Over the past week, the NieR Automata community was taken for a wild ride as a secret room that was recently “discovered” turned out to be an elaborate mod after all.

A reddit user by the name of sadfutago initially posted on the NieR Automata subreddit, asking how to open the church in the game. The question was answered with more questions, as there was no evidence of such a room.

The mystery grew more and more every passing week, hitting a fever pitch when sadfutago suddenly posted short videos of actually accessing the said door. Various theories were discussed, and many in the community were figuring out ways how to replicate the said videos.

The NieR Automata modding community didn’t believe that it was a mod in the first place, due to the fact that the tools for the game weren’t that elaborate and advanced yet, thus sparking more confusion and theories about how this whole thing could be a possible marketing ploy for a new announcement.

After a series of videos and messages, the elaborate event came to an end during a stream from a Twitch user named ze34_zinnia, which showed additional footage before admitting that it was a mod, thanking the community with a full message from the creators concerned.

“We have been loving all the discussions and theories – it has been an amazing journey,” said the team. “It has been inspiring to see the community come together after so many years, it has made the work well worth it”

The team consists of DevolasRevenge (Map design), Woeful_Wolf (Blender Tools), and RaiderB (Scripting tools), and have said that they will be releasing the new Blender addons and scripting tools to the community over the following days, promising so much more in store.

The team also mentioned that the NieR Automata Church mod files will be released and that another upcoming mod from RaiderB is already prepared.

It was definitely fun while it lasted, and the community has certainly bonded over the said event.