Some games do actually earn their poor ratings, mainly from bad gameplay or trying to push some BS message that no one wants.

A game most see as bad will always have some fans who do enjoy it though.

Some people are sensitive to "public perception". They play only good scored games, because ... they have a problem, and they haven't seen enough Doctor K videos or something.

It's insecurity basically.
When the game they are playing is at risk of receiving bad reviews, they will also go crazy and lash out at everyone talking about it or the game in a negative way (which is ironic in a way). The game or its publisher or developer have nothing to do with these players their public image, but somehow... the game became part of their identity, their image, and so they lash out.

And yeah, they feel they are right and if they somehow 'win' this (it's not a discussion no, but a battle), then everything will be okay and go in their favor. That is why they don't mind this reputational harm selectively and dissociate from it.

Yet somehow... they cannot do this with games that are lower scored by default?

As you said @OP, playing a game that isn't a 10/10 is perfectly fine.
heck, if you enjoy a 1/10 game, enjoy it. Games are made to be enjoyed.

Probably a combination of things.
One, videos need to be sensational or controversial for clicks, so "unfairly trashed!" plays better than "people were a bit more down on them than I expected".
Two, the attitude "7/10 means Utter Garbage" has been around among various gamers & forum posters across the internet for at least a decade. There's a bunch of people who seem to think the only two options for ratings are Best Game Ever and Abomination. Yeah, it's dumb.



(and then there's the games that are unfairly trashed, because some reactionary culture warriors decide that it's "woke" because there's prominent female characters, or too much brown skin, or <horrors> a pronoun option in character creation right alongside the hair & eye color options. Or just average gamers screeching about totally-skippable day 1 DLC, or denuvo, or temporary server problems. Review bombs away!)

It's subjective, in my experience, I never played 7/10 game, even among favorites I wouldn't rate tham that high.

I wouldn't trust review scores. I remember everyone was saying Assassin Creed Shadows was a huge success. It was getting 8s, 9s, and 10s everywhere. It sold poorly though. Ubislob tried pushing player numbers as an indicator of success, but the vast majority of those "3 million players" only paid $17 to play it. That's not good when you realize that the production of the game was somewhere around the ballpark of $300,000,000, and that's not including advertising campaign that went with the game.

Then there was the Dragon Age the Failguard. Remember, that game was getting 8s, 9s, and 10s everywhere as well, with everyone calling it a huge success on release. Now everyone, including the developers and publisher, calls it a failure.

Review scores are not to be trusted, especially by gaming journalists, especially more so when you realize most journalists are political activists trying to push an agenda.