Originally published on Trevor Trove on June 2, 2016
While I was drowning in the positivity that was Kinda Funny Live the last week, news starting breaking that No Man’s Sky might be delayed, which was later confirmed by game creator Sean Murray. Originally scheduled for June 21, the game was delayed to August 9.
Why on earth are those 49 days worthy of death threats?
When Jason Schreier originally reported his sources were telling him the game would be pushed last Wednesday, I was probably just getting ready to sit down for dinner at my favorite burrito place in San Francisco. I saw my Twitter feed start to fill up comments about the possibility, said “darn,” and ordered my food and spent the evening laughing with friends.
Not once did something snap in the back of my head where a fury of rage burst forth into my hands and I felt utterly compelled to tweet out to the world that Jason Schreier should die. I wasn’t suddenly possessed to scream out into the faces of the people at Underdogs that Kotaku should burn to the ground. I simply thought “oh well, I guess I won’t get to play it until…oh look, my food’s here.”
When Murray confirmed the news on the PlayStation Blog Friday morning, I was laughing and joking with my roommates about the godawful movie Unfriended we had watched the night before. As we walked to lunch and one of our crew mentioned seeing the confirmed delay, I did not push him into an oncoming car or trolley. Visions of slowly choking the life out of a game developer I had never met did not fill my thoughts. I just said, “oh well, I’m still excited for…and here we are.”
I’m passionate about video games. But sending death threats over the news of a game delay is not passion. It’s psychosis. The fact that twitter claimed to investigate at least one of the threats on Schreier and deemed it fine would be laughable if it were so embarrasingly atrocious.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha pic.twitter.com/YfxaaOBvaz— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) May 31, 2016
Sean Murray, manning the No Man’s Sky twitter account took his death threats with a bit of cheeky humor, invoking thoughts of Kevin McAllister preparing to fend off the Wet Bandits.
But yeah, apparently the prospect of waiting 7 weeks for a thing is enough to enrage a (hopefully) ridiculously small but load minority of insane people who also happen to enjoy video games,
Guess I better start losing my shit at the head of Dreamworks for making me wait until July 22 for Ice Age: Collision Course!
CALL TO ACTION: In honor of yesterday’s article on getting more involved and spreading positivity online, I’m going to occasionally recommend that the audience actually respond to the article.
Today’s call to action: tweet out a kind word to @jasonschreier and @NoMansSky. Sure it’s a bit behind the times but they’re still doing great work and should be lauded for it.