[Update 1/18/2019:] The Caliber developer apologized for his comments while game journalists threatened to boycott reporting on his game until he was fired.

[Original article:] A Russian developer working on the shooter game, Caliber, finally came out and said what every creative developer worth their salt should have come out and said a long time ago: Game journalists are worthless parasites; a bane on the gaming industry; pathetic, trash-peddling scrubs who need to put out to pasture for good.

Website DTF captured some key comments from a Russian interview that Albert Zhiltsov, the producer on Caliber, had with the host of the Twitch channel Posletitrov on January 11th, 2019.

[Update:] Zhiltsov mostly aims his ire at Russian games media. He does, however, dole out some praise to how some of the U.S., media (and some Mexican media) handled the press tours for Il-2 Sturmovik, which came out back in 2013. But generally he held negative views about the current role journalists play in covering video games.

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Translations of the comment were posted up by Ostrog, which highlighted some of Zhiltsov’s honest feedback on the broken state of gaming journalism, where he said…

“For me, any profession that can be replaced by a robot ceases to matter. Only one step is left until journalists are no longer needed. “The role of reviewers has long been assumed by streamers and YouTubers. Who needs your ******* [useless] opinion? “In fact, this is a useless parasitic activity that has degenerated into clickbait. “There is a constant whining: ‘’ahhh, nobody reads long-form stories anymore’’. You long-form stories are shit! “Journalists are useless. For 20-30 years, they failed to explain the audience how games are made.”

All of this is 100% true.

A perfect example of this is how uneducated every journalist is about the basics of game development. None of them out there even bothered to explain why it’s taken a game like Star Citizen so long to develop; why certain technologies or middleware have to be built from the ground up; why some technologies costs more/less than others; how the pipelines work and what that means for the release windows; as well as how the key tools can change the entire design flow of a game.

Instead, we get pathetic articles from uneducated nitwits looking to spread their buffoonery like a contagious disease.

If I were a game developer, I would tell every single one of those bottom-feeding, boot-licking, Liberal-agenda chasing retards to go back to school and learn a thing or two about game design before they would even dare open their mouths to ask a sub-Saharan I.Q., question about a game that’s likely too high above their cognitive pay-grade to play competently, as expertly expressed in such infamous videos as a VentureBeat journalist trying and failing to play the tutorial of Cuphead, or Polygon not understanding how to play first-person shooters designed for people with the mental acuity of a five-year-old.

What game developers should start doing is forcing game journalists to prove they can even play a game before they’re granted a free review copy. We all know that if that was the process of how game journalists could net free swag from publishers then they would be out of business faster than a celibacy-themed book store next to a whore house, because most of them have the hand-eye coordination and motor skill proficiency of a dilapidated marionette operated by puppeteer with Tourette syndrome.

Zhiltsov goes on to say that game journalists are little more than trash that needs to be fed… which is true.

He also goes on to say…

“There are good journalists, and I know them. I met with them. But right now those are needles in a haystack. These are so rare that I, unfortunately, began to resent the profession. Alas. “I have a question for any developer. Why did you spend at least a penny on these parasites? Why not use your head, make a post in social media and promote it? Why feed the parasites?”

Good question.

Why feed the parasites? It’s not like most game journalists even report on games anymore. They spend most of their time complaining about cleavage, sexy curves, scantily-clad females, “toxic masculinity”, and trying to proselytize the diversity agenda as some sort of yoke to foist upon publishers to brainwash the masses through interactive entertainment.

Zhiltsov also decided to take aim at a lot of lousy PR outfits grifting cash from publishers while doing half-arsed jobs in actually getting the lazy pieces of crap at gaming media outlets to actually cover the games. He stated…

“You need to understand: half of the parasites should just disappear. As soon as large companies stop doing stupid things, stop feeding these people for free… I will say it differently: when PR departments stop, basically, stealing money from their companies, arranging this garbage, nothing will change. Because this niche is already occupied [by streamers and YouTubers]”

No arguments there.

It’s basically a oscillating cycle of trash: PR releases fed to journalists from outfits that have no idea how to properly market a game; game journalists whine about sociopolitics like little pieces of feces cursed with the ability to communicate; gamers tune out everything due to the political nonsense, and the game either tanks, under-performs, or just goes completely unnoticed like Road Redemption even though it’s one of the best games made this entire generation. Rinse and repeat ad nauseam.

Zhiltsov proceeds to say…

“For me right now, 97% of video game journalism — I have just come up with the figures — is just advertising in a different form. But if before we knew that there was a cartoon, and then there would be five minutes of ads, now there are 95% of ads, and sometimes among these 95% there are a couple of stupid posts from people who do not even know why they post it.”

If you could hear me clapping through the monitor, it would be loud and obnoxious and consistently sustained for minutes on end.

There’s no lack of truth in what he says, but he does mess up at one point by complaining about people complaining about loot boxes. He’s wrong about that nonsense. It’s a digital casino wrapped in the not-so-subtle skinner box. And yes, there are already multiple studies showing the potential dangers of loot boxes turning kids into addicts.

But otherwise, Zhiltsov hits the nail on the end.

Unfortunately, 1C Company issued a statement bordering on an apology while feigning decorum on behalf of his cohort to keep court with the worthless gaming press.

Ivan Zhivitsa, the deputy head of PR at 1C Game Studios, issued a statement trying to run damage control, saying…

“It was very unpleasant for me to hear the statements of my colleague about video game journalism. Wargaming, as the publisher of Caliber, does not share the opinion of Albert Zhiltsov, 1C Game Studios’ employee. “We believe that media is an important channel of communication with the audience for any publisher or developer. For many years we have been cooperating with the press at all stages of video game development and consider their opinion to be important and useful. We contacted our partner and expressed our highly negative attitude towards such statements.”

The editor-in-chief at the Russian outlet DTF, Vadim Elistratov, also tried to make it as if it was a two-way street between journalists and developers, and that developers could be just as problematic as journalists, saying…

“[…] almost any gaming journalist can go on a similar rant about how developers can’t work with the press and try to ‘feed the trash’ once more instead of giving a good interview or an interesting demo. “But they do not. Because it is unethical. “Communication between the press and the studios is always a two-way problem, and such bold generalization will not exactly solve it. Most likely, he hurt Caliber with this, and that is all.’’

WRONG.

This did not hurt Caliber at all given that corrupt media outlets weren’t talking about it at all. More than anything it might at least get a bit more coverage after Zhiltsov’s rant. And at least now it’s on the radar because the developer had the balls to speak the truth about something that has been known for the last decade, and echoed repeatedly during 2014 by the consumer revolt that was #GamerGate: gaming press are worthless parasites.

More than anything, a developer standing against the corrupt, ideologically driven media means I’m going to pay a heck of a lot more attention to the game Caliber. In fact, check out the trailer below to get an idea of what the game is like.

If Zhiltsov and the crew at Wargaming and 1C are working on a game for actual gamers, and none of this nasty “diversity”-driven propaganda that has literally ruined game franchises like Battlefield and Mass Effect, then I’ll definitely consider giving the game a go.

You can keep track of Caliber or learn more about it by visiting the official Caliber website.

Stay strong Zhiltsov; the parasites will fix their eyes upon your digital feast, seeking to devour it like a plague.

(Thanks for the news tip msoltyspl)