Death threats for game developer

By Digital News Asia June 3, 2016

No Man's Sky delayed by weeks
Developer Hello Games targeted

HERE we go again.

After the incidents of Gamergate, fans have decided the best way to express their disappointment over a game’s delay is to threaten the lives of the people making it.

Hello Games is the affected party as the UK studio’s boss Sean Murray confirmed a rumoured delay for the much-hyped sci-fi adventure, No Man’s Sky. The game has slipped from its original June 24th release date to August 12th.

In a blog post about the delay, Murray said: “We understand that this news is disappointing. Making this game is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, but we are so close now, and we’re prepared to make the tough choices to get it right. The universe of No Man’s Sky is incredibly vast. More than you can imagine. This is a type of game that hasn’t been attempted before, by a smaller team than anyone would expect, under an intense amount of expectation.”

The original story was just a rumour on gaming site Kotaku. The reaction to Kotaku’s rumour story was also utterly strange. Fans were so keen to disprove his ‘lies’ that they phoned dozens of GameStop stores to try and discredit one of the story’s sources, who works for the retailer.

And, as Bithell Games' Alexander Sliwinski points out on Twitter, this is hardly new in the games industry. "Why is getting death threats in games suddenly news?" he asks. "Are we just openly talking about it now? This has been going on for over a decade."

Making death threats is a crime in many countries. It would be interesting to see if the law enforcement agencies will step in.

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