Fallout: New Vegas - Missed Metacritic Bonus by One Point?

Fascinating news via Joystiq who claim Obsidian's contract with Bethsoft for Fallout: New Vegas was a straight payment - no royalties but a bonus for making 85% on Metacritic...which they missed by a point. The original tweet from Chris Avellone seems to have been deleted, so we'll have to take it at face value at the moment:

Business sucks, alright? It's cold and rigid and occasionally unfair. Such is the case with Obsidian's Fallout: New Vegas contract with Bethesda, wherein the developer only received royalties if the game matched or exceeded an 85 rating on Metacritic. Leaving aside the fact that Metacritic is a woefully unbalanced aggregation of review scores from both vetted and unvetted publications, agreements like this can leave indie studios -- like Obsidian -- in the lurch should that Metacritic score just barely miss the mark.

Unfortunately for Obsidian, Fallout: New Vegas currently has a Metacritic average of 84, a single point below the average that would've earned the company royalties on its product. "[Fallout: New Vegas] was a straight payment, no royalties, only a bonus if we got an 85+ on Metacritic, which we didn't," Obsidian creative director and co-owner Chris Avellone told one Twitter user.