Word of Mouth (Patreon)

Eldewrito was a PC Stand Alone Mod for Halo Online, a Free to Play game based on Halo 3 intended to be sold exclusively in Russia. The official game never came to fruition, but Eldewrito was the effort by a small team to bring Halo 3 to the PC, enhanced with higher resolutions, framerates, gameplay options, customization, expanded Forge, and more.

I explain this, because it was available for a very brief time, a beautiful time. A time when Halo's reputation wasn't held in high regard, one where the couple thousands of people left on Halo 5 with MCC's obliterated corpse being the only thing left for company; Eldewrito's release changed everything. Bringing thousands of people a wave of nostalgia, but also brand new experiences never had in 2007. It even appeared on Twitch's top ten at one moment, something Halo hadn't ever achieved.

The reason it was a brief time is the team behind Eldewrito received word from Microsoft that should the project continue, they'd have to take legal action.

Immediately, news headlines across the internet were obnoxiously displayed, reading "Eldewrioto has been shut down!" Even friends of mine were telling me "better get your clips now, before it closes and you'll be unable to play." It occurred within literally hours, and had such a vicious effect, I witnessed many servers vanish for the game overnight.

The thing is, all Microsoft did was put up a stop sign.

The game wasn't impossible to download, it still had servers, community mods being produced, and being an unofficial free to play game, was totally playable! Microsoft wouldn't have been able to stop the game's existence even if it wanted to. You can still technically play it today.

This memory came flooding back to me because of another Free to Play Multiplayer game that I very much enjoy, years after dedicating a part of a video to it, Ironsight. News spread across the waves that Ironsight was being shut down, and immediately I was disappointed. Makes sense, Call of Duty did improve with Modern Warfare, and Warzone is free for anybody to download so its got a vast playerbase.

But then it turns out, Ironsight isn't shutdown at all and isn't dead. Merely, the American version was closed, and the international version created by the game's original developer, would get NA servers. 

So not only was Ironsight not being shutdown, North Americans finally had access to the full version of the game with more weapons, characters, maps, and unlocks! Having spent a couple hours already earning permanent guns, experiencing new content, and feeling the laid back magic again, this has served as a healthy reminder to treat internet claims the way people used to.

Growing up, whenever someone said something doubtful, adults would go "Where'd you read that? The internet?"

Now that information travels faster than ever, always verify. Often the assumption of truth, eventually becomes the truth over a short period of time, if not enough people are careful.

P.S. Check out Ironsight

P.P.S. Sparky says Hi :)