Not everyone is ready to tolerate criticism even on the merits: the author of a low-rated Half-Life 2 mod managed to selectively block it for several players. Now, when installing it, the game crashes with an offensive message.
We are talking about the Half-Life 2 Overcharged mod, which adds new content, weapons, and enemies to the game. The add-on was released in 2022 and received a low rating due to flaws, poor enemy AI, crashes, and other problems. Of course, it appeared in some YouTube reviews, and the author took these videos extremely negatively.
Not long ago, Half-Life 2 Overcharged received a major update 2.0, and bloggers decided to check how its creator coped with the revision. However, for some of them, the official copy of the game simply did not launch — it immediately crashed with a message from the author:
Apparently, the developer wrote a separate line of malicious code that targets the player's Steam ID. Every time the add-on is downloaded by a user from the «black list», it breaks the game. It is noteworthy that in the lines of code, such players are marked as «anti-citizens» — another term from Half-Life 2. Of course, such an act of the author caused the «Streisand effect», and instead of the expected calm of criticism, he received complaints from players about non-existent bugs like a lighting failure.
Earlier, Valve returned an old bug to Half-Life 2 that speedrunners used. Meanwhile, the shooter broke its own online record on Steam thanks to a free giveaway.