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The ongoing battle between Cory in the House and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 to decide which will ultimately be crowned the top user-rated game on Metacritic rages on, but an unforeseen consequence of the conflict is that secondhand copies of the Nintendo DS Disney game are skyrocketing in price in online marketplaces.
As Kotaku first reported on Tuesday, something strange was brewing over on Reddit: a seemingly organic campaign to get the long-memed 2008 Nintendo DS game Cory in the House to the top of Metacritic’s user-rated rankings, unseating 2025’s Game of the Year. When I originally reported on the story, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the current top-ranked user-rated game on the platform, had just dipped from a 9.6 to a 9.5. Cory in the House had just risen from 9.3 to 9.4. The meme was about to become a reality.
Since then, things have simultaneously changed drastically and also somehow stayed exactly the same. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is still clinging on to a 9.5 rating, but Cory in the House is back down to a 9.3. The big change is in the number of ratings on Metacritic. I made a note on the 13th that the PS5 version of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 had roughly 23,351 ratings. Now it has 23,654 user ratings. On the other hand, Cory in the House had roughly 2,400 ratings on the same date. Now that’s climbed up to whopping 4,666 user ratings. Actually, never mind, I typed that and then immediately refreshed the page. Now it’s up to 4,684.
As a result of users flooding metacritic & pushing the game to the #2 spot of all time, sealed copies of Cory In The House have skyrocketed by more than 3000% in the past 2 weeks. pic.twitter.com/nlVkLGWP0V
— Resell News 💸 (@resellnews) January 15, 2026
The point is, the focus is less on review-bombing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, as some had assumed, and more on reverse review-bombing Cory in the House. That also probably goes some way toward explaining the recent meme-fueled price increases for physical copies of the Nintendo DS game on eBay. The first writer to spot this story seems to have been Cllct’s Will Stern. They noted that a copy of the game had sold for $199 on eBay on January 14. Since then, Resell News noticed that prices had shot up by “more than 3000% in the past 2 weeks,” with some ongoing auctions reaching bids of up to $721.00.
That was yesterday. Since then, one copy has been successfully sold for $299.00, and another has sold for $399.97. One dreamer has also put a copy up for a Buy It Now price of $1,704.83, but thankfully, nobody has been stupid enough to take them up on that deal. That $721.00 auction still hasn’t moved, but the bidding doesn’t close until January 22. It’ll be interesting to see if these prices continue to increase if and when Cory in the House manages to finally dethrone Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 on Metacritic. Oh, and in case you were curious, it’s up to 4,697 user reviews now.
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