Twitter user BiggSean66, who said he was a ‘game dev’ from EA that received numerous death threats over Star Wars: Battlefront II, appears to not be an EA employee after all. BiggSean66 claimed, in a tweet that went viral, to be on the receiving end of “up to 7 death threats” and “over 1600 individual personal attacks” because of “an unpopular feature in the game.”
Garnering thousands of retweets and a lot of news coverage, BiggSean66’s tweet was a huge talking point in the on-going discussion about Battlefront II’s controversial launch. The game has come under a lot of criticism for its pay-to-win mechanics, which mean that players must complete 4,528 hours of gameplay or pay $2,100 in order to unlock all the content. EA tried to respond to the criticism on Reddit, with the company’s message to its customers becoming Reddit’s most downvoted post ever.
BiggSean66’s claim that he worked at EA and received death threats over Battlefront II added a personal element to the news cycle around the game. But now, some stellar investigative online journalism from Kotaku’s Jason Schreier has made BiggSean66’s statements seem very hard to believe.
Digging into BiggSean66’s online footprint, Schreier found conflicting accounts about when BiggSean66 started working at EA at what job he actually does. In one post he said he had been at EA for “a few months”, but less than two years later he said he was “about to hit [his] 4th year” at the games company. On his Google account he claimed to work in “Data Entry & Analysis” at EA, but his Twitter page said “game dev at EA.” None of these things add up, and Schreier couldn’t locate any LinkedIn accounts or verified sources that could corroborate any of BiggSean66’s claims of employment.
Schreier reached out to EA for a comment, seeking clarity over whether BiggSean66 actually works for them. EA stated: “since the reports first surfaced we’ve been investigating this internally. At this time, we’re not able to verify this individual’s claims of employment at EA, nor the threats made against him.” The evidence continues to pile up in a way that doesn’t look great for BiggSean66.
Schreier began a direct message conversation with BiggSean66 over Twitter. BiggSean66 said he was willing to talk “as long as it’s off the record.” But when Shreier mentioned that he had spoken to EA and that the company couldn’t verify that BiggSean66 actually works for them, BiggSean66 suddenly stopped replying to his messages. BiggSean66 has now removed all mention of EA from his personal Twitter description and make his Twitter account private. His claims suddenly seem a lot less genuine.
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Source: Kotaku
