N4G Being Bombarded with Gears 2 Spoiler Articles Posing as News

by Dylan Duarte on November 6, 2008 at 11:01 pm

If you’ve been anticipating the release of Epic’s Gears of War 2, you may want to avoid gaming news site N4G for the time being. People (likely PS3 fanboys) intent on ruining fans’ Gears 2 experience – we’ll call them “assholes” – have been spamming N4G with phony news articles containing Gears 2 spoilers.

I clicked on a pending article with the title “CNN: Microsoft Xbox had a 95% Failure Rate” because it sounded interesting. Much to my displeasure, once I got to the article page, I was met with a paragraph outlining what I assume is the ending of Gears of War 2.

My second run-in was when I spotted an article in the “incoming news” section. This asshole was bolder than the first, putting spoilers in the actual title. He also seemed to be smarter, as he had worded it in an odd way, I assume to get around some sort of keyword blocker.

I was talking to our editor-in-chief Chad Lakkis about the ordeal. And by talking, I mean that I was yelling at him because the internet has pissed me off. He brought up a good point and one that ultimately depresses me. N4G has a pretty rigorous process that one must go through to become able to submit news. That means that these people put in the time and effort to reach this status, just to post this bullshit.

Chad also brought up another great point. Remember this whole MetaCritic user ratings debacle that happened over Little Big Planet and Gears 2? In response to the incident, MetaCritic is planning to institute an approval process for fans that want to rank games. Well, that obviously isn’t stopping the bullshit on N4G, so how much is it going to do for MetaCritic?

Both spoiler stories that I encountered have since been deleted off of the site, but you can be sure that more will pop up, so be careful.

UPDATE: People have been getting PMs on N4G containing spoilers as well, so be cautious when opening anonymous PMs. People have also been leaving spoilers in the comments section of the N4G post regarding this story, as was expected, so I wouldn’t read that either.

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Tags: dumb asses, Epic-Games, Gears 2, Gears-of-War-2, LittleBigPlanet, meta critic, N4G, spoilers

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Comments »

The Whaler
on November 6, 2008 11:12 pm

That’s retarded. What ever happened to common courtesy?
Dan Landis
on November 6, 2008 11:20 pm

What a bunch of dicks. We should send the Grand Theft Auto Sex Beast after them and he can rape their fingers off, then they can all get squashed by a boat that for no reason fell out of the sky.
darkpower
on November 7, 2008 12:41 am

Nothing new in the “assholes wanting to spoil good games” department, and it’s not just PS3 fanboys that do this (thus I don’t think it’s fair to just say that it’s JUST PS3 fanboys that have done this). There were people that wanted to spoil the MGS4 ending, too. They just want the attention, that’s all.

And by the way, I personally couldn’t give two shits about GOW2. Never got the appeal of it, and the game, from the trailers, does not catch on to me. The graphics don’t look polished, and the storyline seems to be run-of-the-mill. Don’t worry about me spoiling the ending anytime soon, since I’m not about to be caught PLAYING it anytime soon.
Wesley
on November 7, 2008 1:16 am

Why Do People Always Wanna Boicott everything. Some people just need a good kicking stupid nerds argh im not bothered they’ll get whats coming to them
John Kershaw
on November 7, 2008 4:10 am

Spoiler: It’s the sledge.
John Kershaw
on November 7, 2008 4:39 am

Spoiler for those less culturally informed (looks at Chad): Luke is Vader’s Son
Chad Lakkis
on November 7, 2008 5:14 am

Hand gesture for those who feel the need to call someone out when asked a question via IM (looks at John): Middle finger
Mykul
on November 7, 2008 5:36 am

*facepalm*
Fernando Rey
on November 7, 2008 6:03 am

Wow this is so beyond stupid that is hard to believe at all. I guess some people just want attention and they get it by doing this kind of BS. I really hope this is not the doing of some stupid ps3 fan boy, i would like to think we are better than that! ;) Regarding gow, i played the first one on pc and lt was great; so i will probably get the second one once i get the chance.
The Anti Marxist
on November 7, 2008 7:38 am

There are fanboys on both sides, but it has been a long known fact that PS3 fanboys are the scum of the internet. More numerous and far more outspoken, they have been crying and whining since the PS3 launched in it’s over hyped under delivered state.

No surprise to see them stooping to this level, more of us should have called them out and put a stop to their kind a long time ago, we are to blame for this as much as they are.
BretzE
on November 7, 2008 7:57 am

@The Anti Marxist
I think you might be a bit off on your assessment. I have seen far more 360 fanboys than PS3 fanboys on many different forums. I doubt these spoilers can be attributed to PS3 fanboys alone, because most people who are hardcore PS3 hate GoW 1 and 2 and wouldn’t waste the time playing either. Same thing goes for the MGS4 spoilers that were going around. Those were mostly propagated by PS3 players, not 360 fanboys.

Anyway, bottom line is fanboyism is definitely a blight on the gaming community and it really needs to go away.
darkpower
on November 7, 2008 8:35 am

@The Anti Marxist

That’s seriously a ridiculous statement that PS3 fanboys are somehow any worse than any other fanboy, or that no other group of fanboys would ever do anything like that. Why do you try to paint every PS3 fan as baby killers or anything LIKE that?
Logic
on November 7, 2008 9:06 am

Little exercise of thought here.

For “PS3 fanboys” to spoil the ending, they’d have to play it.

But it’s not on PS3. It’s on 360.

Now if they are truly “fanboys” they wouldn’t be caught dead playing a 360 game.

Do the math.
Schlep
on November 7, 2008 9:49 am

Yeah, well the same crap is happening with Resistance 2. Some Xbot fanboys (I’ll call them assholes) have been posting spoilers about that game as well.

Neither justifies the other and it pisses me off from both camps.

This fanboy crap is a disease.
Steve
on November 7, 2008 10:41 am

Clearly fanboys on both sides are taking their extremist partiality to a new level. What does this means for the average gamer? Of course it means that even reputable gaming sites can no longer be trusted to provide unbiased information, as they are becoming overwhelmed with fanboy BS. Personally I think I’m going to go back to old days where I rented a game before purchasing it, instead of being bombarded with garbage.
Dan Landis
on November 7, 2008 5:32 pm

Kershaw,

I’m not surprised Chad didn’t get it. A ’sledge’ in America refers to a sledgehammer, not a sled. Yeah, we say sled here. If you were more culturally informed, you would know that.

After all, even your cited wikipedia entry calls it a sled, not a sledge.
Dylan Duarte
on November 7, 2008 6:13 pm

Oh man, that was a Citizen Kane reference? Geez, get with the program, Wardy. A sledge?

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