The success of Apex Legends meant
that Titanfall was kicked to the curb.Let’s be honest with ourselves: gamers can be a notoriously
difficult bunch. The same can be said for virtually every
audience within the entertainment industry, but toxicity and
vitriol are often widespread in gaming communities, whether
that manifests itself as homophobia-riddled region chats or
outright death threats aimed at individual developers on social
media. The echo chambers of subreddits and private Discord
servers are no help, especially when they are populated
by gamers who have little idea of how the game production
process actually works, or worse, have huge misconceptions
about how that process can realistically be conducted.
It stands to reason, then, that some games are shut down
not due to any fault of the developers, but because the players
themselves are simply uncooperative and unruly. One of the
most infamous examples of this was LEGO Universe, a 2010
MMO from developer NetDevil, which saw players building in
and exploring a collection of LEGO-themed worlds.Despite initial successes and a player base that grew to
2 million within a year of release, NetDevil encountered an
unforeseen problem: players simply wouldn’t stop abusing the
LEGO construction mechanics to build giant phallic objects.
The sheer volume of penis-shaped monuments forced
NetDevil to pour money into active moderation, and even try
to create ‘dong detection software’ to automate the process.
Players tried to conceal their structures to evade filters, and
NetDevil was forced to shutter the game less than two years
after launch, citing ‘unsatisfactory revenue’.
Another high-profile case came from the indie mobile
world, with Dong Nguyen (creator of the legendary Flappy
Bird game) announcing in 2014 that he was shutting down his
game due to the guilt and stress caused by its ‘addictive’ nature
and the way it brought out the worst in people. This revelation
came after a number of Flappy-Bird-related assaults (and one
viral murder hoax) were reported across the globe.PROBLEM CHILDREN
What’s that you’re building there, a giant
sausage-shaped spaceship? As you were...another hacker, presumed to be unconnected to
those DDoSing the Titanfall games, began inserting
messages into Apex Legends directing players to
‘savetitanfall.com’. Respawn enacted a fix for
this within hours, drawing criticism from players
who saw this as a case of favoritism. It was later
confirmed that the Apex hack was perpetrated by
fans who wanted to see Titanfall Online resurrected.DO IT YOURSELF
One player, going by the moniker ‘po358’, posted a
lengthy explanation of how to fix the DDoS issue on
the online publishing platform Medium. In the post,
po358 described their frustration at Respawn’s
apparent inability to repair the issues, before
highlighting a number of key vulnerabilities and
suggestions of how to fix them. Many of these had
existed for years, with a stream of lower-profile
hacks occurring in the original game, leading to
an Overwhelmingly Negative user review rating on
Steam. Still, Respawn did not release a patch.
The slew of DDoS attacks ebbed somewhat
in late 2021, leaving the game playable in most
regions, but the damage had already been done.
Player counts for every platform had shrunk, and
many matches were still troubled by disconnects
and instability. In December, the DDoSers returnedJUN 2022 MAXIMU MPC 41
© NETDEVIL/THE LEGO GROUP, RESPAWN ENTERTAINMENT