Top 10 Biggest Video Game Controversies EVER
#10: PSN Hack
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In April of 2011, the PlayStation Network was hacked, resulting in it being shut down for nearly a month. Worse than being locked out though was the fact that 77 million users’ account data was compromised - the largest data breach in gaming history. Sony delayed notifying users about the breach, leaving people and even governments worldwide up in arms. Legal actions were taken and Sony did a lot of work to earn back public trust. Even so, the PSN Hack made gamers everywhere aware of how vulnerable their information is.
#9: Kojima & Konami Split
Hideo Kojima is one of gaming’s few auteur directors. Famous for his work on “Metal Gear Solid,” Kojima is by now equally famous for his contentious split with company Konami. While Kojima’s perfectionist nature certainly clashed with the company’s increasing pursuit of cost-effective content like mobile games, it doesn’t excuse anything they did to him. Not only was Kojima’s connection to his final “Metal Gear” game with the company removed, but he was separated from his employees during development for six months and his developers were demoted and effectively blacklisted. Kojima leaving and making his own studio only makes sense when you consider how poorly treated he and his employees were. Konami may still be making a profit, but their reputation may never recover.
#8: Gamergate
Originating as a reaction to a sex scandal in 2014 involving developer Zoe Quinn, #Gamergate soon spiraled out of control. While some supporters were concerned about the ethics in gaming journalism raised by the scandal, the impromptu campaign largely became synonymous with harassment, and a reaction against the rise of social justice issues and feminism in video games. Quinn and many other women involved in the gaming industry have been doxxed or otherwise harassed, both online and in-person. While the gaming industry itself has made steps to be more inclusive in the years since Gamergate’s inception, harassment still persists and the tactics used by those involved have been used in other online movements.
#7: False Advertising & Unfulfilled Promises
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You don’t always get what you pay for - as any customer will tell you. However, over the last few decades, gamers have felt burned out by video games that don’t live up to promises made by developers before release. “No Man’s Sky” promised features that weren’t available at launch. “Cyberpunk 2077” downplayed technical problems so much that it received lawsuits. And it often feels like every other trailer played at E3 has a good chance of looking much better than the final game. Consumers are used to products like food looking better in ads, but talking up games to be better than they are feels straight up dishonest.
#6: XBOX One’s Terrible Launch
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Whatever you think of the console now, XBOX One had a pretty awful start. Along with its confusing name, XBOX One’s pre-launch suffered many controversies. Its first presentation focused on multimedia capabilities instead of games. It was going to require users to use Kinect and always be online. Players would also be forbidden from playing used games. And while Microsoft naturally backpedaled heavily after the backlash these planned features received, enough that people nicknamed it the XBOX “180,” players still had to contend with a huge day one patch to even use the console. But it was worth it to play the new games - at least that’s what the YouTubers who were paid to praise them told us.
#5: Mass Effect’s Sex Scenes
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It may surprise anyone who has played “Mass Effect” or knows anything at all about the games, but the first entry in the franchise was the subject of controversy for its love scenes. Fox News took a widely inaccurate article by a conservative blogger and painted the game as if it was a highly graphic harem simulator. In reality, the love scenes in the series are brief and rarely explicit. Fox and the blogger were roundly criticized by gamers for their wrong takes on the series, but the controversy is unfortunately symptomatic of mainstream media’s frequent inability to do their homework on video games.
#4: Crunch
While it shares its name with a delicious candy bar, crunch in the gaming industry is far less appetizing. Another word for compulsory overtime by game developers, crunch has been a growing problem in the industry. While some defend that crunch can lead to games being completed in a timely manner and with sufficient quality, others point to the poor working conditions for developers in general, and how games like “Cyberpunk 2077” end up buggy messes despite crunch conditions. Treating employees like they’re machines is always problematic, and the gaming industry is no exception.
#3: E3 Accidentally Doxxes Attendees
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E3 is the biggest convention in gaming, where fans, journalists, and developers gather to present and discuss the latest upcoming games, consoles, and content. However, the 2019 E3 proved disastrous on some of its attendees' personal lives. The website for the Entertainment Software Association, which runs E3, accidentally posted a public link with contact information on over 2 thousand of the people who attended the event. Game journalists, YouTubers, and other visitors’ information became publicly available, despite attempts to take it down. While few hostile actions were taken as a result, it’s still a bad look to carelessly leak your guests' contact info for the world to see.
#2: Battlefront II’s Loot Boxes
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“Star Wars: Battlefront II” (the 2017 one, not the 2005 one) has proven to be one of the most controversial games of the 21st century so far. This is thanks to its microtransactions, in the form of loot boxes. As well as being criticized for being a form of “pay to win” content, the loot boxes drew controversy worldwide and led to multiple countries’ governments examining if they constitute gambling. They totally do, by the way. While EA removed the loot boxes from the game, and has made more steps to improve “Battlefront II,” the impact of the debacle on the gaming industry (and EA’s stock price) is still substantial.
#1: “Mortal Kombat”’s Violence Creates the ESRB
10 Times Mortal Kombat Was CENSORED
During the 1990s, video games started becoming more realistic. “Mortal Kombat” may look cartoonish by modern standards, but the violence on display was shocking at the time. The United States government held hearings on violent video games, with “Mortal Kombat” being a prominent example. This resulted in the creation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board, which assigns ratings to games in North America, and also spurred the creation of similar organizations in other countries. “Mortal Kombat” basically instituted a board whose decisions on who should be buying which games have proven as controversial as the game itself! Whether you think its ratings are too lax or too strict, if we had to rate who’s been upset by the ESRB, we’d go with “E - for Everyone.”
