'Marvel's Spider-Man: Turf Wars' DLC Mocks Puddlegate Drama

Marvel's Spider-Man's newest Turf Wars DLC included a reference to the "Puddlegate" debacle by suggesting that there are perhaps fewer puddles in the game after the DLC's release.

Spotted by a Marvel's Spider-Man player and shared to the game's subreddit, a user pointed out that the social media feature players can see when accessing the game's menus now has a message about the lack of puddles in New York City. The in-game social media mimics Twitter with residents of the city commenting on current events, and one of those fictional users delivered what was a clear reference to the controversy over in-game puddles.

Puddles reference in the new DLC from r/SpidermanPS4

"Are we experiencing a drought in NYC?" the in-game comment said. "feel like there are fewer puddles than usual."

For those who didn't get the reference and hopped on the Marvel's Spider-Man hype train either right when it launched or after, the "tweet" is a callback to when players speculated that the game had been downgraded by Insomniac Games at some point during its development. People circulated a before-and-after image of a scene where Spider-man was in front of a large puddle, the "after" version showing the puddle had been greatly reduced in size. Insomniac Games responded to say "It's just a change in the puddle size, there's no downgrade at all," but that didn't stop people from speculating that the game had indeed been downgraded before its release. Further analysis of the game indicated that the opposite was actually true and that it'd been upgraded from what had been shown previously.

This isn't the first time that Insomniac Games has poked fun at the whole situation either with a developer tweeting about an October update to say he'd "fixed" a part of the game for players by adding puddle stickers all around a building. Insomniac Games isn't even the only one who's gotten in on the Puddlegate references with BioWare also joking about puddles at one point during a showing of its new Anthem game.

The Turf Wars DLC with the reference to the Puddlegate drama is now live as of Tuesday with the DLC being the second one Insomniac Games has released so far for Marvel's Spider-Man. Turf Wars was released alongside a new trailer that featured J. Jonah Jameson returning for another episode of his "Just the Facts" podcast. It's included as part of the bundle for anyone who bought The City That Never Sleeps, but it can also be bought as a standalone purchase.