BETHESDA, Md. — A new study by the National Institutes of Health has confirmed that the decline of global birth rates has been directly caused by Atreus of the God of War series.
The rapid decline of birth rates across the globe, especially in wealthier nations has been a problem that has stumped experts until now.
“There are so many possible factors involved in a problem as widespread as this that it really could have come down to anything,” said head NIH researcher Yarden Angel. The big breakthrough for us was when we noticed 2 very similar dips a few years apart. We tried to find what two events occurred within the timeframes that could be a cause and when we realized the first dip happened a couple weeks after God of War released for the PS4 it wasn’t hard to figure out that the even steeper drop four years later was God of War Ragnarök.”
Angel says that after careful research, cross data examination, and focus group tests, they determined that the element of both of these games that caused the decline is Atreus.
“We looked at all the data we had, we cross-checked everything with data that game researchers had and we had focus groups come in. The logical conclusion that we came to and that was confirmed by our research is that Atreus is the main cause of declining birth rates since 2018. Even people who didn’t play those games were still so annoyed by Atreus that they decided to never have children for fear they would turn out like him. That character may well be the cause of the greatest population crisis in human history.”
Upon the study being published, gamers came out in mass to declare how much sense it makes in hindsight.
“I always knew that the reason I never wanted kids is because of that annoying little twerp. But I assumed that was just me and the reception to him was generally positive. It all makes perfect sense now because honestly who would ever want children after they’ve spent hours trying to enjoy a God of War game while being incessantly badgered by an annoying kid who never shuts up,” wrote user TiltedTowerofPisa on Twitter.
“Me and my wife were expecting our first born while we played through Ragnarök and once we finished it we went out and got her an abortion so I’m really not surprised by this study,” tweeted user KDGamer
At press time, NIH claim that if Santa Monica Studio do not drastically rework Atreus’ character for the third game, the population may never recover.
