The Last of Us 2 director Neil Druckmann attempted to explain why he deleted a tweet attacking haters.
Earlier this month, Druckmann took to Twitter to encourage his followers to vote for The Last of Us Part II as Game of the Year in The Game Awards’ Player’s Voice vote.
In response to a tweet from The Game Awards’ Geoff Keighley detailing the final five games available for players to choose from in the Player’s Voice vote, Druckmann wrote, “TLoU fans, activate!”
He then added, “As a bonus, for every vote you cast for The Last of Us Part II, a hater loses their caps lock.”
In contrast to Druckmann’s initial tweet, Greg Kasavin, a developer at Supergiant Games and a writer for Hades also responded to Keighley’s stating, “It’s amazing to see our big little game going toe to toe against the gods.”
He added, “Though, Hades turned out the way it did thanks to the support of our players in Early Access, so maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised they’ve carried us farther still. Thank you all!”
At the time of Keighley’s initial tweet, The Last of Us Part II was leading the vote with 43%. Ghost Tsushima was in second with 32%. Hades was in third with 14%.
On December 7th, Druckmann would detail he was deleting the tweet and offered an explanation for why he was removing it.
He explained, “My tweet was meant as a joke re: trolls, but it just added fuel to the fire and made it seem like I’m against criticism.”
The Last of Us Part II director then stated, “I should be better than that. Taking it down. My bad.”
Jeremy Griggs of the Geeks + Gamers YouTube channel commented on Druckmann’s explanation stating, “Neil Druckmann understands that he projects so hard and pretends that these things don’t bother him that he realizes that this tweet only confirms that these things do bother him.”
He continued, “So, therefore he goes to delete the tweet and virtue signal to talk about how good of a guy he is… So he deletes the tweet because he understands the tweet has completely exposed him as a hypocrite. And then he wants to take the virtue signal high road to show how great he is.”
Related: Naughty Dog’s VP Neil Druckmann Claims He Cried While Playing The Last of Us Part II
Interestingly enough, Druckmann’s original tweet attempting to get his followers to push The Last of Us Part II over the edge appears to have backfired.
Currently, Ghost of Tsushima is now ahead of The Last of Us Part II in the Player’s Voice voting category.
As you can see below, Ghost of Tsushima currently has 45% of the total votes while The Last of Us Part II only has 34%.
What do you make of Druckmann’s original tweet? What do you make of his explanation for deleting it?