support the play? Is the screen readable when it matters, and does the visual style have any identity of its own? | 15% |
| Depth | Is there something to learn beyond the first minute? Does skill, planning or strategy change the outcome, or is it luck and reflex alone? | 20% |
| Accessibility | Can a new player understand it without a tutorial? How forgiving are the controls, the timing windows and the failure states? Can it be played one-handed? | 15% |
| Performance | How quickly does it start? Does it hold a steady frame rate? Is input responsive, or is there perceptible lag between action and result? | 10% |
| Originality | Does it bring an idea, a mechanic or a presentation the genre does not already have in abundance? Faithful, well-made takes are not penalised, but they are not rewarded either. | 10% |
Gameplay carries the heaviest weight because it is the criterion that can never be compensated for. A beautiful game that plays badly is a bad game. Originality carries the least because refusing every familiar idea would empty the catalogue — a well-executed familiar game is still worth playing. It simply does not earn bonus points for novelty it does not have.
How the MayGame Curator Score works
The six criterion scores are combined using the weights above to produce a single figure on a 0–10 scale, rounded to one decimal place. This is the MayGame Curator Score that appears on every game page. It is a comparative editorial judgement about a small catalogue, not an absolute measure of quality, and it should be read with the band meanings in mind:
- 8.5–10.0 — Essential. Among the best things to do in a browser. We would recommend it without hesitation to almost anyone.
- 7.5–8.4 — Recommended. A genuinely good game with a clear strength and no serious flaw. Our default recommendations live here.
- 6.5–7.4 — Worth a try. Solid but limited, or excellent in a narrow situation. Good if it suits you specifically.
- Below 6.5 — Not listed. We do not publish games that score below this threshold. A low score is a curation decision, not a warning label.
Where a game has a significant limitation — poor touch controls, no progression, a steep learning curve — we state it plainly rather than quietly marking it down. A score without an explanation is not useful; the accompanying assessment is what lets you decide.
Corrections, updates and takedowns
We get things wrong, and the useful question is what happens next. Three processes keep the catalogue honest.
Corrections
If a factual detail in one of our assessments is wrong — an incorrect control scheme, a feature we described that a title does not have — tell us via our contact page and we will verify it and correct the page. Substantive corrections are noted by updating the page's modified date. We do not quietly delete text to make a mistake disappear.
Re-reviews
Games change. A title that is patched, optimised or given new content is not necessarily the game we scored. When a game is materially updated, or when we learn something that changes our assessment, we revisit the score and re-date the page.
Takedowns
If you are a rights holder and a title is listed here in error, contact us at dmca@maygame.online or through our DMCA page. We act on valid notices promptly and remove the listing while any dispute is resolved.
What we do not claim
Transparency is the point of this page, so it is worth being explicit about our limits. We do not claim to have completed every game or played a retail build of anything. Our assessment is based on time spent with each title in the browser, the developer's published information, established genre conventions and our own accessibility checks. Where we offer an opinion, we label it as editorial judgement. And we do not invent statistics, user numbers or awards to make a recommendation look more authoritative than it is.
A score is only as trustworthy as the method behind it. We publish ours so that a reader can hold us to it — and so that a recommendation from MayGame means something you can rely on.
If you would like the shorter version of the same philosophy, our colleagues' guide to what H5 games are explains the format we work within, and our collections are the practical result of all of the above.