A developer of Oblivion remake Skyblivion, which rebuilds Bethesda’s beloved Elder Scrolls 4 using the Skyrim engine, says they have experienced death threats.
If anyone is wondering why…yeah there’s no reason. It’s just sad losers trolling them and hacking their Discord for no reason other than (probably) the lulz.
Remember that it's most likely just edgy kids, the internet becomes a lot more bearable when you just assume all the dumbos are little kids trying to act cool.
It's incredibly common for game developers. Change a variable from a 5 to a 4 and you get death threats. Change it back to 5 ane you get more death threats.
The reality is that a lot of gamers simply aren't very good people (and now they often have the far-right cheering them on).
I loved working in the industry but the constant tantrums and entitlement made it easy to leave.
There's probably a seriously petty reason behind it, like someone who also loved Oblivion also began to involve themselves with the development but were driven out or left because they were a petty troll about something. Placing my bets on someone finding out their cult of ideology idol was not universal, if only because that seems to be the statistically most common for pettiness nowadays.
There are as many unbearable man-children as there are socially underdeveloped teens on the internet. As sad as that is, even if we banned teenagers from the internet it wouldn’t improve anonymous spaces all that much.
I'd be curious to know what the death threats entail. Like, of you don't finish this free mod soon your going to be killed?
How does that even make sense?
Although I suppose the sort of person who would send a death threat over the internet is not going to be known for thier intelligence.
We live in times where folks are more worried into bashing randoms rather than improving/enjoying things for no reason other than attention/self-validation -- those are probably "internet tough guys" acting like such.
I know people can be absurdly toxic in general, but does it seem like games are an unusually concentrated place for that? If that is the case, why is that?
This is the correct answer, in my opinion. Keyboard warriors usually dry up real quick in the face of physical, meat-space confrontation. Same reason behind road rage, really. I'm only brave while I can hide behind a perceived barrier.
Maybe it's just me then. I know it happens elsewhere, but it just seems to happen more often in games. I feel like I'm reading stories all the time about developers getting threatened, but I feel like it's much more rare to see for instance stories about filmmakers or authors being threatened.
Yeah I really don't understand this why specifically the gaming communities seem to suffer from this problem more than others.
Perhaps it's not reported on as much in other hobby circles, or it's a confirmation bias on my part.
Regardless, it's really disappointing that these communities have this 'there I go death-threating again' stigma growing against them. Absolutely disgusting.
If I had to guess, it's because gamers are often more tech-oriented, likely younger and impulsive, video games are more and more popular every year, and also based on your presence here, I'd say you're more likely to be aware of game-related news in general?
If knitting were more popular, had a greater online presence, and you actively followed knitting communities online, I'd imagine you would probably feel like knitting culture is such a toxic cesspit as well.
The skyrim modding landscape has got so much worse in recent years, so many mod users are so self entitled, dumb, and very demanding it's so disappointing seeing this niche area getting so much worse thanks to more and more people flocking to it
It's hard to say tbh, Skyrim offers a great base to mod off of, the scripting system is very strong too(only held back but slow refresh times) and tools are freely available and easy to uae to create these mods, I assume aswell the fact there's not been another TES game to pull people away and the general state of gaming over the last decade, people are going back to it
Also tons of people myself included make mod lists but never play
That unfortunately what happens when a game with mod supports gets a bit older. There's a sweet spot in modding, easier than that; dumbfucks arrive, harder than that; nobody mods and scene dies out incredibly quickly.
Minecraft sits right on the spot for example. Not too easy that any idiot can do it, and it isn't hard enough to require a CS degree to mod.
Ah yeah the modding tools being very new user friendly is defo a big thing that has lead to this, I think the lack of a new TES game and the insane explosion of high quality popular mods has brought more people into the scene too
It sounds like the story of the AetherSX2 emulator, that happened earlier this year: the main developer got burnt out by all the harassment and threats from toxic individuals and abandoned the project out of frustration.
The internet can be really hard for sensible people, I hope wherever Tahlreth is right now is feeling better.
I don't entirely hope he's feeling better cause he definetly lived for the drams, and hyped it up however he could. He also shit talked a lot of other open source devs, especially of emulators
I'm over here with my skooma pipe going, "chill, I'm still waiting on Morroblivion and Morrowskyrim". I don't think modders have ever managed to finish one of these kinds of projects.
It means this person is trying to grind their 'keyboard warrior" skill, which to my mind is a waste of spec points but maybe they're running some gimmick build.
If you are on the Internet you will receive death threats. Why are we treating it like news? I don't make anything, rarely comment and get told to kill myself about once a month.
It's messed up, but I hate reading articles of people clutching their pearls over chat from any multiplayer game.
Either create consequences or accept that it's a part of the Internet.
You make it sound normal, which it is not. There is one thing shouting in a game that they will kill you in the game. It's something totally different when they are sending death threats.
This is not "part of the internet" this is people being insane. The people behind this could face jail time.
Death threats are normal on the Internet. People's lives are constantly threatened on the Internet.
It's not acceptable. It should be stopped, but currently there is no real enforcement, and no way to stop them. Acting shocked isn't going to stop them.
I seem to interact with the internet more frequently than you and I have literally never been told to kill myself online. And that even might be about to change, but I'm not particularly sensitive to it. Still an absolutely braindead and shitty thing to do