After a controversial PS5 game recasting decision that's quickly spiraling out of control online, a key Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered developer is calling toxic series fans out for harassing himself and his staff over the game's version of Peter Parker being remodeled to better resemble the voice actor (and, many argue, the MCU Spider-Man's Tom Holland).
Voiced by prolific gaming and animation voice actor Yuri Lowenthal in both the original PS4 release of Marvel's Spider-Man and it's upcoming PS5 remaster, fans expected to see John Bubniak's face matching to Lowenthal's voice lines when the game's visual overhaul of story cutscenes were unveiled. Instead, they were met with the high-resolution visage of model Ben Jordan, instantly sparking outrage from some players of the first game. Fueling this flash fire was the believable accusation that the reason for the recast was actually to make the character more closely resemble his MCU counterpart, Tom Holland, while Sony and developer Insomniac Games argue that the change was made because Jordan's face better fit the frame of Lowenthal's own, with the voice actor having also done Peter Parker's performance work.
Now, that disagreement has apparently come to a head online, and Insomniac Creative Director Bryan Intihar is having none of it. Claiming that some "fans" are sending him (and presumably his fellow developers) "threatening notes" in response to Peter Parker's recasting, he calls for those fans to instead "be a force for good and be respectful of each other." While he says that he does appreciate their "passion," there's absolutely no blaming him for standing up to these online bullies, whether they be fans, critics, or neither.
To say that Intihar is taking the unknown-but-presumably metric tons of hate mail he and his team are receiving over a video game in stride is putting it lightly, and it's not hard to assume that his tweet's generic fan threat is being equally generous with its paraphrasing and tameness. Considering another PlayStation console first-party exclusive's controversial decisions prompted players (and many a non-player with nothing but time on their hands) to send unabashed bigotry and death threats to The Last of Us Part II's voice actress, it's both easy and abhorrent to imagine the types of messages Insomniac is receiving at present over this perceived sleight.
There's plenty of greedy and cynically motivated developer and publisher behavior - some of which is even directly related to Spider-Man - to call out in the games industry, but harassing Insomniac Games employees over a basic face-swap after they've already explained the situation is unacceptable and shameful. Some of these so-called fans are spending an unhealthy amount of time staring at Peter Parker's digital face, but what they really need to look into is a mirror.
Source: Bryan Intihar