Persisting technical issues and a lackluster game loop have resulted in harsh criticism of Capcom’s Monster Hunter Wilds. The game currently has an Overwhelmingly Negative rating on Steam based on 20,000 player reviews from the past month, and its official social media channels are swamped with players’ demands for fixes. However, the criticism has escalated beyond the game itself in certain instances, with developers reportedly being personally attacked and threatened. The issue seems to be particularly severe in Japanese online spaces, as the topic has even earned coverage from major national newspapers like The Sankei Shimbun.
Earlier this month, Capcom issued a statement regarding its Anti-Customer Harassment Policy (only in Japanese, notably), in which it said its employees have been faced with harassment, threats of harm and threats of business disruptions. Furthermore, some of these instances were supposedly directed at individuals personally, addressing developers by name. Capcom warned it would be taking legal action in cases when criticism goes “beyond the scope of socially acceptable standards.” Although the company did not state so directly, the warning was, based on the timing, likely related to the controversy surrounding Monster Hunter Wilds.
A few days following this announcement, Capcom also cancelled a CEDEC lecture during which its engineers were supposed to hold a presentation about Wilds’ optimization, which may have been done as a safety precaution. Reporting on the worsening phenomenon of harassment in the game industry, the Sankei Shimbun notes, “Die, “Get on your knees,” “Incompetent scum” – these are just some of the many words of abuse hurled online toward specific creators behind Monster Hunter Wilds.” Although this kind of crude language is nothing new to gamers, it is increasingly becoming targeted at individuals working in game companies – on a personal level, which makes the issue a lot more serious.
The Sankei talked to Hideki Yasuda, a game industry analyst at Toyo Securities, who commented, “It’s always been common for some fans to lash out when a game’s quality doesn’t meet expectations. But in recent years, companies have increasingly put individual creators in the spotlight as a means of marketing, which has turned them into public targets.” Yasuda goes on to note that with how widespread social media has come to be, society now demands the same level of moral conduct online as it does in real life, but “when it comes to gaming, user awareness hasn’t quite kept up with this shift.”
Meanwhile, there has been an increasing tendency among Japanese game companies to publish policies against customer harassment, with some recent instances being Square Enix, Sega, and Level-5. Among them, Sega even publicly announced that it had taken legal action against an individual who continuously made “excessive defamatory and insulting remarks” about an employee. It might be important to note that in Japan, the memory of the Kyoto Animation arson attack – which took the lives of 36 people – is still fresh in the memories of creatives, and it serves as a very stark reminder of how much harm a seemingly random online threat can lead to.
Morality doesn’t change with the times. What a stupid statement.
People would rather complain than have something fixed
In the West game devs yell at the players and slander them with false accusations of bigotry if the players refuse to pay for products they don’t like. 180
People take things to far over a video game,. It isn’t that serious,. People need to grow up,. Nobody likes video games that much to send death threats loll,. Shit is stupid,.
Pathetic attempt at deflecting genuine criticism of the game.
I don’t condone death threats. But I’m getting tired of game companies cherry picking those from the actual criticism to deflect they messed up.
People making mostly empty death threats has sadly always been a thing. So stop pretending like this is only now a problem.
This is business speak for “We released a bad product and don’t like criticism”
Typical Asian devs taking standard internet comments and blowing them out of proportion. There are obviously no real or credible threats they’re just grasping at straws because people aren’t eating the monster Hunter slop anymore and are starting to push back with legitimate criticism on their poor game design decisions.
What’s even more childish is singling out the outlier comments in order to discredit all criticism of your product. People saying dumb things has been true ever since we moved past “ooga booga”, and what also hasn’t changed is rich executives thin skin to genuine criticism
This is why I never play multiplayer games. I don’t care what people say most of the time, but death threats are inexcusable and should be taken seriously. Although the main reason I keep my distance is to preserve my own identity. There are too many people out there who can determine, and later publicly disclose exactly where a specific player lives.
With this said, I think that is the larger threat. I believe the people involved in moderating the issue described in this article have chosen to handle a fly with a sledgehammer so to speak.
None of those meet the legal minimum to be considered “death threats” in America. Those are just common trash talk. To be a credible death threat, the perp has to mention a time, place, method, and intent. There can be no ambiguity for that to stick in America.
If I had a nickel for everytime someone told me to “die” or “kys” in a lobby, I would be on a megayacht typing this.
Yea we got to a point where kids were taught they do not have to respect elders or anyone else, they can not be punished or grounded or parents could literally face legal actions. Schools step in and violate parent rights all these things have led to where we are morally bankrupt.
Let’s Cherry pick 5 instances of bad actors in order to ignore 10000s of valid criticisms.
Its hard to take these statements seriously when the gaming industry as a whole has used this as an excuse to deflect criticism or to tug at peoples heart strings to make them feel bad or slander the actual criticism.
Even if Gamers’ moral conduct hasn’t kept up with the times, then the same could be said about developers game development conduct. If were going to endlessly be fed slop repeatedly with the same issues that every one of the games predecessor’s had. With no noticeable improvement at all in that regard after a decade… its no longer on the gaming community, but the developers and publishers for refusing to actually make an effort to not let the same mistakes happen again, and again, and again. Wilds had the same problems that Rise had, and Rise had the same problems that World had… literally nothing has changed outside the monsters and the environment.
Hyperfixating on the death threats is and has always been a deflection tactic of these industries to take away from the actual problems being presented.
Death threats are a crime and authorities need to investigate, but I don’t think it’s fair to use this as a form of immunity to divert attention from the problem.
In recent years, it has become standard to use comments from toxic minorities to deflect issues in games.
Well, when you promise certain things in a game and you deliver junk. Pretty sure that is also cause for a law suit, maybe not threats of assault and death, but definitely legal action against Capcom for producing crap. All game companies have been lazy lately and just letting half finished games out…. with promises to fix it…. but thwy dont.
This is nonsense. Just because a handful of people say something mean on the Internet, it does not mean that all legit critique of the product should be considered null and void.
If these people can’t handle having their work criticized, then they should leave the gaming industry. We as consumers shouldn’t have to sugar coating our criticism when we have to spend our hard earned money on a video game.
I’m completely fine with the game the way it’s going I’m on PC and haven’t had any issues graphics wise. The only problem I have is that it takes forever to load up. so all you people complaining about it graphics wise get a better setup or shut up. I’ve played Monster Hunter Series since day one love them all and this one is no different for me.