Last Wednesday, I reported that No Man’s Sky had been delayed. For two days, up until the game’s developers confirmed the news, I received a stream of nasty messages, angry tweets and, as has become a standard part of gaming culture, threats against me and my family.
Apparently I’m not the only one. No Man’s Sky director Sean Murray tweeted on Sunday that he’d also received death threats for the crime of delaying his game a few weeks. Fans of the game — really, fans of the game’s marketing — have been loud, passionate and angry.
This probably comes as no surprise to anyone who spends time on the internet, especially in the video game world, where every week there’s something new to get mad about. Over the past few years, death threats ranging from silly to scary have been sent to all sorts of gaming targets: Call of Duty‘s developers, for nerfing a weapon; Anita Sarkeesian, for critiquing video games; Gabe Newell, for running Steam. Anyone who is outspoken about politics or who criticises the Gamergate movement is regularly subject to this sort of behaviour. On the internet, where words feel weightless and ephemeral, death threats are par for the course.
Still, it was unsettling to wake up Friday morning to a series of messages from someone who said he was going to kill me and my family for reporting on a video game delay:
https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/736151267215560705
Don’t worry: I’m fine. I’ve never felt like this dude was actually going to come after me, and working at Kotaku forces you to develop a pretty thick skin. When you write about video games, you get used to trolls and threats. This can’t even compare to some of the harassment faced by outspoken women like Sarkeesian, especially on Twitter. The social network is crucial to the careers of critics and reporters who use it to spread word of their work, develop sources and communicate with readers, but it is pathetic at dealing with harassers. I reported @BeachClasherMDR for these threats four days ago; as of this morning, Twitter has yet to do a thing – and won’t do a thing.
https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/737755820444790785
UPDATE (11:31am): And now Twitter has suspended the account. Original article follows:
One line in that message is particularly revealing: “It’s the only thing I live for.” Whether or not he was exaggerating, that’s the type of obsession that fuels so much of the nastiness in gaming culture. There are plenty of great gaming communities and, in my experience, most gamers are perfectly pleasant, but too many are unable to separate themselves from their products. Video game fans who are zealously attached to their favourite games — even, as in this case, a game that has yet to come out! — are prone to get aggressive when they feel like they’re being attacked. Or when they get bad news.
As soon as I broke news of the game’s delay on Thursday morning, I watched the No Man’s Sky subreddit explode, filling up with messages about how it couldn’t be true, how Kotaku must be trying to troll them, how we’re always wrong. The subreddit’s overworked moderators were quick to clean up many of these threads, but for the next two days it was bedlam. People tried to dig up reasons the delay couldn’t have been real — “Kotaku‘s sources are anonymous, so it can’t be true” — and even came up with elaborate schemes to harass GameStop employees across the US.
One Redditor, Gilchrist78, declared that he’d called 30 GameStops and confirmed with them all that the news was false. “NMS is NOT delayed,” he wrote. When I commented that I was confident there was indeed a delay and that people really shouldn’t get their hopes up, he doubled down. “So you have 1 source in Gamestop,” he wrote. “I have 30.”
No Man’s Sky has been heavily hyped since its debut trailer shocked the gaming world at the VGAs in December of 2013. It’s hard not to be excited about a game that looks like it will let us fly through the universe and land on an infinite series of beautiful worlds. The New Yorker has gushed about it. Murray has been on Stephen Colbert’s show to show it off. And that was before it even had a release date, which was slated for June 21 until last week’s delay.
What really exacerbated the situation last week was a series of threads on Saturday by a Redditor who worked at EB Games and said he’d received a poster with a new release date for the game: June 24, three days after the original date. Wishful thinking combined with blind devotion led members of the No Man’s Sky subreddit to accept this as fact. Again they started flooding my inbox and Twitter with angry messages.
By Saturday morning I was nervous that the developers might wait until Monday or Tuesday to confirm the delay and that I’d have to deal with an entire weekend of these messages, but I soon found out that they’d be announcing the news on the PlayStation Blog that day. No Man’s Sky was pushed to August. I’ve never been so relieved to see a video game get delayed.
What’s most astounding about this whole sequence of events isn’t the threats to me and to Sean Murray, nor is it the toxic elements of the No Man’s Sky community, nor is it even the sharp GamerGater who insisted that the threat was fake because he doesn’t understand how open Twitter DMs work. What’s most astounding is that this has become the new normal. In a few days everyone will forget about it, and we’ll be on to the next big outrage. And on to the next set of death threats.
Comments
138 responses to “I Got Death Threats For Reporting On A Video Game Delay”
I just like to play video games…
I absolutely agree. It’s really difficult to tell people that though, because they see stuff like this and assume that if you play video games, you’re a horrible person. I just want to have fun with some pretty lights and colours, not yell at people and threaten to kill them.
Exactly! You know what I did when I found out? I was disappointed for about 10 minutes, tweeted about it and then bought Ratchet & Clank to tide me over. I’ll probably buy DIRT Rally at the weekend and soon enough August will be here and we’ll all have forgotten it was delayed. And I managed all this without threatening to kill someone! 🙂
Oh wow you too? There are more of us than I thought.
I will admit I was disappointed when Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst was delayed again and again – but not to the point of sending death threats…
Right? Would these people prefer something half-assed and released earlier than it should be all full of bugs? Although I guess that’s just something else they could send death threats for.
the no mans sky community is crazy, if you criticise or question anything you get attacked
SCREW YOU FOR SAYING THAT, I’M GOING TO SEDUCE YOUR WIFE AND FORCE YOU TO RAISE MY CHILDREN AS YOUR OWN.
Someone’s been playing Crusader King’s recently.
Silence! I kill you!
But yeah, they’re nuts.. What happened to being excited for a game meaning being excited for a game, and not a hunt for excuses to threaten and abuse people? I’m gonna blame Battletoads for some reason.
You’ll do what??
That’s it I’m hopping on my dragon and I am going to ram it into your FACE.
no its EVERY gaming community. I have yet play a game in years in which the online community wasnt massively toxic. Its got to such a stage where I try not to be actively part of communities. And stick to youtubers like Mr Fruit who reminds us that gaming should be FUN.
No, it’s EVERY community full stop. Any community past a certain size that doesn’t self-police well will have this. I’ve had death threats for pointing out that a cyclist is entitled to the whole lane on a multilane road. “If I see you in the middle of the lane, i’ll run you off the road and reverse to make sure.”
There are a lot of people who have very little self-control or empathy.
Yeah but cyclists have it coming, just like people in cars who go 40 under the limit 😛
…as for people with beards, they’re the worst. The WORST.
Especially beardy people who play space sims.
But at least they fly fast 😛
Charge the engines with beardonium!!!
Ah crap I need to go find some more to scoop.
TO THE JOYRIDEMOBILE!
Oh you dirty bastard, Trikeabout! That was low, lol! :p
Hehe, our learned friend Sir Gooky knows that I too have a hirsute face (although nothing like the pogonic masterpiece that adorns Gooky’s!!!) and spend way too much time in SPAAAAAAAAAACE. And now you do too. 🙂
And there’s my new word for today.
My beard is faster than your ….. not beard. SO THERE! 😛
NO THEY DONT. Caps intended. Even if it was meant as a joke. As a person who is almost killed at least twice a ride without fail by loser drivers who dont even know the road laws themselves. There is absolutely no room for humour on this. Given how many people have died/hurt on the roads due to such people it is no laughing matter.
There is room for humour in everything.
Especially when it comes to people in funny pants.
Yeah no. Sure things like Last Week Tonight and Daily Show remind us the best medicine is comedy no matter how serious the topic but they both have something the average fool that jokes able hurting cyclists or the like doesn’t have, skill. Comedic and otherwise.
Glad we agree then 😛
I swear there must be some actually measurable critical mass for communities though, where they reach that tipping point of being a good place to being a hate-infested shithole. Would love to see some smart dudes come up with actual numbers for it.
Yeah. I reckon the best place to research this would be Rotary branches or amateur dramatics. Both seem to be microcosms of wider society, if that society is a post-apocalyptic dystopia.
Splatoon. Great community.
You are joking, yes? They went crazy at not having voice chat. They are no better.
I wasn’t really interested in the game so didn’t get any of that. Either way, it’s amazing now.
world of warships asia server hs ZERO toxicity
some small or private MMOs actually get along together !
Yeah I agree with this. I’ll give you three examples off the top of my head.
Rust:
When it first started, RUST was a delight to play. Over the last few years though, RUST on pc has turned into one of the most toxic communities I have *ever* come into contact with. I actively avoid playing RUST now, because of this fact. This sucks too, because I really enjoyed that game 🙁
ARK:
Again, same reason as RUST. When it started, everyone was into Dino taming, everyone was into playing the game to explore it etc. Soon, it somehow swung into becoming a COD lite game where people just sought to grief and kill. Nothing wrong at *all* with PVP. I partake in it happily, but when it reaches toxic levels, with people actively griefing you over steam, then trying to track you down on Facebook (didn’t happen to me, happened to someone in a clan I was part of), to bully you, it gets ridiculous. However, if you do find a private server on ARK and managed to get into a good community, it’s one of the best gaming experiences you’ll ever have.
Minecraft:
Really, you wouldn’t THINK this would be that toxic. You really wouldn’t but this is probably the worst out of the three. People get *so* serious over this game it’s utterly ridiculous.
Every gaming community has its fair share of crazies. It’s not limited to NMS.
Or even gaming! Anyone who’s work is on display in front of millions of people is likely to get a few death threats because odds are there is a person with some serious problems that will see it.
What kind of sick monsters are we dealing with.
The type of monsters who sit in the 4 seat sections in a train by themselves just so they can put their feet up on the seat and noisily eat snack foods and leave their garbage wedged between the seats.
https://m.popkey.co/91ca17/Alx0V_s-200×150.gif
Just your average run of the mill sociopath with the internet and a little too much time on their hands to fixate.
Friend of yours, @tech_knight? 😛
I was hyped for No Mans Sky back when it was announced. But now? It don’t care much for it. Between the long wait, other titles and decidedly lacking gameplay footage I’ve concluded that the game will look pretty but be rather boring to play for any period of time.
You’re next, human!
😛
HOW DARE YOU INSULT NO MANS SKY. I LIVE FOR THIS GAME… Whooaaa hang on. That’s the article talking not me 😛
I’m actually in the same boat, I don’t think I’ll be buying it until I see more of it, see what mates think of the game etc. Guess we’ll have to wait and see if it can live up to the hype!
Maaan, that’s messed up. I really don’t understand people that define themselves by the products they like.
They don’t even like this product! How can they? They haven’t even tried it yet!
I also don’t understand why people care if a game gets delayed. So what? You’ve lived your entire life up to this point without that game, what does it matter if you go another few weeks / months without it? Unless you’re dying from some terminal illness and won’t actually make it to the new release date, but I imagine that would be a pretty small segment of the market.
I know I’ve seen some cases where people have booked their entire annual leave balance for a game release date that either got pushed back, or launched as an online-only product with dodgy servers that ended up being down for the duration of their holiday. Those people definitely sounded mad enough to kill.
Thing is, they’re probably just mad at themselves. For, y’know… not taking into consideration the basic realities of video games and the gaming industry. A ‘flawless online launch’ is the exception to the rule.
Oh man the number of salty dudes who did exactly that for the Rift launch and could not fathom that they had to wait for theirs to be delivered rather than just having it instantly materialise on the 28th was… actually I can’t decide whether it was hilarious or scary.
A delayed release is way better than a broken game, it can be really crap to install a game then watch as it starts downloading a massive patch
Imagine calling 30 outlets when confronted with news you don’t like, lmao.
And more importantly having a fundamental misunderstanding that a gamestop employee (or any retail staff) will only have a confirmation date that is completely dependent on the distributor. Like they would know any more than what they’re reading off a sheet hahaha.
“I can try, sir, but the computer doesn’t have an option for [REDACTED GRAPHIC INSTRUCTION REPLETE WITH EXPLETIVES].”
honestly… that guy should be in jail.
Not trying to stigmatise anyone but I wonder how many of these people issuing death threats have some sort of disorder or autism.
I remember being back in uni and there was this one guy who always got awkwardly aggressive if someone criticised a game or anime that he liked. He’d just shout over a group of people or butt in on conversations that he wasn’t a part of. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was making death threats like this.
That kind of amateur diagnosis just makes it harder for people who do have a spectrum condition but aren’t raging entitled fuckwads. It’s only recently becoming clear how many people that get by reasonably well or very well in life are on the spectrum.
Maybe some ragers are socially awkward thanks to their brain wiring, but there are plenty of “neurotypicals” that are still complete arseholes. Seems like it’s easier to blame a condition than the person.
Facebook and Twitter are appalling at dealing with this behaviour.
Yeah, this is why so many fuckwit parents make like difficult for the people who work in public education by demanding an unfair and undeserved slice of the far-too-limited money assigned to helping children with disabilities because they can get any hack doctor to diagnose their kid with “autism”. Lady, you kid isn’t autistic, he’s a selfish, entitled little shit because you spoiled him and never taught him that the entire fucking world doesn’t revolve around him.
That’s the thing: people these days can’t tell the difference between autism and just being a douchebag.
Word.
They do have a disorder. But it isn’t autism.
They are, for the most part, teenagers, with all the dissociation, entitlement and anger that implies (or 30-40 year olds living in their mother’s basement, who are, for all intents and purposes, teenagers).
Combine that with John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory and you have a recipe for disaster.
Put an age limit on a community and most (not all, but most) of the bile vanishes (the basement dwellers!).
What difference would it make if they were autistic? Autism doesn’t automatically make you act like a cunt and throw death threats around.
Wait am I missing something? Why is it your fault? You just reported on the delay not caused it.
I dont understand people
Well, if it makes you feel better, they did also make similar threats against Sean Murray, that game’s director 😛
Which just shows how utterly stupid these people are. They want the game so much that they’re this pissed off by the delay. But if they kill the game’s director, they’ll delay it even more! HA! Jokes on them!
Its simple, because he was reporting news they didn’t like, they assumed he was lying just to get publicity or clicks or something.
See, now it seems like a perfectly reasonable basis to send death threats.
But don’t you see the journalists are trying to DESTROY VIDEO GAMES with their
discussions of the portrayal of gender rolesreporting delays in release dates!NMS peeps are crazy as hell. How can someone be so obsessed with one game? What thoughts go through a person mind that makes them want to wake up and log into a site to talk about the same game day after day after day for absolutely no reason?
People need to chill out. This article has me worked up so i’m going to go back to playing some Biker Mice from Mars.
I get being excited for a new release and poring through new info as it comes out. But yeah @decoy, I haven’t seen this level of fanaticism outside of a cult!
Remember the good ol days? When being referring to yourself as a gamer only made people think you were slightly weird instead of a potential psychopath? I miss those days.
Are you talking about the pre 80s?
Well, back then, being a gamer meant you were into D&D and therefore a Satan Worshipper.
Spot on.
Writing an article about this hives him the attention he wanted, gj
The internet is home to some serious crazies. Like.. holy shit.
I think actual mental conditions may account for a lot of the people that make these threats, though. I just can’t imagine a normal balanced human being doing something like this.
Yeah. This isn’t actually something specific to gaming. Some people just seem to think that making death threats is the only way to get anybody to pay attention to them specifically amongst all the other noise, regardless of the issue.
Look at that thing the other day with the kid who fell into the gorilla enclosure at the zoo. His parents are getting death threats, apparently. Why?! Yeah, they probably screwed up that parental supervision thing, but why would you make death threats over something like that? Or anything else, for that matter?
I am getting closer and closer to just quitting the Internet entirely.
Hear hear!
them star citizen fanbois seem to have moved to a new space game….. they are terribad
delayed games hardly really get to me
Sooooo…. is the expected backlash why there’s been no substantial news on star citizen in 6months?
Oh I can’t wait to see that particular shitstorm.
Who is this muppet? He sounds like some perpetually adolescent neck beard that’s stuck in the same, “my dad could beat up your dad” argument since he was 12.
That’s pretty fucked up. I can see now why most Kotaku staff stick with stories about cosplay and whatnot.
the cosplayer girls can get just as bad
correction: the creepy guys who deal with cosplay girls get just as bad.
haha, I agree, obviously people who disagree dont follow many cosplayer girls
Hang in there mate.
Just know that there are people out here that appreciate what you do and not all gamers are this sort of supercrazy.
Everyone should be taking a page out of your book and take a stand against people like this. As you well know, words are not weightless, not even on the internet, and a death threat is just as serious as if you said it in person.
People need to calm down, I fell into this trap once, I was really hyped for Fallout 3, and I think it got delayed, I felt like crap after it was delayed, couldn’t sleep for a day or two cause was so anxious. Now I know the signs and I don’t get bothered by this stuff anymore (when there is delays on things I want)
I’d say get a new hobby, but those angry individuals would blight that one, too.
People be cray cray … also I checked, that account (as of now, but who knows when) has been ‘suspended’ by Twitter.
The veil of anonymity can be a good thing but unfortunately it also allows arsehats like these to spew vitriol pretty much consequence free.
Reading this, it make me genuinely feel bad about wanting this game, yes it’s disappointing to read about the delay but jesus fucking christ i would never send anyone a death threat over it.
Isn’t a delay normally… a good thing?
Like… it means the publisher has enough confidence to keep paying the developer their wages and rent etc, while the developer still doesn’t have a product out that’s going to make their money back? That’s a pretty big vote of confidence in my books. To keep paying people a living wage for something that you’d kind of hoped would actually be generating revenue by now.
And it normally means that the finished product isn’t likely to be as buggy, or unbalanced, as it otherwise would’ve been… right? A delay means that whoever’s in charge doesn’t want the final product to be buggy/unfinished. That’s a GREAT sign. Because we’ve seen what happens when publishers care more about release dates than they do about a good, finished product.
You’re going to have to take your logic and reason and move on, sir. We don’t appreciate your kind ’round these parts.
It’s better than releasing a bad game, but it’s a stretch to call it a “good” thing.
They should have just announced that they had removed space travel so they could hit their release window.
If I’ve learned anything from star wars battlefront is you can just skip massive chunks of content and still get paid as long as you hit your release date.
Crazy. This game looks like a bore anyway.
Fly around alone to randomly generated planets filled with what? Grass? Trees? Some random resources to collect?
Yawn.
But these procedurally-generated flora/fauna are slightly different to these OTHER procedurally-generated flora-fauna!
And if you’re very lucky, you’ll be the first person to see them and be allowed to name them (eg: ‘Bonerfarts’)! Which will have zero impact on anyone else except providing them with frustration and disappointment that they weren’t the first to name them! And their response will likely be instead to go find some other corner of the functionally-infinite cosmos to find as-yet-unnamed Bonerfarts to lay claim to discovering, much to the apathy and disinterest of literally everyone else in the entire world.
Yeah. I’m not seeing much of a point from what’s been on display, but what I DO find interesting is the space-combat side of thing which indicates that there might actually be constellation-spanning empires and such; actual people who you can engage with and tell more meaningful stories than, “I found a slightly unique thing, as did everyone else in the world, ever, thus making my ‘achievement’ utterly meaningless.”
No Man’s Sky feels like a very potent display of the principles behind nihilism.
Actually, considering that the game tells you WHO named said creatures, their response will probably be to send you death threats for getting there first.
Too soon!
Mr Weebl has shown us how the naming will work…
You are obviously not a fan of Minecraft? 😛
Not as a solitary experience.
Minecraft adventure mode offline is a soul-crushingly lonely experience.
On the contrary, I find it very relaxing!
I do initially… it’s only when you reflect on what you’ve achieved or your intended goals and how you value them. Who’s going to see this structure? Why am I bothering with making something pretty? Why am I bothering with it at all?
It leads me down a dark path that has parallels in real life.
I come to Kotaku to be angry about video games, not to read things that make me think sad thoughts!
It’s all good. For the most part my narcissism keeps my nihilism in check.
I’m just sayin’… Minecraft makes me reflect on futility more than I’m comfortable with. 🙂
Ahhh the nihilistic rabbit hole.
I conquered four planets in this playthrough of Stellaris, hooray!… That’s how I spent my last three hours?
Why am I building the Trump Collective? Why am I even playing?… Why anything?…. Why?
Throw in the PS4’s screenshot button and you’ve just described something I REALLY want to play! Sounds like a great chill out game.
Totalbiscuit quit social media cause toxic peopke on them, and he said in an BBC interview he cant explain it cause in all his Cons, Game shows, media events and eSport events he ghas never been threaten or verbally abused or anything even coming close… I doubt anyone has ever walked up to him and said “I hate you”… but online people have gone out of there way to track his members of his family to deliver death threats against him.
What really gets to me is, that after the story was confirmed that the game is getting delayed, not one of these idiots who make idle death threats would stop and think that what they did was wrong, or to go back and apologise. Threatening harm to someone else is just a part of their existence when things don’t go their way.
One of the biggest issues is that these sort of people feel entitled to everything, precisely as it was first described to them, and if it doesn’t 100% match that initial description they have been wronged and must seek to make things right in their world again.
How do individuals like this ever expect to function in society if something as minor as a game delay triggers such an irrational response?
This is just sad. The veil of anonymity strikes again.
I’d love to see how these scumbags would react face-to-face…
Road rage shows us how that works out.
Yeah. Infantile, inexplicable, unjustified, explosive rage isn’t just in gaming.
Road rage is an interesting one as a majority of that is driven by anonymity but more in the opposite direction.
The car in front of you is anonymous which makes some people angry, it isn’t another person trying to get home to their family it is a bloody ford slowing you down.
So the explosive rage happens where there is no human interaction and then is too late by the time their is actually another person involved.
Oddly enough I feel like that’s half the motivation behind this stupid chest thumping. This makes a lot more sense if they believe Jason is pulling serious bullshit that he only thinks he can get away with because he’s hiding behind a keyboard. As near as I can understand it they think he’s needlessly damaging the games public image, desperately jumping on a rumour, making it looks like some half baked project run by a group of clowns who can’t meet a deadline, all for the sake of click-bait articles.
They probably figure by threatening him they’ll snap him out of his the power trip he’s on, making him realise he’s not bulletproof and then admit that he’s just a hack internet writer who tried to turn people against a poor innocent game for the sake of a few ad dollars.
That’s stupid and paranoid but it makes sense on some level. Their reasons may be ridiculous but they seem to think people like Jason are what’s wrong with the world and that he needs a reminder that being safe behind a computer doesn’t mean he’s free from any consequences. How many of us can honestly say we don’t feel that way about the people making these threats? I know I wouldn’t want to actually see it, but part of me wants this guy to be scared. Part of me wants to see him doxxed even though that’s a crazy over reaction.
Yes.. it’s become the new normal. It’s unfortunate that the internet, once a sanctuary from the shit fight that is out there IRL, has become in many ways worse. Back in the early days of internet access, when it was near impossible for the average person to get online and local dialup bulletin board services were even quite a niche thing, the vast majority of people online were intelligent, open-minded individuals with generally a good head on their shoulders. Sure, there were trolls back then too, but it was not the norm.. and even those trolls were of a higher calibre and certainly wouldn’t resort to death threats.
Yup, I dislike the internet more and more as it becomes more and more common place.
We need a new frontier.
I bought a Thermomix and it’s a useless piece of shit. There, I said it.
Come at me.
M8, I would be sharping my knives but I have a thermomix so i don’t need them anymore. It slices, it dices, it turns raw sugar into icing sugar.
I would mess you up but I can steam, stew, boil and heat as well so I don’t have the time.
World’s best custard maker though.
(I’m being serious. It’s friggen awesome at making custard)
You haven’t met my wife.
I was going to add “and at least she doesn’t randomly explode in the middle of cooking”, but then I remembered she’s got a fantastic temper and has rage quit the stove before. 🙂
Remember when we use to say “don’t feed the trolls”?
Remember when trolls were just antagonists looking to get a rise out of people and stir up a little chaos, and not just another synonym for sociopath?
Did that troll succeed in getting a rise and causing chaos?
I’m psyched for No Man’s Sky and I was looking for reasons that the delay was misreported (why would physical stores be advertising the new release date before hello games’ official website/playstation’s website etc.) but when it was confirmed it was just like…”oh, okay cool” and then I started thinking about what other games I’m gonna play between now and then.
I remember seeing the first trailer for the game like two years ago and being like “I’m gonna get this game” and then losing track of it for a while, and then watching a bunch of interviews with Sean Murray, so I’ve been on and off the hype train for a while now – what’s 2 more months?
Welcome to social media, you must be new here
The internet. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.
You should not have to deal with that! Unfortunately idiots are often the loudest people. Looking forward to the day when there are good procedures for dealing with these kind of unlawful comments (threats are against the law… I hope).
I wouldn’t like to see this behavior slowly accepted as par for the course and a communal rebuke, while heartening, would also further marginalise these people.
Both No Man’s Sky’s delay and Captain America’s bombshell highlight the sense of entitlement some fans hold and verbalise, usually without possession of the full story, all the facts or complete context.
But death threats? Just way over the line, no matter who it is directed to and why.
I bought a PS3 in late 2099/early 2910 when The Last Guardian was announced. If that game doesn’t release in 2016, based on the ridiculous rationale some of these idiots operate on, I’ll be well past death threats, I’ll be wiping out most of the Southern Hemisphere…
This upcoming E3 should prove very interesting. I’m expecting the release date for The Last Guardian to be announced then, and for it to be in October. Also, I expect PSVR support to be announced.
Ah social media. Giving voices to of people that should not be heard. Worst invention in the history of man kind.
People like these are why people are blaming shit to the video game industry. Thanks assholes
I faart in your general direction! your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
I hope, even though it most likely won’t be, but I hope NML will be a big fail. Just to see these aggressive online abusers cry. It’s a delay, shit happens. But as usual, people who have no clue get angry and they get angry at the wrong person. Kotaku has been a reliable and trusted gaming source, yet people will still not trust what you say. They would rather trust someone on minimum wage in a constantly reported bad working environment at EB/Gamestop who themselves probably doesn’t get updates from the publisher or head office.
Twitter may have “investigated” the account, but maybe they should read their own rules of behaviour. Any reasonable person would consider what Beach Clashers said to be abusive behaviour.
TWITTER’S Rules:
Abusive Behavior
We believe in freedom of expression and in speaking truth to power, but that means little as an underlying philosophy if voices are silenced because people are afraid to speak up. In order to ensure that people feel safe expressing diverse opinions and beliefs, we do not tolerate behavior that crosses the line into abuse, including behavior that harasses, intimidates, or uses fear to silence another user’s voice.
Any accounts and related accounts engaging in the activities specified below may be temporarily locked and/or subject to permanent suspension.
Violent threats (direct or indirect): You may not make threats of violence or promote violence, including threatening or promoting terrorism.
Harassment: You may not incite or engage in the targeted abuse or harassment of others. Some of the factors that we may consider when evaluating abusive behavior include:
if a primary purpose of the reported account is to harass or send abusive messages to others;
if the reported behavior is one-sided or includes threats;
if the reported account is inciting others to harass another account; and
if the reported account is sending harassing messages to an account from multiple accounts.
TWITTER must be longhand for TWIT
No Mans Sky is just a prettier version of minecraft. Still dull under all the bells and whistles.
And 3. 2. 1.
This here’s Kotaku AU son, not US. Don’t hold your breath for that firebombing you were looking forward to. 🙂
Dang oh well just quietly I am pretty keen to give this game a nice little thrash.
I’m getting it, too. I just have to make sure I keep expectations low.
yep couldn’t agree more. Its like the less I expect from it the more I will enjoy it, hence why I haven’t been watching or keeping up with all the new game play videos and such.
Hi Jason, I consider myself to be one of the second generation of gamers; I started in the 80s and have been a fanatical gamer ever since. And I just want to say that these scumbags that infest the scene nowadays are not real gamers!
I have always believed that gaming is about having fun, and having respect for your opponent.
At least, it always was like that until the rise of internet gaming, and the anonymity that these cowards hide behind. There once was a time when your opponent would most likely be in the same room as you. You couldn’t insult or threaten them, because they could just stand up, walk over, and hit you upside the head.
But now…
We have a whole generation who have grown up knowing zero accountability. They can say what they want, and get away with it. Or course, this attitude now pervades the whole internet. It is a slimy, filthy, degenerate cocktail where the lowest common denominators drag everything down to their scumbag level.
It is a world where loud-mouthed little kids, immature teenagers, pathetic hairy man-babies, stupid fools, ignorant morons, psychos, trolls, misogynists, socially inept ugly bastards who can’t get a real woman, fringe-dwellers, pariahs, loonies, religious extremists, racists, cranks, quacks, whack-jobs, nut-jobs, dumb slobs and general losers rule. In the kingdom of the damned, the scummiest is king.
I’m not altogether sure how we can fix it, short of requiring everybody online to register their full name and address. But that idea would go down like a lead balloon; I’m not sure I would like it myself. But really, how can we restore law and order to the wild frontier that is the general internet and specifically social media? How can we instill a sense of accountability?
Until we do, the trolls and bullies are going to have the upper hand.
I disagree that this can be blamed on a generation. I tutor high school kids and they are fine (at least the subset whose parents have money for that). Apologies for a short reply to a full, well worded opinion, I’m putting too much energy into writing today.
I think this story is the best thing I’ve read on Kotaku and I read Kotaku often enough that I feel I have to capitalise its name whenever I write it. Only good thing to come of this delay (oh, and the game can only get better) A follow-up would be a look at why gaming is the medium with the biggest hype train by far, I’m on board, but imagine a book written this way. There are books published in text messages. Feature length films screened in theatres have been adapted from that source material… I read that somewhere (probably here?) What if people txt’d back? There could also be parody piece on games that were once game of the year material only to be ruined by a delay and become a terrible game in the following year. Jason Schreier you are my hero for today. I hope great journalism like this becomes the new normal. We’ve gone through a rough patch, this site is a rare solid source and I’m not just talking about games journalism.
This death threats, go kill yourself stuff is not a gaming thing. I have had both on YouTube from subjects as diverse as golf to politics and I don’t try and attract that type of attention (always try to keep it civil and polite). This is about the enormity of the internet and anonymity. You can’t take it seriously because that is what they want you to do though they have no intention of doing anything.
It sucks a little to begin with but I barely notice that type of thing now.