Earlier this week, the Nier Automata community erupted after a player posted video footage of a previously undiscovered secret door in the Copied City. Reddit user Sadfutago posted the video a month after initially asking for help exploring what they said was an area that their friends couldn’t assist them with. This footage eventually started circulating on social media, and egged on by Automata’s on developers, fans were whipped into a speculative frenzy. Only it was all a hoax. News has broken on the same social networks that circulated the footage that the secret church door was actually the work of a dedicated group of modders. "For those not keeping up, the modder community has basically confirmed that Nier door/room/etc isn't in the game - the assets aren't on the disc, and many are borrowed from Replicant," wrote Alex Donaldson of VG247. "Anyone hyping it up as anything else now is either out of date or being deliberately misleading."
Sadly, this means that the last secret of Nier Automata really was discovered back in January of last year. On the plus side, however, this means that someone has figured out how to mod Nier Automata so completely that they can add entirely new areas to existing maps.
"So - the Nier room was the work of a team of modders. They just revealed it all on Twitch," Donaldson added. "An elaborate troll revealing Nier modding has been blown wide open! Really good stuff."
Some were already skeptical of the footage. Others even made fun of it by modding a similar secret door into Mario 64 and Minecraft--two games that have long been the playground of modders. Now we can add Nier Automata to the list of games that have been entirely cracked.