The embargo for reviews of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 has lifted. We don't have a review on the site here at Polygon. This is not an editorial decision; we had hoped to review the game. On Jan. 2, Polygon requested a code for Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 from Warhorse Studios, the studio behind the game, and received no response. On Jan. 7, we reached out to the PR firm working with Warhorse, who told us they were "not able to provide access. We'll let you know if this changes." We reached out to parent company Plaion on Jan. 9 as well — no response. On Jan. 10, we saw our peers publishing early previews for the game. We re-upped our request and were again told we would not be given access.

This was very unusual. But this was the situation that transpired with Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. It can be difficult to tell when a studio's decision to withhold a code from a publication is intentional and personal. That's due in part to the fact that the process for getting advance review codes is about as rote and administrative as it gets. Sometimes, PR firms working for studios send us codes unsolicited in hopes we'll cover the game in question. Other times, we request codes from the game's representatives ourselves, several weeks ahead of the release date, and we get those codes when and if they are available.

As part of our final request for code on Jan. 10, Polygon's editor-in-chief Chris Plante contacted Plaion and Warhorse's PR firm to get a comment as to why we were denied advance access to the game. He stressed in his message that our hope is that this decision wasn't due to any personal bias against Polygon, nor motivated by any of our previous coverage of games made by Warhorse or any other. In short, we wanted to know: Was Polygon being blacklisted?

On Jan. 10, we did receive a response to this request stating that we could get one code for the game on launch day, Feb. 4. We did not receive any clarification as to how this decision was made. Nor did we receive the requested clarification on why the developers of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 declined to provide Polygon access to the game.

Because we will not receive access to this game until its public release, our review is nonetheless forthcoming but will not be published in time for its release date. We look forward to telling you more about this game in the weeks to come.

KIA Gloats

And now, for the why. From Charlie Hall's review (12 February 2018)

https://archive.is/WqcZl

"The game is also not without its controversies. Warhorse is a team of more than 150 people, but the game's creative director has gone out of his way to rationalize his support of G*merGate, a loosely knit hate group that has devoted time to harassing women, people of color and journ*lists in the past. So outspoken is the studio's leadership on cultural issues that they have found it necessary to work with a German outlet to publish anti-fascist, anti-sexist and anti-racist statements prior to their game's launch."

Thank you for that completely unnecessary bank-shot that turned a poor review into a politically motivated hit piece. And you wonder why they weren't lining up for more of that?

https://old.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/1igwh0w/polygon_whines_about_not_getting_prerelease_code/

!g*mers !chuds @kaamrev its G*MER GATE REVENGE TIME!

Coming soon! pic.twitter.com/BETCBf4s3N

— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) February 5, 2025

pic.twitter.com/J8iDhSEewa

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) February 5, 2025

The Trump Resort, Gaza in 2030 pic.twitter.com/8ERR1Nyiz5

— Shelley G (@ShelleyGldschmt) February 5, 2025

🫳🏼
🇵🇸
🗑️

— Hashem (@HashemAllMighty) February 5, 2025

Thoughts? pic.twitter.com/5zn6HMLSJd

— Jews Fight Back 🇺🇸🇮🇱 (@JewsFightBack) February 5, 2025

Think bigger pic.twitter.com/vxZJpXvxEq

— Kitty Surprise (@KittySurprise1) February 5, 2025

Confetti was needed 🎉 pic.twitter.com/H5TP1H2AIE

— Caт Вee ✡︎🪶 (@CatShoshanna) February 5, 2025

Brandon Sanderson

For those that don't know, Brandon Sanderson is a Mormon author that specializes in writing fantasy for people that believe video games are art. The Mormonism manifests itself as embarassing and clunky attempts at insults.

For example:

But don't worry. He doesn't need the crutch of Mormonism to help him write atrocities.

Sanderson started getting big in 2006 when not mentioning current-day issues in your writing wasn't considered violence. Because his early work was inoffensive, some of his fans had certain opinions and would be described as chud-adjacent today. We'll come back to them in a moment.

With success came the the desire to expand, and what better way to reach more people than making it more relatable™ and courting a "modern audience"! It started out subtle: a background character making comments about the same s*x, allegories about mental health and, eventually, an out-of-place political desire to install a modern democracy in a medieval fantasy world. It got progressively more obvious with each new book, but it clearly worked, because you can't go anywhere online to discuss fiction now without being bombarded with Sanderson recommendations.

And now a large chunk of his fan base looks like this

Wind and Truth

The most recent addition to the Sanderson Literary Universe was the 5th book in the Stormlight Archive series, Wind and Truth.

We're going to look at some 1-star reviews, which are mostly chuds dumb enough to have kept reading up until now.

Remember the excerpts from earlier? ALL his writing is like that. All 4 previous books in the series. These geniuses endured 4,546 pages of slop to get to this point

Goodreads Link. Sort by 1-star reviews. 2-stars are also funny, but it's mostly just people begging him to get another editor.

I will be honest, I cried

I didn't realize I was reading garbage until there was a gay character!

^ This is an actual quote

This guy wrote a whole novel in protest

Can't read it? You're welcome!

It turns into an impassioned plea for Sanderson to renounce Mormonism in favour of mainstream Christianity, which is funny, but not actually worth reading.

I couldn't drug myself to sleep, so I used boring audiobooks

The best part of these 1-star reviewers pouring out their hearts (and some of them posting from accounts with face pics and real names) is that none of it meant anything. The book was well-received overall and will fund the next 5 books in the series!

These clowns are desecrating the great Mosque of Cordoba with their pagan rituals. https://t.co/sGdHIBqDdG

— Ibn Bayrut 🇱🇧 (@hasandarb) February 6, 2025

Are you afraid of the truth falling apart @davidhogg111? Lots of our peers are in my dms right now. pic.twitter.com/z6Li4xOErr

— spec (@_opencv_) February 3, 2025

pic.twitter.com/ksg8bYehA0

— spec (@_opencv_) February 3, 2025

pic.twitter.com/pADBHpN747

— spec (@_opencv_) February 3, 2025

pic.twitter.com/TaLaefE2SJ

— spec (@_opencv_) February 3, 2025

pic.twitter.com/ixfPhL2yrh

— spec (@_opencv_) February 3, 2025

pic.twitter.com/yNG9Nqug1r

— spec (@_opencv_) February 4, 2025

pic.twitter.com/9We76YLeXo

— spec (@_opencv_) February 4, 2025

pic.twitter.com/8OBPtY3adn

— spec (@_opencv_) February 4, 2025

pic.twitter.com/WKTBdSYMAp

— spec (@_opencv_) February 4, 2025

pic.twitter.com/ffE0HJuJtb

— spec (@_opencv_) February 4, 2025

Verifying all of these to maintain integrity. David can be seen row 2 col 4 pic.twitter.com/FhHICG2fCi

— spec (@_opencv_) February 4, 2025

worst i've ever seen it is it just edgier /r/politics now or something

Something new is coming to the shops. ⚡️💙⚡️ officialsonichu.com/collections/... www.etsy.com/shop/Officia...

— CPU Jesus Christ Chan Sonichu Prime (@cpujcwcsprime.bsky.social) 2025-02-04T17:18:03.180Z

skyview

Chris' handlers still haven't figured out how to use the bluesky block features yet like they do on . Probably because nobody actually uses bluesky. Weens barely even try even though chris officially switched there to fight drumpv and elmo or whatever.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1ifxghf/multiversus_players_who_bought_100_founders_pack/

https://old.reddit.com/r/PS5/comments/1ifajwr/multiversus_players_who_bought_100_founders_pack/

https://old.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1iefpf0/multiversus_season_5_is_its_final_season_ending/

https://old.reddit.com/r/MultiVersusTheGame/comments/1iefjlw/future_of_multiversus/

https://old.reddit.com/r/MultiVersus/comments/1iego4p/im_happy_the_game_is_getting_shutdown/

https://old.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1ieh2wo/multiversus_update_going_offline/

https://old.reddit.com/r/MultiVersusTheGame/comments/1ieg0pp/multiversus_was_a_scam/

https://old.reddit.com/r/MultiVersus/comments/1iefifg/season_5_is_the_final_season_confirmed_by_devs/

https://old.reddit.com/r/MultiVersus/comments/1iegmz7/did_i_just_get_scammed_got_founders_around_when/

https://old.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/comments/1iew7s0/the_development_of_multiversus_was_problematic/

https://boards.4chan.org/v/thread/701735342/multiversus-shuts-down-for-good-this-time-may

https://boards.4chan.org/v/thread/701757840/multiversus-final-season

!g*mers !r-slurs @Optimus_Primal

M27 from the UK and following what is going on in your fricking country.

Rent free

Btw if you're a 27 year old male in this country and STILL haven't chudded out, transition immediately

I hope you Trump voters are happy.

Immigration - He promised to lower immigration. You do realise that the majority of your illegal immigrants come into the US by plane on Visas and over stay their welcome?

Heh I bet nobody at ICE has figured that one out

no wait no you can't take those Dreamers from their homes and fly them back to Colombia nooooo defund ICE

Price of groceries - He promised to lower groceries. Has that happened? Has it frick. Its fricking risen.

How would this cute twink know exactly why does he care so much about american 'groceries' when a loaf of bread here is like 3 hours wages

Elon Musk - He has put the world riches man in charge of a joke of an government agency. I would say he is a much bigger threat than the Chinese are with Tiktok.

>elon mask bad for amerika!! mach wors than china!

DEI - You realise that we fricking need diversity? To bring a varying range of perspectives into areas.

Unless those perspectives happen to come from white men

If all people working in an agency are of one race, gender and economical upbringing, chances are they are going to come to a very similar conclusion on a lot of matters.

So what you're saying is diversity encourages conflict? interesting...

Honestly frick your country. All you are doing is isolating yourself.

Isolating themselves from....? A backwater communist shithole island?

Forgot about fricking Ukraine. What happened to Trump ending the war almost as soon as he stepped foot in the White House? Hasn't fricking materialised has it?

yeah chuds what happened to this thing I just made up in my own head. Bet you feel silly now

Comments

I'm American and I have voted against Trump every chance I got. I don't know what to do. I voted, I tried to instill in everyone around me the danger he poses to our country only to be ignored

Hmm, I condescendingly hectored and lectured everyone about trump and it didn't work... What am I doing wrong?

I called those stupid government official phone lines to express my concerns. I did everything I reasonably could and now I'm stuck here growing more and more terrified every day, and with every new executive order that gets released. I'm trapped in a nightmare and I can't wake up.

When is Trump Derangement Syndrome going on the DSM-5? Like holy shit chuds were never this bad about Biden, were they?

Rebel. We have before

I wonder how our Brave Resistance Leader feels about Jan 6th

Bingo. We may be stuck with them as our government but those poor bastards are stuck with me as a proud dissenter.

I am a proud dissenter I... larp as a witch and cast spells against Immigration Enforcement

Look at my Resistance dawg we ain't ever escaping the Trumpreich

I'm embarrassed and disgusted to be an American.

shouldn't you be anyway?

I'm also from the UK, but older. I don't quite understand what benefit to the US is going to gain from having a President with the mental age of seven

This user spends his entire waking life neurodivergentally typing paragraphs about cats

Hey there. What you have to realize is that in general, MAGAts lack empathy.

Empathy mentioned, deploying heatmaps!

This is 100% home grown photoshop no AI which is why it kinda sucks

there is nothing else implied though

!illuminati !schizomaxxxers

@WeihnachtenSalvador

Top Drama

Relative Drama (takes into account the size of the subreddit)

autodrama: returning jobs to dramneurodivergents. Ping HeyMoon if there are any problems or you have a suggestion

In case you're like me, and had no idea what an "ego death" involves other than a vague awareness of it being some kind of Freudian nonsense:

Oh, he went nuts. Why not just say so?

So Bardfinn was a normal well adjusted functioning adult 20-30 years ago?

Not exactly.

That's right. Our neighbor walked away from the best job he ever had because the boys wanted to go to Hooters.

Now he collects welfare payments and creates AI horrors he can post on BlueSky for 27 likes.

I am desperate for sleep, honey

!animalposters !cats

!codecels it's 1000 lines of copy/paste slop that would get an intern bullied

I'm trans and I'm going to rpe you. I'm gonna call up all my goons and we're going to break into your house and rpe you until you're gaped far enough to fit a fire hydrant in there.

Should I call the fricking fbi, b-word?

The boys are integrating into the house very well! Goodbye, baby jail!

!animalposters !cats

Department of Education is (soon) kill!?

I was talking to a irl maga person a month ago and they were like:

...what? It doesn't matter who gets appointed to head the DOE because Trump will dismantle it. He literally said so lol

And I was like

pshhh that will never happen...

Over the last few days, we've seen an increase in content in several communities that violate Reddit Rules. Reddit communities are places for civil discussion and are one of the few places online where people can exchange ideas and perspectives. We want to ensure that they continue to be a place for healthy debate no matter the topic. Debate and dissent are welcome on Reddit—threats and doxing are not.

When we identify communities experiencing an increase in rule-violating content, we are taking the following steps as needed:

Reaching out to moderators to ensure they have the support they need, including turning on safety cowtools, reminding mods of our rules, or offering additional moderation support

Adding a popup to remind users before visiting that subreddit of Reddit's Rules

In some cases, placing a temporary ban on the community for 72 hours to enable us to engage with moderation teams and review and remove violating content

Currently /r/WhitePeopleTwitter is under a temporary ban. This means that you will not be able to access this community during this cooling-off period while we work with the mods to ensure it is a safe place for discussion.

We will continue to monitor and reach out to communities experiencing a surge in violative content and will take the necessary actions noted above to ensure all communities can provide a safe environment for healthy conversation.

Clean it up janny