The Curious Case Of The 'EA Game Dev' Who Said He Received Death Threats

Earlier this week, a man with “Game Dev @EA” in his Twitter profile wrote that he had received death threats from angry Star Wars Battlefront II fans. His story was covered by news outlets like USA Today, the BBC, and Yahoo. Vice wrote an editorial about it, CNBC ran a headline about it, and the tweet was retweeted by hundreds of people. There’s just one lingering question: Does he actually work at Electronic Arts?

[Nineball2112]

Wow. According to this article, it sounds like a case of a nut job who has been lying the entire time about working for EA. What drives people to make up stuff like this? I don't get it.

[-Foxtrot]

I'm more taken aback Kotaku actually looked into this as much as they did...like real investigated journalism.

[isa_scout]

Jason is the best investigative journalist in the video game industry. Every time he writes something it's eye opening. Kotaku is fortunate they have him because he's the only reason I even occasionally visit their site.

[mercyblades]

Yeah, Jason is a great journalist/guy. He’s done great work interviewing developers and he actually asks them some questions from fans.

[Christopher]

Ikr? Was just talking to Bono and Lady Gaga about this stuff the other day over tea. It's weird how people will just create lies for attention.

But seriously, we see a lot of that here. People sometimes need attention and they find the only way to get it is by creating these online personas. For those who stick to them to long, they tend to end up where this guy is.

[Eonjay]

I still think sites are to blame for not investigating fake news. It shows you how little work they do to validate what they put out. I just think this is poor on their part.

[bloop]

To be fair, it's not as bad as some of those other lunatics, like the idiot who said his brother was missing after the Vegas shooting and then asked everyone to follow his Instagram. Having said that, he's still an idiot. As for the journalists, I think even the overly blatant Twitter account name should have been a give away. "Game Dev @ EA." How original.

[1nsomniac]

Making up death threats is the new “Thing” a local member of parliament here in the UK named MP Lucy Allan has been caught making up death threat claims in order to progress her career.

It was factually proven & instead of being punished she was let off & it looks like career in politics now seems to be on the rise.

That’s UK politics for you though.

[Christopher]

How quickly people jump on the anti-harassment train. Sure, harassment sucks, but so do game journalists who would rather report on that than EA and their MTs issue or just actually make sure what they're reporting on is legit to begin with.

And getting told by people that we should take responsibility for the actions of the few... This is why we are only responsible for our own actions. It's the only thing we know to be true and to actually have control over.

[-Foxtrot]

That's the issue though in cases like this...death threats apparently pop up and it's made out to be bigger then they are like here I thought it was 30 employees with hundreds of threats sent to each one. Not dumbing down death threats sent to anyone but you have to understand that a select few can't represent the majority otherwise you are giving the accused the chance to shift the blame from what they've done and make that into a bigger deal to play the victim card

In reality it's this one guy, who dosen't seem to even work for EA and he got 7...compared to how many people in gaming who are taking part in this fiasco

[Eonjay]

"How quickly people jump on the anti-harassment train"
I'm not convinced. There is nothing wrong with fighting harassment. The problem., is jumping on the train with out knowing what you are representing or allowing yourself to be duped by fake things. This is no way means we have to stand for real harassment. It only means we need to know people are out to deceive us.

[fenome]

Talking about "armchair developers". Lmao

Death threats are no joke, but there's a huge difference between a legit threat and some random ass-hat on the Internet saying stupid shit on the internet. I should know, I've been told to drink bleach and live stream it just on this site. Lol

I'm not saying that's all this is though, no one knows because there's no proof. If he takes legal action and posts screen grabs then it's a whole other story. Otherwise he's probably just an attention whore who got too much of what he wanted.

[KillBill]

But if a fake persona is being attacked on twitter is anyone really being attacked? If threats actually were received from this fake person then would it be a threat against the persona or the person acting as the said persona?

[fenome]

Good point.

"A fake persona lying on the internet gets threatened on the internet by a different fake persona on the internet."

[subtenko]

Thousands if not millions have received mugging threats...FROM EA! The former is worse yea, but punk moves sometimes return back on ya.

[NordicRainy]

People love to be victims these days. But seriously is this guy insane or something?

[InTheZoneAC]

Spread the word, buy the game used. Don't feed EA anymore money.

[OpenGL]

Or don't buy the game at all.

[InTheZoneAC]

true, but regardless both options don't provide money

@cheeto, no one is saying to stop buying games, a message is being sent to the worst company in all of gaming.

[OpenGL]

It's not like every game with DLC operates the way this game does. I never said stop buying games in general.

[Prince_TFK]

I wouldn’t play this game even if it is given to me for free. Playing these kind of games would just leave a bad taste in my mouth.

[Dante101]

Best way to send a message to these developers is simply not buying their games. Don't need violence when most of their job is related to how well their game sells.

[Chaosdreams]

So he is an attention seeker who formed a platformed based on lies, trolling and using EA's already toxic name in the process. Some might call it genius. I think it's pathetic.

This person is clearly lonely and now he's enjoyed some undeserved fame while making light of an otherwise tense subject. Did he even receive death threats? Probably not. And if he did - it's not like it even bothered him since it's apparent it's all a game in his eyes.

I do however applaud the person who looked into this and connected the dots. Well done.

[Goldby]

well if all is true in this article, any hope he had at working for them is probably now shot

[Elda]

Dumb.

[2cents]

How bizarre this whole debacle has become. So much wrong at every turn.

[Mikelarry]

Ha! i pointed out in the article that was submitted yesterday that this sounded too convenient and i got downvoted.

just goes to show you that we have to be careful and verify allegations properly

[AnubisG]

That is true, however it is not unheard of that devs get deathtreats.

[Mikelarry]

I have read articles about this topic and to be clear I am not not saying they dont happen.

my point was in this particular case it looked way too convenient, and this should be a lesson for future allegations on any ground should be properly investigated before every game journalist writes scathing articles about gamers " are all kids" and "need to grow up" when clearly most are just echoing with no proper investigation.