It’s a perfect storm that combines a multitude of various effects that graduates into something greater than the mere sum of its parts; you have fanboys, bizarre claims, destruction of property, and a lot of emotionally stunted individuals trying to piece together relatively simple news. At the eye of the storm is Horizon Zero Dawn, a PlayStation 4 title that has gone from being an exclusive title for the platform, to soon being offered on PC.
This news has been met with the gnashing of teeth of Twitter from diehard PlayStation 4 owners, proposing that it weakens their preferred console, or it’s false advertising. Along with these claims are many users destroying the game disc of Horizon Zero Dawn, their PlayStation 4’s, and their entire room while simultaneously posting tear-stained videos about how it isn’t fair.
Interspersed with more absurd cries about the (apparently) now inevitable death of PlayStation 4 (F in chat, please), are people asking for a bit more level headed thinking, yet it seems to fall on deaf ears as the outcry is frankly outlandish.
https://twitter.com/L3fty775/status/1237407528922697733
Yet there’s one reply in specific that prompted a developer from Guerilla Games, and it’s likely the most out-there response in response to a title being ported over to PC, and invoked laughter from the majority of the internet. If you’ve been plugged into the internet over the past week, you’ve likely already seen it.
Some PlayStation 4 fan has destroyed his entire set-up over the news that Horizon Zero Dawn is coming to PC, and continued ranting online well after the video of the destroyed room was posted. It’s odd how a title can invoke such intimacy from consumers around the world to the point of violence, but apparently HZD has that effect on people. It’s worth noting that the owner of the Twitter account has come out since the video went viral and said he was ‘only kidding’, and it’s, of course, now claimed by the author to be a ‘parody account’.
This claim naturally came after global ridicule and mocking of the user when the tweet went viral; it’s assumed that the hundreds of comments about Guerilla Games abandoning their user base, and threatening them with litigation, are also only kidding. Whew.
Sam Sharma, previously of Guerilla Games and Ubisoft, posed a simple question in regards to the outcry that continued to generate online.
This was the initial post in what became a rather long thread about being kind to developers, but the idea that it’s even necessary to attempt to stymie what has become a torrent of hate (even if they’re ‘only kidding’) is abhorrent, at the absolute best.
Exclusives have been shown to move platforms; they’ve also been shown to annoy the ever-loving crap out of consumers that are just looking to play games. To paraphrase: it’s only a game, why you have to be mad?
