An American woman was arrested this week for flooding Stephen Hawking’s email with death threats, then stalking him at an astronomy festival in the Canary Islands.

Last Wednesday, I reported that No Man’s Sky had been delayed. For two days, up until the game’s developers confirmed the news, I received a stream of nasty messages, angry tweets, and, as has become a standard part of gaming culture, threats against me and my family.

Sometime during the weekend, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood stopped working for some players. Given the game's popularity—it's currently the number one free game on iTunes—it's probably not surprising that some fans got miffed that their game time was interrupted. Even so, getting death threats over something like this is…

Last week, a patch hit Black Ops II that enraged some unreasonable Call of Duty fans so much, they started sending death threats to the game's design director, David Vonderhaar. While unfortunate, it's also not the only recent case of enraged fans spewing ridiculous threats at something.

Dedicated communities always react to changes to their favorite games, it's normal. But threatening someone's life over a small tweak to a game? That's a whole other level of ridiculous.