Alright, so before we even get started here, let me be clear that this story comes with an Everest-sized mountain of caveats. The Five Nights at Freddy’s fandom is incredible, and has been sniffing out any clue for any possible information regarding the upcoming release of Five Nights at Freddy’s 4. I mean any clue. r/fivenightsatfreddys is actually fascinating to watch, as the rate FNAF fans will latch on to theories, speculation, and vague hopes is really stupendous to behold. Backing things up even further, Scott Cawthon’s web site seems to exist almost exclusive to disprove the endless tsunami of fake Scott Cawthon messages and fake Five Nights at Freddy’s information. With that being said, a recent thread has exploded on the Five Nights at Freddy’s subreddit featuring an email allegedly from Scott Cawthon saying that Five Nights at Freddy’s 4 is coming on August 8th, 2015.
The alleged email was sent to Dawko, a prominent Five Nights at Freddy’s YouTuber with as of this writing, a hair over 115k subs. Dawko went on to publish the above video revealing said information. The evidence that “bolsters" (Using exaggerated air quotes there) the validity of these claims and this video is the fact that the most recent teaser image has been uploaded by Scott Cawthon to the IndieDB as “8815." Typically speaking, most of these teasers and tidbits have additional meaning attached to them, so, 8/8/15 could be a launch date, maybe. As the email in question points out, that is the anniversary of the initial release of Five Nights at Freddy’s, so it makes sense. Also, it’d seem kind of weird for a guy who, as far as I can tell, has a pretty good reputation inside of the FNAF community to prank everyone with a fake release date.
That being said, it is ridiculously easy to doctor a screenshot of an email, which seems to be the main piece of “evidence" everyone is clinging on to here. The IndieDB thing could be a coincidence that Dawko is using to drive traffic to his channel, or maybe that’s just how he’s reading the 8815 clue which could be used in part to decode a future teaser. The 8th of August falls on a Saturday, and it’d be real strange to release an iOS game outside of the standard Wednesday/Thursday release cycle… But, when you’ve got a fanbase as rabid as FNAF, I’m not sure that matters.
If nothing else, following all this craziness is a lot of fun, largely because the enthusiasm and excitement the FNAF community has for the FNAF games is just totally refreshing, and honestly, a bit infectious.
