Call of Duty Fans Are Immature Brats That Send Death Threats to the Developers

[Shawn Zipay]

Earlier today, a new patch was released for Call of Duty: Black Ops II for the Xbox 360. This patch contained the usual pieces of bug fixes, improvements and of course, weapon balances.

Apparently a few of those weapon balances caused some Call of Duty fanatics to completely flip their shit. The target of most of their anger? David Vonderhaar, the Design Director for the game.

[tweet]359662272500609026[/tweet]

So what has a bunch of gamers so outraged? This:

Multiplayer Game Balancing
- AN-94: Damage slightly reduced.
- DSR 50: Rate of fire reduced.
- Ballista: Rate of fire slightly reduced

Three little balances to three weapons. The threats of violence are literally over fractions of seconds in changes. The DSR 50 was changed from .2 seconds to .4 seconds while its re-chamber time went from 1 second to 1.1 seconds.

These almost miniscule changes resulted in Twitter replies along the lines of:

"End your fucking life you cancer cunt i will fuck your daughter"

"I hope u die"

"@DavidVonderhaar fucking retarted shit what are you doing you patch guns that dont need to be patch you double chinned bitch have a good day"

"Haha screw @DavidVonderhaar fuk*n up the DSR and Ballista cant fuk*n hit quad feeds now #KillYourself Vonderhaar!!! SERIOUSLY!!"

"@DavidVonderhaar fuck off you bald headed calliou looking ass! Put the DSR how IT WAS YOU CUNT!"

You think I'm joking? Watch the tweets come in real time and you be the judge of just how pathetic these kids really are. Activision's OneOfSwords was even compelled to write up a lengthy and scathing article about how pathetic and childish the community is acting.

So many of these people are threatening to quit the game now that it is "ruined." In other news, I might try my hand at some Black Ops 2 multiplayer again! I hear it's full of a lot less 6 year olds!

I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

[Linux]

Holy hell I cannot stop laughing at how bad these tweets are. The funny thing is the government is watching this and will be kicking in some doors in the next day or two I bet hahahhaa. People forget that threats on the internet even if they do not mean something the law and government doesn't find it amusing anymore.

[CptainCrunch]

Yeah Linux, you're right. I read articles just about every week where police have arrested someone for harassing/threatening people online through twitter and facebook.

Classic example of the comic showing a normal person + anonymity and what happens.

In my blog I wrote about the M16A3 in BF3 and how people demand it be nerfed all the time and I wrote about how most people will just figure the game changes and adjust and how the bad player will always be bad.

So write your threats bad player cause you still suck.

[Coleman]

lol consoles

[K-16]

Classic example of the comic showing a normal person + anonymity and what happens.

Are you talking about this comic? Somebody changed the formula by the way which doesn't use anonymity, but rather its functional result of consequences to imply this problem can be fixed by correcting this constant.

Anyways, what confuses me is what compelled OneOfSwords to write that article. What I mean is, those who are willing to read the article are actually the silent portion of the community, who follow what was being suggested there anyways. Those who are cocky and vulgar will ignore that wall of text immediately (as their attention span is less than 140 characters). Frankly, aren't threats and childish whining part of the job as a game developer? It's like working for the government, or a tax centre where you would be surprised somebody's going to complain. Customer support jobs everywhere deal with meaningless complaints (such as an ISP giving out reduced billings simply because somebody stole copper wire, which disrupted service for less than an hour which actually happened), so how is anyone surprised that changing the game slightly won't involve death threats? This sort of thing comes with the job when you're serving people who are vocal of their over-entitlement. So when you expect these things, that's pretty much why David Vonderhaar has the patience of a saint much to OneOfSword's amazement. Heck Hideo Kojima had death threats too, and he headed MGS4's development as a possible result.

So this kind of thing is perfectly normal, but I will agree with anyone who wants to say this shouldn't be acceptable in society ever. So I hope the police will do something to shut us up and teach us a lesson we won't forget (abusing that anonymity shouldn't keep you free from consequences, but it also shouldn't infringe on our privacy rights; it's a difficult balance between two extremes). We just uh... Have to wait until the police develop enough resources to differentiate real from fake, or Activision and Treyarch employees might suffer from SWATting pranks. That wasn't a joke. I think David Vonderhaar should call the police and let them know nothing's wrong, because apparently we're not above doing that.

[cikame]

lol consoles

As someone who has played pc games for years, i can confirm it's not just consoles.

Interesting factoid, you also get immature people in universities, there's no escaping them.

[CptainCrunch]

Yeah, K, that was the comic.

Though I do agree that the "insane" do not read the wall of text, there are those that have not decided to become "insane" and reading something like that from someone you value their opinion on could change them from also being stupid and instead looking at the big picture.

It also gives others something to point to to tell the "insane" to knock it off.

Also, it shows that those that are "sane" that they are not alone in their thinking. When you see non-stop posts about something like this you start to wonder if maybe your thoughts are not correct and those shouting about it might know something you don't. Which, usually isn't true.

So I wouldn't say the posting is about telling the "insane" to stop, but to provide support for others and an example of how dumb the insanity really is.

[K-16]

Change them from being stupid and looking at the big picture? Maybe... I'm too jaded and cynical to think there would be more than one or two people who would benefit from that.

Give others something to point to? Unlikely due to the aforementioned wall of text issue. Can't tell the "insane" to knock it off by pointing to something more than 140 characters long.

Not alone in their thinking, and alleviates self-doubt? That I agree and did not really consider until now. Good point.

Provide support for others and an example of how dumb insanity really is? Ok that helps me understand the purpose a bit more clearly now that you mention it (I know it's obvious to everyone else, but it was less obvious to me). Good counter-points.

Reply to CptainCrunch below: Oh I know you're aware of that. I'm just saying it's fruitless that we put effort into telling others to knock it off, when the available resources we're using is ineffective in the first place (in this case, a message post from someone in the industry). I do understand the INTENTION of having something to use in our efforts to tell others to knock it off though.

Also I believe the current trend is snorting condoms. They're already past plastic bags, blow dryers, hanging, and planking in incredibly dangerous areas. I'm intrigued to see how much further society can drop when the next YouTube viral fashionable trend happens. Possibly Russian Roulette with a semi-automatic.

[CptainCrunch]

Dont get me wrong, your part was correct as well. All this stuff does nothing for them. Their probably still putting plastic bags over their heads and using blow dryers in the showers.

[l=l-ONeill-l=l]

You treat community like children, you'll get childlike respond.

[Shawn Zipay]

You treat community like children, you'll get childlike respond.

How in the world did he "treat community like children?"

[l=l-ONeill-l=l]

How in the world did he "treat community like children?"

We tell you how to play. How many times gaming community ask them to give ranked dedicated servers? Their respond was "no", you are not mature enough to run your own servers and we want to control your game. Sounds like parents want to control their children, well community is behaving like one.

[Shawn Zipay]

That isn't treating anybody like a child, it has nothing to do with this since the dedicated server stuff started back in MW2 with a completely different development studio, and it sure as hell isn't treating anybody in any way that should illicit death threats against him.

[l=l-ONeill-l=l]

Activition is main company and they are the one that pulling the strings. And Threats are that what they are,just a threats. Community pissed and probably you right, death threats are bad expression of one of the feelings, but on the other hand could be a tool to change some things in some one else favor.