Gamers who are looking forward to playing the newly-released God of War should be very careful using Google and YouTube to search for anything related to the game; complaints are being made that search results, automatically generated by the online platforms, include significant spoilers.

Risks When Using Google

Both Google and YouTube record data in order to suggest content which will best suit its users. As a result, the situation is almost certainly the result of users who have already completed the game creating content which discusses spoilers, or searching for terms that include them. That content is then being suggested to other users, many of whom have not yet completed the game.

Gamers who have encountered spoilers on Google have reported that merely typing in a character’s name is risky. Google’s algorithms have begun to inadvertently list major spoilers among the site’s top auto-completed results.

Google really needs to appoint a Chief Autocomplete Spoiler Mitigation Officer. I just typed the name of a character from God of War to see if he had a relevant historical/mythological counterpart & got the equivalent of “Kaiser Soze… [was Kevin Spacey the whole time.]” — Julian Sanchez (@normative) April 24, 2018

Risks When Using YouTube

YouTube, on the other hand, may be an even riskier place at the moment for fans hoping to avoid spoilers. YouTube suggests videos based on content its users have viewed; users who have watched content related to God of War are likely to have more of it suggested. Unfortunately, that means that those who watched things like trailers prior to the game’s release are now the most likely to see suggested videos with spoilers in the titles.

God of War’s release has been explosively successful, both in terms of sales and reviews. New content related to the game has been appearing all across the internet in recent days as a result. Similarly, an upsurge in searches related to the game is highly likely to have occurred. Indeed, the game recently became the top-selling God of War title ever in the UK; successes such as this equate to a lot of players who are likely to search for topics related to it.

Of course, there is so much content uploaded to YouTube and Google every day that monitoring all of it for spoilers would be all but impossible. Fans who have yet to play God of War, and who do not want it spoiled, should probably avoid searching online for anything related to the game for the time being.