Veteran Silent Hill developer Masahiro Ito shared a few sharply worded tweets directed toward "disrespectful" fans blaming him for their dissatisfaction with the forthcoming Silent Hill 2 remake. One tweet that suggested some fans have acted like "children" has since been deleted.
The exact Silent Hill 2 remake release time varies depending on region, but for most folks it lands on Tuesday, October 8, which means the vast majority of fans haven't had time to actually play the game yet. However, reviews have been largely very positive, with Bloober Team's remake currently boasting a more than respectable 87 Metacritic review score. Our own Silent Hill 2 Remake review is a little lower than most at 3.5/5 stars, but that's still a pretty solid score.
Point is: most people who have played Silent Hill 2 Remake seem to be pretty happy with it, and judging from these early impressions it seems to be an extraordinarily faithful retelling, but with a series and entry as beloved as this one, a remake will always have its critics. And unfortunately, among those critics is a small but vocal group of people who are upset because they think a character from the original game has been made "ugly" in the remake. Frankly, I don't want to dignify these criticisms by discussing them any further.
Ito, who created the iconic Pyramid Head villain as monster designer on the original Silent Hill, who was art director on Silent Hill 2, and who was creature designer on the remake, took to Twitter to voice his frustrations with these fans in particular.
"Don't just take what people on the internet say at face value, but see for yourself and verify the facts before you say anything," Ito said in a machine-translated tweet (thanks, PS Lifestyle). "If you're an adult, you should stop saying disrespectful things to the actors who played them, like calling them 'ugly.'"
ネットのエアプな発言を鵜呑みにせず、御自分の目で確かめて裏を取ってから発言してくださいね。「ブサイク」とか、あなたが成人なら演じた俳優さんに失礼な物言いは止めるべきですよ。October 4, 2024
A few days after that tweet, Ito followed up with an even stronger rebuke, this time written in English, saying he wished those fans "were not children but adults." Ito has since deleted that one tweet, but he's yet to scrub another that revealed he's since blocked all of the accounts blaming him for their remake woes.
"This is NOT the account to take it out on," reads a tweet from October 7. "I decided to block all of them who did it to me IMMEDIATELY from now on."
This is NOT the account to take it out on. I decided to block all of them who did it to me IMMEDIATELY from now on.October 7, 2024
I'd usually advise not just game developers, but everyone else, to block disrespectful people before even engaging with them, but I also can't blame Ito for speaking up in this case.
