Unbelievable from what I’ve read about just now. This is games-related because it is targeting a gaming community, one that has seemingly taken things too far than they needed to go.
Summary: A user, who I will not name, issued a challenge to the developers of Helldivers 2 to play their game on the hardest difficulty on a mission mode that is known for being difficult, poorly designed and glitchy. Should the developers complete it, he will donate $1,000 to charity of his choosing.
The fanbase? They didn’t take this kindly and have now been making it a campaign to make that user’s life a living hell. Even up to making said user lose their IRL jobs. I’m surprised the user hasn’t killed themselves yet and I hope it never gets to that point.
If you’ve been on the Helldivers 2 subreddit and Steam community, you will know what is going on. I am talking of this because, I hope to never ever see this kind of behavior happen within the Fediverse, because we are supposed to be better than this. I’m not surprised that the rapid dogpiling in rabid irrationality, happened from Reddit because that’s where a lot of it comes from.
There is way more to this drama than I am speaking of, but all it has been doing, is making me disgusted over game-based communities who allow this to happen. I’m disgusted at the people who could’ve nipped it in the bud before it got out of control but didn’t. I’m disgusted at Reddit for predictably allowing it to happen.
I have not felt this disgusted towards something since the Night in the Woods incident. Absolutely disgraceful.
I mean, there are certain games where the online community actually breathes a lot of life into a game. Lots of open-ended games have fantastic online communities. For instance, Factorio’s online community is largely focused on sharing factory blueprints, finding better ways to optimize your setups, and modding.
In fact, the biggest “controversy” surrounding Factorio is that the company’s founder is a bigot. The official Reddit sub actively turned against him. The mods even started deleting his inflammatory posts and comments for breaking the rules, which is a nice piece of irony. Imagine creating a game and then having the entire fanbase turn against you when you start blowing dog whistles.