Over the years, mass hate campaigns against video games have become more prominent than ever. The latest hate campaign against Bungie’s Marathon has been eye-opening to see with swathes of gamers online seemingly hoping the game fails before it even releases.
Following a number of videos regarding Wildlight Entertainment’s Highguard, which is shutting down on March 12th after less than a month of release, Half-Life, Portal, and Left 4 Dead writer Chet Faliszek pushed back against the constant online hate campaign that surrounds a large number of new releases.
Responding to a comment from a user dubbed LittleCanada12 that claimed “the large majority [of developers] have got lost in the sauce and make games for themselves”, the award-winning game developer expressed their frustration at players that simply just want fans to fail instead of giving things a shot.
“If you hate game developers, you hate games, okay?” Faliszek said. “I’m being really clear. If you’re cheering on for things to fail, if you think game developers have no idea about games, and only you – LittleCanada12, I guess that’s your age or your IQ – knows the truth, man, just keep it to yourself.”
“You don’t love games,” the developer continued. “If you hate game developers this much to post something like this, that you think that little of the people who make the thing that you say you love, you don’t love it. You hate it. So go get lost.”
In a separate video, Faliszek also pushed back against claims that developers only make games “the suits want them to make”, using Highguard as an example.
“I’m really sick of it,” the developer said. “There’s a hatred for game developers and a dismissal of ideas and people. Like, people are mad that they like their own game. People are mad they tried something. It’s different. It is different. It’s a different kind of game, and it works in a different way. And it’s not the latest trend.”
“You can say you don’t like it,” he continued. “But like, ‘oh it’s just the suits, oh it’s just a money grab. It’s an asset flip’. Oh, go f**k off. Seriously. I am so sick of gamers. Gamers who have this– they hate games. You hate games. Just say you hate games. And I know what you’re gonna tell me: ‘Last game I played was Half-Life: Opposing Force ‘cause I’m a real gamer’ or whatever the f**k.”
Online hate towards game developers has been a huge problem for decades now, but it has become increasingly spiteful. Following the release of Concord, Sony’s high-profile hero shooter failure, almost every new title has seen a wave of haters prior to release claiming it’ll be the “next Concord”.
Situated away from social media, millions of gamers just watch trailers and play games. Nevertheless, YouTube, Twitch, Twitter and more are increasingly becoming more hostile towards games than ever before with a growing disconcerting glee at the fact that a game could fail if the hate campaign is big enough.
With video game layoffs reaching record levels, honestly, game developers already have enough to worry about. And as someone who actually loves games, what does anyone have to gain from hoping something fails without even playing it? Outside of a few Twitter likes, that is.
