The man behind the Fallout 4 hoax website thesurvivor2299.com has made himself known in a Reddit AMA titled “I’m the Prick behind thesurvivor2299”.
The website duped many Fallout fans (including us) into thinking that its countdown was eventually going to reveal the next iteration in developer Bethesda’s critically-acclaimed series, as it featured the Vault-Tec logo and Morse code that was revealed to reference a Fallout 3 radio transmission. However, when the countdown ended, it was clear that the website was simply an elaborate hoax, with a message thanking the denizens of Reddit for their help with popularising the site. It now displays the message “THAT’S ALL FOLKS” accompanied by a YouTube video of sad piano music.
In his AMA the pranker, dubbing himself ‘DCHoaxer’, claimed that he had received over a dozen death threats over the stunt. Of his reasoning behind staging the elaborate stunt, he said: “Some men just want to watch the world burn. I wanted to force Bethesda to reveal something during VGX, and bring [the Reddit] Fallout community together (for at least 3 weeks). Unfortunately, this plan failed.”
He also said that he had planned to release a CGI trailer, before Bethesda revealed that they had nothing to show at VGX. He said: “I’m one of these ‘selfish bastards with a lot of money’ so I wanted to release a CGI trailer. But Pete [Hines, Bethesda’s PR boss] killed my plans. Maybe I’ll release it later along with the script, so somebody else can use it… I don’t wan’t to piss off Bethesda at this time even more.”
[Via Eurogamer]
