The developers of Dying Light 2 are enjoying toxic players

As promised, Polish developer Techland today released a video that updated the world on the state of the zombie parkour thriller Dying light 2. and it’s a very concise look at one of the most toxic cycles underlying the video game industry.

In the first half of the about three minutes video, several Techland developers have read comments from fans demanding that the game be released or at least proof that it still exists. FUCK THIS BULLSHIT !!! Let go of dying light 2 or give a fucking demo GOD DAMNIT, ”reads one of the messages.

Then the second half of the video begins with one of the developers calmly and seriously saying, “Okay everyone, we got the message. We understand that you’re curious about the game because you want to Dying light 2 to be as good as you imagined. ”

The developers go further Dying light 2 is a big game, a complex game, the kind of game that is hard to make (note: it’s all), and that the studio just needs a little more time to bring its ambitious creative vision to life , especially after a year full of unique challenges and tragedies stemming from the ongoing pandemic. The second half of the video is defensive and bordering on apologetic, apparently in an attempt to satisfy the most capable and also virulent fans of the upcoming game.

“We’re all here delivering a game that will keep you playing for months,” says one developer as if filming a hostage video.

“We are proud to have such dedicated fans as you, no matter how you express your feelings,” said Tymon Smektała, the game’s lead designer, towards the end, completing the ill-fated run of co-dependence on video games.

“Normalizing this shit or playing it for laughs makes the industry worse for everyone,” he wrote GamesIndustry.biz editor Brendan Sinclair today on Twitter. He’s right.

We’ve seen it play out decades before. A certain part of game fans like a developer until they bombard them with death threats because a game was delayed or, wrongly, had the wrong ending. Yet some of the biggest studios and game publishers are keeping their attention on these hyper-online, super-fickle “fans”, because it is also they who will spread the E3 marketing gospel on social media and private chats, the non-believers repent and be ready to launch a harassment campaign in an instant if the assessment points do not go as hoped.

Dying light 2 was first unveiled at Microsoft’s press conference at E3 2018, three years after the release of the first game. It looked neat. A demonstration I saw, I even teased it could have an interesting world building going on beyond the standard zombie survival survival. But the game never got a fixed release date, and early last year Techland announced it would be delayed indefinitely. So some Dying light 2 Fans have apparently thrown out the game’s developers’ abuse, and now Techland is trying to win them back, including a brief new preview to pull them over until the studio is finally ready to announce more.

We saw this exact scenario unfold last year with Cyberpunk 2077. After the game was delayed a third time at the end of October, senior game designer Andrzej Zawadzki and others reported being harassed over the news. “I will burn you alive if you do not release the game,” reads one of the death threats. he shared in a screenshot. It was a few weeks later Bloomberg first post that CD Project Red developers are being forced to work mandatory overtime to complete the game, and that a few weeks before some Cyberpunk 2077 fans would berserk about insufficiently positive reviews of the final match. The game quickly sold 13 million copies and was removed from the PlayStation Store just as quickly for performance issues. In spite of years of edgelord marketing, it’s submerged from the NPD sales charts. Who exactly was served by this whole messy cycle?

And yet we see it again with Dying light 2. Months after delay, Polish outlet PolskiGameDev.pl reports that development is not going well, and that the studio has struggled to fulfill its promise of a dynamic and changing world. Last month, The player report that the project led to a lack of direction, citing a number of incidents in the studio that pointed to a pattern of toxic handling at Techland. Just last week, tweeted the studio, “We announced the game too early, but it’s far from hell.” Techland leadership has a dream for what sells Dying light 2 it may have been for fans years ago, and now it’s a nightmare inciting ash commentators and deeper problems in the studio.

Eventually the game will come out (the new video says 2021) or not. It can be good, bad or good. Whatever the outcome, hopefully the very visible, obvious issues Cyberpunk 2077, Dying light 2and games with similarly armed fans will convince creators to stop relying on the years-long hype circus to promote their games. Or at least stop making the worst parts of the fan base.