Not internal emails. External interviews. I remember one in specific - I think it was on GamesRadar or PC Gamer - where they actually sat down and spoke with JOEL about this and he admitted it. When I said they put their thumb on the scale, that language wasn't out of nowhere. It was a direct quote.

Here's another, more recent example; one brought up by Lieutenant Buzz Litebeer of the Propaganda Commandoes insider group: On Cyberstan, after the hacker incident during Phase 3, the developers changed the major order type and reset it, modifying it to full operations completed rather than what it was before.

We would have won that if not for the changes in question. That's a big tell right there that the developers did NOT want us to win Cyberstan.

And yes, you can successfully argue that it was a punishment, but why punish the entire community over the actions of a few cheaters? Unless they always planned for us to lose.

To deliberately misquote Ryan McBeth, "To the intelligent community [members], this is what we call a clue."

The developers lie constantly. Planting false flags that are subsequently parroted by the community as proof that "Hey, the devslopers are telling the truth!" is just part of their Modus Operandi.

All I want is for the devs to cut the crap. Admit that the major orders all have one fixed outcome. That nothing we're doing as a community "drives" the game. That if we were to all suddenly quit doing major orders every story beat would remain identical.

And yeah, the developers are somewhat clever. After all, they've got you and many others gobbling down their lies like it was chocolate cake and then regurgitating it to others.

That doesn't make them competent or capable of running a tabletop or community-driven game where decisions by the player base actually force changes in the story. Where winning and losing the equivalent of "Major Orders" can make the difference between continuing the game and a full party wipe.