That NieR Automata Secret Church? It's Just A Mod

For several weeks, a newly found NieR Automata "secret church" stumped the game's entire community. So many people tried their absolute best to find the secret door in the Copied City that leads to the church, but it turned out it was just a freaking mod - that's why only one person could find it.

(Photo : Steam)
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This was the bombshell revelation of a recent Twitch stream. As reported by GameSpot, the aforementioned NieR Automata secret church was a mod created by modders Woeful_Wulf, Devolas Revenge, and RaiderB. They also revealed that Redditor sadfutago, the one who posted the original video to the NieR Automata subreddit, only ever shared videos created "completely in-game" without any sort of editing.

Here is a message the modders shared at the end of the Twitch stream, where they thanked everyone for going down the rabbit hole:

"We have been loving all the discussions and theories - it has ben an amazing journey. It has been inspiring to see the community come together after so many years, it has made all the hard work well worth it."

So it's time to hang up the tinfoil hats, people. That NieR Automata secret church was fake - a darn good one, but perhaps other members of the game's modding community already saw this coming.

Initially, modders thought that the entire sequence and epxlorable area was impossible to create using a mod. But according to Discord user Vats3, who is a member of the NieR Automata modding community, said that prior evidence already pointed "hard" to the fact that none of it is real (via Kotaku). They even went as far as use the handle "Church Non-Believer" in the NieR Discord server.

Either way, the mystery of the NieR Automata secret church is now resolved. It was an amazing effort for all involved, even just those who came together and pooled their ideas as to try to explain whatever the heck was going on. It is also testament to the insane capabilities of game modders as a whole. These folks, while not really professional game developers, should really have jobs at big studios.

Well-played, everyone.

Is The NieR Automata Secret Church One Of The Best Game Mods Of All Time?

Considering how it threw the entire community of NieR into a frenzy thinking it was real, then it could very well be included in the pantheon. And there are several insanely amazing game mods out there to begin with.

Among these mods are just absolute marvels of game development skill from fans, like the Half-Life mod that spawned a literal new game: Counter Strike. Yes, the Counter Strike franchise you know and love started off as a mod for the original Half-Life, which was overseen by just two people when it began in 1999 (via TechRadar).

Another mod worth mentioning is Killing Floor, which originally started as a mod for Quake. The mod really was just simple: all you needed to do was shoot and kill zombies. But as per The Gamer, it was basially the granddaddy of all multiplayer zombie modes in other bigger games. It was also influential enough that it inspired a handful of first-person survival shooters these days, potentially including the now-iconic Left 4 Dead franchise.