Call of Duty fans crossed what should have been a very clear line when they started flooding Treyarch developer David Vonderhaar with death threats to himself and his family following the latest update to Black Ops 2 on the Xbox 360. Whereas most of the notes in the game were innocuous, what drew people's attention were these notes regarding certain guns for multiplayer:
AN-94: Damage slightly reduced.
DSR 50: Rate of fire reduced.
Ballista: Rate of fire slightly reduced
Why did they go after Vonderhaar? He is Treyarch's game design director, and often comes to Twitter to evangelize and occasionally act as unofficial social media representative for the team. In this capacity, he immediately came back on Twitter to explain they decided to nerf the guns as it became clear they were too overpowered for multiplayer.
Former gaming journalist and Activision social media head Dan Amrin later went to his blog to defend Vonderhaar and chastise players for his behavior. As he surmises, now that the fan reaction has hit level pitch, its getting reported in gaming news outlets and is putting the COD community in a bad light. Dan basically argues that players can air their grievances without resorting to inflammatory language.
A Change.org has since propped up, from a certain nick w, simply asking Treyarch to fix the sniping in Black Ops 2.
Honestly, I'm floored something like this is even possible from the COD community. When I look across other competitive gaming communities, I never hear of League of Legends or Street Fighter IV players threatening developers of those games for making changes, even if those changes may not be to their liking. It really does make you wonder what kind of fan culture has developed around the game. Hopefully, the community's leaders and bastions get around to policing bad behavior among themselves and maybe get some goodwill running for them.
