Creating and launching games is a nightmare of toxic gamers and influencers, for a dev

Joe Hobbs, developer of Ubisoft, vented on Twitter stating essentially that develop and publish games has become a real one nightmare because of the toxic players and influencers. Many developers are forced to suffer offenses and death threats from players dissatisfied with anything, even for titles they have not played, so much so that they often leave social networks immediately after the launch of their latest effort, in order not to suffer harassment from the various keyboard lions. Their influencers would be to blame for stirring up the community, just pointing out the flaws of the games to make their daily show and grow views.

Hobbswho works as a graphic designer, simply wanted to uncover Pandora’s box, recounting a situation that has become unsustainable and under the eyes of all: “Releasing a game should be a game developer’s highlight, but gamers and social media have made it a horrendous experience for any of us publicly stating what game we are working on. In the past, I’ve received death threats for The Division 2. It’s not acceptable.

The most ridiculous part is that gamers complain that developers don’t communicate with them, but do you know what happens when they do? Destiny 2’s recent problems are one example. Then there are the various “fix the game”, or people who say to a graphic designer “fix the matchmaking” and so on.

The treatment received by the developers is disgusting and I find it in the comments of most of the developers who say anything. A few months ago a guy wrote about his sick mother and half of the comments were ‘go back to work’, ‘fix the game’.

So sure, they want us to be more open and communicative, but here’s what happens when we do.”

Here Hobbs brings the role of influencers into play: “Streamers and content creators, who thrive on reactions and behave excessively to get more views, only make things worse. They have a large audience and they peg it against developers. They claim that the developers are bad and they get it all wrong etc. etc, then they wonder why they don’t interact with them … These are real people who work every day and don’t need this bullshit.“

For Hobbs, a lot also depends on the fact that many players don’t know how games are made (as do many influencers and other insiders, let’s face it) and therefore talk about things they know nothing about, just by hearsay. Be that as it may, the saddest part is that many developers leave social media for weeks after a title launch to avoid the risk of toxic player reactions: “People will say toxic things no matter what you’ve done.“

After his messages, Hobbs received a lot of solidarity, but also many death threats and messages from players who justify the same with the most bizarre theses. Hobbs then drew a very bitter conclusion, returning to the subject in the last few hours: “What makes me sadder is that I know a lot of people would like to talk about what we do and be more informative about video game development, educating more people, but they will never be able to because trying is not worth the mental abuse they would suffer.“