Turns out Dead Space players have been upgrading the worst weapon

Dead Space player stats have been revealed, and they're very telling.

Yesterday, developer EA Motive used the official Dead Space Twitter account to reveal stats from players the world over since launch last month. Arguably the most noteworthy statistic is that players upgraded the Pulse Rifle the most out of any weapon in the game, putting Nodes into increased capacity more than any other in-game upgrade.

This is absolutely bonkers. The Pulse Rifle is the second of the Dead Space weapons that players acquire after the Plasma Cutter, and is proved in the opening moments of the entire game to be relatively useless against the Necromorph threat, a far less effective method of cutting through limbs and body parts than the iconic Plasma Cutter.

That players would prioritize the Pulse Rifle over weapons like the Plasma Cutter and the Line Cutter is extremely weird. Turns out an entire ship crew of trained armed forces with Pulse Rifles getting mercilessly shredded by a Necromorph wasn't enough to deter Dead Space players from pelting Nodes into the weapon like no tomorrow.

However, as players point in response to the tweet above, there might be a good reason for this behaviour. Last month, Dead Space players discovered a hack that could render infinite ammo for the Pulse Rifle, whereby players utilize capacity upgrades to generate ammo, turning this into mines, and then collecting the mines over and over again to accrue endless ammo.

If the cheat really went widespread among the Dead Space community, this could be why the Pulse Rifle's ammo capacity was the most upgraded weapon component of all. It makes seriously little sense when taking the upgrade news on its own, but the picture begins to become clearer when you think about the ways in which players are manipulating the game.

Here's why Dead Space is the perfect remake from EA Motive, an excellent homage to everything that came before while still striking out in its own new direction.