COD dev gets death-threats over game tweaks

A developer at Treyarch has received death-threats over a few tweaks that were made to weapons in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.

David Vonderhaar, who is the design director on the game, received numerous threats towards him and his family via Twitter following the publication of the patch notes on the Call of Duty forums.

The patch itself was aimed to tweak three in-game weapons, changing their damage and rate of fire.

“The DSR fire time was 0.2 seconds. It’s now 0.4 seconds,” tweeted Vonderhaar. “The rechamber time was 1.0 seconds. It’s now 1.1 seconds.”

“Let me put some perspective into your life because I do care about what you say,” he continued. “Not sure these fractions of seconds are worth the threats of violence.”

Twitter users directed threats towards Vondehaar on learning about the game tweaks.

Activision community manager Dan Amrich spoke about the community’s hostile response to the changes.

“Vahn [aka Vonderhaar] often gets told he should die in a fire or kill himself or is a horrible person,” said Amrich. “If anybody thinks for a second that this is okay, it is not. But if the loudest voices in the Call of Duty ‘community’ act like an angry mob instead, guess how the entire world views Call of Duty?

“Now consider that these Internet Tough Guy rants and demands are not unique to COD, but exist everywhere, in many gaming communities. This is why the world often does not take gaming seriously; this is why gamers are assumed to be immature, whiny assholes. Because the immature, whiny assholes are louder.”

Amrich explained that gamers should respond with “useful feedback”, just as Vonderhaar did to people who tweeted him.

Some of the community even made videos on YouTube about the changes, threatening Vonderhaar directly.