How A Video Game Glitch Became A Full-Blown Conspiracy Theory

The Binding of Isaac community lost their minds yesterday, in search of items missing from the game. Teases from designer Edmund McMillen suggested it was an elaborate, totally ridiculous mystery for players pg123 to solve. The reality is far more mundane: it was a joke, while the developer worked on a patch. Image Credit: TehHolyPancake If you missed yesterday’s story about how far The Binding of Isaac fans were going to figure out what was happening, here’s a prime example: they were reading passages from the Bible, suspecting it contained hints on what to do.cnx.cmd.push(function(){cnx({"playerId":"e3616d04-4972-4839-a63a-c6975e2e9731","settings":{"advertising":{"macros":{"AD_UNIT":"/23178111854/od.kotaku.com/article","CHILD_UNIT":"article","POST_ID":"1740611082","POST_TYPE":"post","CHANNEL":"uncategorized","SECTION":"","SUBSECTION":"","CATEGORIES":"uncategorized","TAGS":"","NOP":"0"},"timeBeforeFirstAd":0}}}).render("cnx-player-main")}); The game’s latest expansion, Afterbirth, promised more than 120 new items for players to use. When the expansion launched, however, players could only account for 74 items. Worried they’d been ripped off, McMillen began teasing that players simply hadn’t looked hard enough, beginning a National Treasure-esque dive into The Binding of Isaac that had everyone putting on tinfoil hats. Specifically, lots of players were focused on the number 109, which has a history in The Binding of Isaac community, related to the number of hours it supposedly took for one of the game’s biggest secrets to be exposed, thanks to data mining. Roughly 109 hours after Afterbirth was released, a patch dropped for the game. Were there new mysteries to be solved? Would the path become clear? Nope. Instead, it was just a patch. The items should have been available at launch, but there was a glitch that prevented them from showing up. It was an elaborate ruse on the part of McMillen, a way of toying with the community. @UnderwaySMW yeah we had the patch done a few mins earlier but then realized if we wait we can launch it at 109 thought it would be funny :/ — 🜏 Edmund McMillen 🜏 (@edmundmcmillen) November 4, 2015 The move has not been met with universal acclaim, however, with some fans upset McMillen allowed fans to spend so much time and effort on something that ultimately amounted to nothing. He could have said a patch was coming. (He did, in fact, say a patch was on the way, but perpetuated this joke anyway.) The primary source of theory searching, reddit, seems understandably mixed: One reason people fell for the joke was due to a previous interview from McMillen, in which he expressed disappointment over the way data mining h25 com เข้าสู่ระบบ had revealed previous secrets faster than he’d hoped. Here’s what he told Vinesauce: “It’s disheartening. It sucks because we’re gonna start working on an expansion soon, but we sure as hell aren’t gonna fucking take all the time that it took – especially with Simon, who tried his best to really bury the stuff so it would deter people from doing this, but all they see is a challenge, so they’re going to dive right in and do it anyway. I can say right now that I don’t think the expansion is going to feature any buried secrets that anybody will care about.” McMillen now claims he’s never been upset, and he didn’t plan for โค้ดเครดิตฟรีสมาชิกใหม่ล่าสุด “revenge.” Man some people have the pointiest tin foil hats ever, I wasn't ever actually upset about data mining and there is no "revenge" here 🙂 — 🜏 Edmund McMillen 🜏 (@edmundmcmillen) November 4, 2015 No one was upset at anyone at all there were was just a launch bug that caused missing items due to a "thing" that I can't talk about now — 🜏 Edmund McMillen 🜏 (@edmundmcmillen) November 4, 2015 Some of you guys drifted a bit to far from earth and started assuming the worst intentions possible — 🜏 Edmund McMillen 🜏 (@edmundmcmillen) November 4, 2015 In this environment I don't fault you for assuming crazy shit but seriously I'm not mad at anyone and wouldn't fuck with people like this — 🜏 Edmund McMillen 🜏 (@edmundmcmillen) November 4, 2015 But in addressing what was going on, he left the door open to more speculation. There are kinda clears reasons why this wasn't addressed as it was happening … I'm positive more than a few of you out there know why — 🜏 Edmund McMillen 🜏 (@edmundmcmillen) November 4, 2015 And why I can't say 😉 — 🜏 Edmund McMillen 🜏 (@edmundmcmillen) November 4, 2015 Of course, it wouldn’t be shocking that Afterbirth would be hiding more secrets that people haven’t yet found—that’s been a mainstay for The Binding of Isaac McMillen didn’t respond to my request for comment about how this all went down, but promised a blog post about everything when “the dust has settled.” this eventual postmortem blog post is going to blow your freaking minds.. its blowing mine now @tyronerodriguez & i have so much to tell ya — 🜏 Edmund McMillen 🜏 (@edmundmcmillen) November 4, 2015 Gotta admit, I was loving how ridiculous this was getting. It’s disappointing there really isn’t an elaborate conspiracy going on. Maybe McMillen can actually work something like that into the next expansion for The Binding of Isaac? You can reach the author of this post at [email protected] or on Twitter at @patrickklepek