who said to accept it? Above poster said that death threats are easy to get these days for virtually anything and can hardly be used as an excuse.

B) whinging about inevitable death threats to deflect attention from your gaffes isn't really great, either. The public complaint, if anything, further normalizes the death threats with people inclined to make them. Secondarily, it generates sympathy and distraction, which is probably the effect one wanted when one chose to whinge.

If one wants to object to death threats in a way that improves our culture and makes them less likely, it's probably best done out of band from the actual coverage of one's failing. Do it retrospectively, and in contemplative channels, not ones that are already polemic and filled with attention to the failing that caused the original outrage.

Violent extremists are often operate under the mistaken belief that they represent the "silent majority", and that most people secretly agree with what they do.

This is one reason that when a political party that tacitly or explicitly approves of extremist violence gets in to power more terrorist acts are committed. It's also why, for example, racists terrorists believe the murders they commit will spark a "race war". They believe that most people are secretly racist, and all it'll take for such a war to start is for their murders to encourage people's secret hatred to come to the surface.

To counteract this, it's important for the real majority to not be silent, and instead condemn violence, hatred, and terrorism (which includes death threats) in the strongest possible terms. When terrorists see evidence that the majority actually opposes them it'll require a lot more cognitive dissonance on their part to continue to believe that they represent the majority.

This is not a panacea, and I don't imagine for a moment that it will end all violence, especially as some people will never believe the evidence of their lying eyes, but many people speaking out in public against violence is one of the most effective tools we have for combating violent extremism.

Because if you're pissed off about Cyberpunk 2077, and think death threats are OK... seeing an article with more news about '2077 being late, and an aside of them saying "these death threats are upsetting us" A) reinforces your belief death threats for situations like this are normal, and B) provides you with some validation/happies.

I'd wager that the kind of people who issue death threats over video game delays has a pretty big overlap with 4chan. 4chan peeps know their behavior is not normative, and having a bunch of outcry has never stopped their pursuit of the luls... and the kind of article mentioning the threats you're talking about is pretty much winning from their standpoint.

At this point on the internet, if the topic touches more than 100,000 people and its controversial. You can probably find a few truly heinous comments.

And giving them attention, is kind of what they are after.

Its just very vocal fringe minority.

It's an expression of frustration, and we all know that. Unfortunately in today's world, feeling threatened is socially valuable so they're simply playing on that. It says more to me about the disingenuity and/or weakness of the "victim" than anything else.

We need to laugh at people more.

Hate is cheap on Twitter

Some, at the very ends of the bell curve, are enraged and simultaneously not equipped with the tools to process that in a healthy way.

This indicates that nobody even knew how bad it was. There's also rumors developers found out about the delays from social media.

CDPR execs are just incompetent and unable to set realistic timelines. When big AAA releases are delayed, they're usually delayed once and it's done 6+ months from release (because it's obvious then you won't make it).

Delaying when it's less than a month out? Absolute incompetence. You lose millions and millions of dollars doing this, by burning marketing dollars and screwing over your retail partners.

You can point out the delays are do to incompetence without agreeing that death threats are ok.

You are ascribing intent where there is none. We need to stop framing conversations based upon the extremists in the population.

The root comment is full of hyperbole, but there is no indication he supports death threats, that's just silly.

How did they deliberately mislead them? By saying things like only a natural disaster would stop the latest release date, only for it to slip with less than a month left.

That's an actual lie and false advertising. As someone with project management experience, the people making those claims are either incompetent or lying.

So yeah, customers who paid them money and were lied to have an absolute right to be furious. Death threats is an excuse. 99.99% of the criticism was justified and without intimidation or threats.

Obviously people can feel however they want, but we’re talking about $5–60 and like eight months delay; you’ll forgive me for being a little dismissive of people who are “furious” about this.

(1) the issue would have likely been avoided if the studio did not set a day-definite release date (announcing it more generally as e.g. Q4 2020 instead);

(2) there is a general problem with how game pre-orders work: people put their money down but it isn't really clear what they are getting for it in return, or when they will be getting it; many pre-orderers make certain assumptions to this effect, and when promises fail to materialize later, the disappointment runs deep.

Expecting not to be lied to as a customer is a very justifiable stance.

And it seems pretty clear to me that they met the standards of lying in the more recent announcements. They didn't just make bad predictions early on.

> more generally as e.g. Q4 2020

The first release date was Q2 and the second release date was Q3, so I'm skeptical that would have helped.

As for my personal interest: "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad." - Shigeru Miyamoto

They were still promising there would be no more delays with less than a month to go, even saying only a natural disaster would stop them. Now we know that's a lie, and they were deliberately misleading customers.

Oh, so building something that was never done before and not meeting the deadline exactly is sheer incompetence? I hope you never have to build anything new.

No, you can't really make that claim. There are thousands of clones of more popular games out there, it's not like the game production is massively original to begin with.

And yes, Cyberpunk 2077 pushes the boundaries of what we expect from games in many ways - it's going to be one of the most complex games we have on the market to date when it releases.

I don't know people bother to defend billion dollar corporations in the habit of lying and misrepresenting their products. People paid them money for a product that was misrepresented in false advertising, I don't know it could be clearer than that as to why they're justifiably outraged.

99.99% of the criticism did not include intimidation, death threats or anything along those lines. CDPR used it as a deflectionary tactic from their own business practices.

And no, delays like this are not common. Games get delayed when they're many months away from release (it's obvious then that it's not done). Less than a month? They're either lying or so incompetent they don't know their own progress. Neither excuse the false claims.

It's a billion dollar publicly listed corporation. This isn't some indie studio.

> Cyberpunk 2077’s advertising has been saying the quiet part loud. It has maintained the spiky, anti-SJW, anti-woke persona throughout its marketing campaign, careful to always pepper any diverse characters’ inclusion with stereotyping or humor designed to mock its own ideas.

As the article concedes, these pieces individually don't have to be bad, but they are always presented by the overall marketing as something to make fun of or stereotype, not as something to take seriously or positively.

The first (and most black-and-white) is that CDPR's social media presence has been very… trolly. For example, "did you just assume my gender" is not something I've ever heard a queer person say; it's an anti-woke joke at their expense aimed at people who disdain the notion of gender fluidity. These, I think, color the rest of CDPR's conduct; there are other things that might be considered benign if not for their consistent trolling here.

> The criticism of the character creation surprised me: sure it could be better, but is it not also the most embracing version created yet in any AAA videogame that we known of.

The cynical take is that CDPR is exploiting the issue; they know that this is a popular topic right now and they're appropriating it in order to sell a video game. But even if you assume good faith on the part of CDPR, I think this is a case of intentions not mattering. Ultimately this game is going to be played by a lot of people, and help shape how many of those people see trans issues, and trans people are unhappy with the impression the game will leave.

I also observe that people often use "at least they/we are trying" as a way to evade criticism — even constructive criticism — which makes it hard to move forward. Like, are you only supposed to engage with people that are already hostile?

> Same with the poster: is it not cool to have a buff trans protagonist - they are objectified, but that is the point of posters (see captain america or black widow posters).

Objectification isn't binary; there are plenty of ways to highlight conventionally attractive features, which is why you see films like Wonder Woman lauded for their representation while characters like Black Widow are criticized for superficially similar portrayals. And of course criticism refers only to a consensus; there will always be people who are offended at benign representation and others who are fine with flagrant stereotyping.

Ultimately, I think the author knows that AAA titles are made by teams of hundreds of people, many of whom are trying to make a progressive game. But whatever the creators' intentions, when all is said and done the game and marketing thereof will look how they look, and people will feel how they feel about it.