Nier Automata's secret church mystery explained: genius marketing, modding stunt, or total hoax?

gamesradar.com:

The Nier Automata community has become borderline feral almost overnight thanks to new footage of a never-before-seen secret door that leads to a mysterious church seemingly found by just one player. 

The alleged discovery has brought modders and data miners out of hibernation and even prompted statements from a few of the game's developers, but players still aren't sure if the church is even real, and if it is, nobody knows how to get into it. 

This tumultuous saga is the work of Reddit user sadfutago, who first posted about the mysterious Nier Automata church on June 10, the same day their Reddit account was made. 

"Hello, I'm new to Reddit and want to know how to open the church in Nier Automata," they said in a brief post (opens in new tab) on the Nier fanart subreddit, which has now been flooded with incredulous comments. The same day, they asked (opens in new tab) the Nier Automata game subreddit the same question, and the community was understandably confused because nobody knew of such a church. 

Four days later, sadfutago shared (opens in new tab) two screenshots taken inside the church they described – or rather, taken of the screen, seemingly with a phone. They said they entered the church via a door in the Copied City after the boss fight with Adam, but noted that their friend was unable to replicate this in their game. This post was initially deleted by the Nier Automata subreddit's automod (it's now been restored), but on June 15 it was also posted (opens in new tab) to the larger mainline Nier subreddit, which is when the mystery really took off. 

Nier fans were immediately perplexed, in no small part because back in January 2021, Nier Automata director Yoko Taro personally confirmed that the game's final