Publication Sites Spread Fake Death Threat About Star Wars Battlefront 2
Developer and Publisher EA had a rough time this week and received massive criticism from Star Wars Battlefront 2 fans for their ignorant response about heroic characters being locked behind high credits. although they responded to the issue by reducing the credits required to unlock hero characters by almost 75%.
But it seems like controversy around the new Star Wars Battlefront 2 just won’t end anytime soon and now a new drama has erupted around it. On 13 November 2017, a Twitter user named BiggSean66 who posed himself as an employee of EA wrote the following
So I’m up to 7 death threats, and over 1600 individual personal attacks now (and yes, for legal reasons I’m keeping track). And why, you might ask? Because of an unpopular feature in a game.
— Sean ? (@BiggSean66) November 13, 2017
Many people were quick to believe an anonymous person on the internet. Major publication sites like Fortune, WCCF Tech, Screenrant, Vice and many more sites published articles in support of Biggsean66. Fortune’s article by Chris Morris wrote the following
“Death threats over game features came into vogue during the early days of the GamerGate controversy. For angry gamers, those sort of actions hurts their chances of actually being listened to.”
Notable figure in gaming community like Boogie2988 retweeted it and said the following
This is why no one takes our reasonable requests seriously.
This is why developers hate us.
This is why they don’t care if they screw us over.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
This is why we are attacked by progressives every day.
This is why the media hates us. pic.twitter.com/uHESNQd8mY
— Boogie2988 (@Boogie2988) November 13, 2017
However, when Biggsean66 was investigated it turned out it was all a hoax and he does not work in EA.
Jason Schreier from Kotaku checked the history and details of his background and found no concrete information about him working in EA. he personally messaged him to inquire about the issue but he did not respond and furthermore he removed EA from his Bio and turned his Twitter account into protected mode.
Schreier contacted EA to confirm if BiggSean66 is an employee of their company to which EA said that they have no information about him and said the following
“We take threats against our employees very seriously. Our first concern is ensuring safety and support for our people, and since the reports first surfaced we’ve been investigating this internally. At this time, we’re not able to verify this individual’s claims of employment at EA, nor the threats made against him.”
We are currently living in an era where we believe anything we see on the internet, of course, this stuff has happened before and is a real issue in the gaming community. but this is no excuses for major publications to publish an article without verifying the source. Thanks to Kotaku this time we got to see the real story on Star Wars Battlefront 2.