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Abandoned developer fed up, threatens action over death threats

The makers of Abandoned have reported death threats and are planning to take action.

Ozzie Mejia

October 18, 2021 2:50 PM

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One of the saddest truths in today's gaming landscape is that there is a sector of people who will get so worked up over video games that they'll resort to death threats. While that may be a truth, it doesn't mean that anyone has to sit back and take it. Developer Blue Box Games, who is currently working on Abandoned, is vowing not to sit back and take it anymore. On Saturday, the team lambasted the most recent round of death threats and is promising to take action.

Here is the full message posted to the Blue Box Twitter account (via GI.biz):

The following message is not addressed as a company, but as a group of human beings. The last few days have been difficult. Death threats are increasing online but unfortunately also physically and this has to stop. We have been dealing with death threats the past few months and the last few days we have been dealing with it again, especially physically. This not only affects us as a team, but everyone within our environments. Other businesses, families and everyone surrounding us. We want to work in a safe environment and with job openings upcoming in the future, we want to offer a safe work environment for future colleague's aswell. [sic] We won't tollerate [sic] this and we will take action by providing authorities IP addresses, logs and camera footages.

We are fully aware of the negative situation that we have created and we truly understand your frustration. But what we don't understand are the death threats. We understand and appreciate your interest for Abandoned, we are working hard on Abandoned. We will start a regular blog on our website that you can follow and we will post any news on Abandoned on our Twitter. But all we ask until then, is just to give us space and to us work on Abandoned.

Please.

The death threats appear to stem from Blue Box recently debunking rumors that it was working on a Silent Hill reboot. Internet detectives were surmising, based on the little information currently out there about Abandoned and Hideo Kojima's penchant for misdirection, that this game would prove to be another Silent Hill in disguise. With PT out there as precedent, such an idea would not have been unheard of. However, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and that looks to be the case with Abandoned.

We'll continue to monitor Abandoned's progress here at Shacknews, as well as report on any further action that the company is taking against anyone sending death threats.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?