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'God Of War 2' Staff Suffer Horrific Abuse Online Following Delay Announcement

Mike Diver

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'God Of War 2' Staff Suffer Horrific Abuse Online Following Delay Announcement

Featured Image Credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment

While a scan of the major social channels and messageboards yesterday revealed that, on the whole, fans of all things God of War-shaped were OK with the news that the sequel to 2018's PlayStation hit will be delayed into 2022, having initially been revealed as a 2021 release. We spied a lot of positive comments, talking about putting the health of the dev team at Santa Monica Studio ahead of crunching to hit an unrealistic launch date.

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But while the first-party Sony studio was very open and clear as to why it had to move the game that may be called God of War: Ragnarok - that's certainly what we've all been referring to it as - issuing a statement that appreciated the support and enthusiasm they'd received, it turns out that abuse has still found its way to devs. And you absolutely hate to see it.

Remind yourself of the Ragnarok tease we got at the end of 2020...

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Cory Barlog, creative director at Santa Monica Studio and the game director on 2018's God of War, has revealed on Twitter some particularly nasty abuse received by one of his colleagues, Alanah Pearce. Pearce joined the studio as a writer in late 2020, having previously worked at IGN and for Funhaus.

"For real, y'all, this is some bullsh*t," Barlog writes, in a post featuring a screenshot of messages Pearce has received. The message suggests that the delay of the new God of War is somehow Pearce's fault, and says as much in language I'm not about to repeat here - but you can see the embedded post below.

Barlog adds: "You want to be mad at somebody for ANYTHING GOW related - the delay, ps4/5, trolls, subtitle size, Sigrun, whatevs - be angry with me. I made the calls. I did this. Don't bother the team, they are all very good people doing great work."

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Pearce also posted the same messages, writing alongside them, "Aside from the ones I got for being hired in the first place, I think this is my first game-dev-related abusive message. I'VE FINALLY BEEN INITIATED, LOOK AT ME GO!"

While it's somewhat relieving that staff at a game developer can brush aside this terrible abuse - Pearce later posts, "This stuff doesn't bother me in the slightest, it has 0 negative impact on me at all" - how the heck did we get here? What goes through a person's head to send stuff like this? I'd love to say it baffles me, but we've all seen stuff like this in the last decade or so - some of us have even received it. It's a sad reality of our online existence - but at least the team at Santa Monica Studio can take some comfort from the fact that the majority of posts about the God of War delay have been very understanding and respectful.

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As for when we'll see something of the next God of War, which is due to release in 2022 on both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, it could be later this month. Fingers crossed - but no rush, guys, really, please.

Topics: PlayStation 5, Twitter, PlayStation 4, Santa Monica Studio, God Of War

Mike Diver
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