Culture warriors are using AI to drag Saros into gross misinformation campaign

Sadly, it’s not every day, month, or even year that the PlayStation 5 gets a massive exclusive. Saros is just that, but a bunch of inexplicably angry dudes have started a massive misinformation campaign to make things worse for devs and gamers alike. Let’s shed light on these shenanigans.

Saros, Housemarque’s spiritual follow-up to the fantastic 3rd-person bullet hell revolution that was Returnal, is finally out, rules, and some people are somehow not having it. So, to combat this huge problem, a game that’ll force players to clean the dust off their PS5, people on the Internet have been coordinating to spread some ridiculous spoilers regarding the game’s story.

The most “popular” of the bunch explains that the main character finds himself in his predicament because his wife left him for a black woman. First off, this is a gross and clearly malicious misrepresentation of the game’s events. That’s why the “screenshots” used to “expose” the game’s plot are all AI slop.

Secondly, would that really have been the dumbest plot twist of all time? The only thing these idiots are doing is outing themselves as people who haven’t been playing video games for long.

And what’s interesting is how this is actually the second instance of “anti-woke” backlash this game has had to deal with, as the main character is played by and modelled after Rahul Kohli, a British actor of Indian descent, which didn’t sit well with certain people.

Is the Saros misinformation campaign working?

It started even before the game was out, before anyone was even aware of any of its plot points. The first example of an attempt to stir the pot came from a guy who made up a bunch of fake reviews that amounted to little more than racist dog whistles.

None of that prevented the game from getting stellar reviews, great player feedback, and selling over 1.2 million units in its first week. Saros isn’t simply a hit, but a hit that’s expected to do very well with the kind of people that often go forgotten in video game representation.

Saros can’t really be stopped now, but things can get even better. Hopefully, if people learn the truth in time, this whole misinformation mess can turn into yet more positive publicity for this rare studio that’s still putting out uniquely great AAA experiences for your already very expensive AAA console.

Don’t let these idiots ruin everything for everyone. And, if that’s somehow not enough, then maybe consider how we’ve all recently been made aware that all this GamerGate and culture war nonsense was a Jeffrey Epstein-related pet project, and make your decisions accordingly.

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Grand Theft Auto 6’s development is trudging along to release later this year, but the hotly anticipated sequel won’t be coming to PC…at least not right away.

PS5 and Xbox Series X|S will be home to GTA 6 at launch, but PC gamers are being left in the lurch, as has been the case for most previous titles that Rockstar Games has launched. And that’s by design, according to Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick.

“Rockstar always starts on console because I think with regard to a release like that you’re judged by serving the core,” Zelnick said in a new interview with Bloomberg. “Like really serving the core consumer. If your core consumer isn’t there, if they’re not served first and best, you kind of don’t hit your other consumers.”

So, PC gamers aren’t a “core” consumer in the eyes of Rockstar, apparently. But you can bet that, within a few years, GTA 6 will eventually come to PC with upgraded visuals and other buzzwords so that the game can continue to sell.

GTA 5 was released and re-released several times over, on multiple different console generations, along with a Definitive Edition that also came to PC. It’s hard not to see this for what it is: a chance to make more money with subsequent different launches, and that’s just the way it goes.

The expectations for GTA 6 are unfathomable, with Zelnick previously calling the game “the most spectacular piece of entertainment on Earth, in history.” And according to a QA analyst at Rockstar’s studio in India, it’s leading to crunch conditions to make sure the game’s development crosses the finish line.

“We never claim success before it occurs,” Zelnick said. “We have the most amazing creative teams. We not only encourage them to pursue their passions, we insist that they do it. We try to give them unlimited financial, creative human resources and then they aim to deliver perfection.”

With Nov. 19 just about six months away and a massive marketing campaign looming over the summer, Zelnick said that “our goal is to deliver to consumers something that’s never been experienced before,” when it comes to GTA 6, remarking that “being on the sidelines but pretty close to the front of the sidelines is very, very exciting and terrifying, because the expectations are so high.”

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