A satirical article is currently causing trouble for the developers of Anthem: The magazine The Onion recently wrote a parody that apparently seemed too real to the players. A producer of the game had to clarify the situation.
What is it about? Things have been quite calm in Anthem lately. The developers are focusing on upcoming features, such as the content related to the Cataclysm.
The English satire magazine The Onion took advantage of the situation and wrote an article about Anthem. Normally, readers of the “news site” are always aware that the articles from The Onion are fictional satirical topics.
The article about Anthem apparently felt a little too close to the truth for some players.
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What does the article say? The article teased with the headline: “EA announces a new business model where all Anthem characters will be deleted unless you send the company 300 US dollars in the next hour”.
The text was garnished with cheeky and of course fictional statements. Even alleged quotes were included.
It is said that EA CEO Andrew Wilson stated about the fictional business model: “The idea is simple: You send us 300 dollars in the next 60 minutes or we delete your Javelin permanently. Think about it. All your gear, gone. The time you’ve spent outfitting your Freelancers in Heart of Rage is over. Your stash full of weapons, also gone. Forever. Or you can just play along and send us the damn money.”
After this statement from EA, players were supposed to find a countdown in the player lobby. This should display how many seconds the Freelancers had left to comply with the company’s demands.
In the end, an alleged quote from the CEO was added: “Tick-tock, you poor fools”.
How are players reacting? Overall, the satirical article was well received on Reddit. Many players apparently identified with the text and understood it as harmless fun.
A Freelancer, however, took the topic a bit too seriously. He angrily addressed Executive Producer Mark Darrah on Twitter, asking what the company was thinking to speak to its players that way. Darrah responded: “Uh, you do understand that this is an article from Onion, right?”
The player’s reaction and Darrah’s response led to laughter on social media. Nevertheless, some players found it strange that the producer responded to this tweet, while BioWare had been extremely quiet in recent days.
