Just days after Sean Murray received numerous death threats, Kotaku reporter Jason Schreier reveals that he too has received death threats for his report on the No Man's Sky delay.
It's a bit of an understatement to say that past couple of days have been quite dramatic for those at Kotaku and Hello Games. After last week's reveal that Hello Games' space exploration epic, No Man's Sky, will be delayed from its planned June release date, some fans didn't take the news very well. In fact, a number of gamers took the news so badly that they issued death threats to Hello Games founder Sean Murray. Unfortunately, Murray wasn't the only person that was targeted by overzealous fans.
Jason Schreier, the Kotaku reporter who broke the news about the latest No Man's Sky delay, has now revealed that he has also received death threats. On the same day that the new August release date for No Man's Sky was revealed, Schreier tweeted a screenshot of a threatening message that he had received, and captioned it with "What it's like to write about video games on the internet."
Following his tweet, Schreier posted up an update on Kotaku to talk about his current well-being, as well as subsequent events following the death threat. It will most likely be a relief to gamers and journalists to know that Schreier explained that he is perfectly fine and that he never really felt threatened by any of the messages he received. He also went on to state that while the messages were understandably unsettling, he has gotten used to unsavory messages from online trolls during his time at Kotaku. As for the troll who sent the message, Schreier reported them to Twitter, and the account was suspended.
[HTML1]
This certainly isn't the first time that death threats have been sent out following the announcement of a delay, something that Oculus Rift developers and Skyrim modders know all too well. But what's most unsettling about this whole saga is how overblown outrage has now become the norm. As Schreier pointed out in his article, it isn't the death threats that are worrying - it's how everyone will forget about this sequence of events over the next few days, and all the attention will be focused on the next big outrage.
The events of the past week has put a bit of a dark cloud around No Man's Sky, but Schreier, Murray, and the rest of the Hello Games team deserve credit for not letting the threats get to them. Let's hope that the online trolls will remain silent, and everyone can turn their attention back towards how No Man's Sky is shaping up to be one of 2016's most exciting titles.
No Man's Sky is scheduled for release on August 9, 2016 for PC and PlayStation 4.