'Rumors about poor Dead Space 3 sales and an unannounced Dead Space 4 being cancelled are 'patently false,' EA tells us,' the tweet read. As lays out in a detailed timeline following its first report, EA's first public comment on the matter came through a Gamasutra tweet mere hours after the original piece. But before the virtual ink on the initial report had begun to dry, EA started to push back hard against this rumor. Usually the rumor would spread out to the Internet like a copied-and-pasted weed from there, and that would be that until it was either confirmed or refuted by the course of actual events. There were also recent reports that the team at Visceral Montreal had been completely laid off.

The report included the perfunctory 'EA told that it does not comment on rumor or speculation.' It included some circumstantial supporting evidence, such as a previous public statement from EA's Frank Gibeau that the series would probably need 5 million players to continue. Yesterday morning, published a report citing 'a source familiar with the unannounced project' who said that Visceral Games' work on Dead Space 4 had been cancelled after Dead Space 3 sales came in beneath EA's internal expectations (official sales numbers have not yet been released for the game, but it is selling relatively poorly according to British sales reports).

The publisher vociferously denies the rumor it previously refused to comment on (this almost never happens).

This pattern is so incredibly common that it was actually noteworthy when EA apparently added a fifth step to the pattern for a recent rumor regarding the Dead Space series:

Outlet publishes the story, and it spreads throughout the Internet.

The publisher or developer says, 'We don't comment on rumor and speculation.'.

Outlet reaches out to the company's public relations to get a comment on the rumor (this step is technically optional, but it happens more often than not these days).Outlet gets a tip from a source who wishes to remain anonymous.In the video game industry, there are four basic steps to rumors leaking out before an official announcement by a developer or publisher:

Is dead space 4 cancelled