I’m just sitting here thinking about all the hoopla around palworld right now and I was wondering what other titles out there have been in the controversy filled category in the past few years/decade? I can think of a few, but my game interests are kinda narrow.
What are some of your picks?
“Hatred” caused a big controversy ahead of its launch back in 2016, for being a game where the main objective is mass-murdering innocent civilians. Then it released, turned out to be a pretty sub-par uninteresting game and was promptly forgotten by most people.
Surprised I haven’t seen anyone mention “Postal” or “Bully”.
From the wiki for Postal… “ A man referred to simply as the “Postal Dude” has been evicted from his home. He believes the United States Air Force is releasing an airborne agent upon his town of Paradise and that he is the only individual unaffected by the ensuing “hate plague”. He fights his way from his house to an Air Force Base through various locations, including a ghetto, train station, trailer park, truck stop, and an ostrich farm.”
Kinda feels like any big release has some kind of controversy added to it, be it poor performance, bugs, riddled with mtx/day1 dlc/seasonpass-nonsense, denuvo/horrid-drm-in-general, invasive anticheats, unnescessary launcher apps… you name it.
Off the top of my head the few “hooplas” I can remember. Also I’m not claiming to remember 100% correctly on the reasons/details
- Arkham Knight
- poor performance, 30 fps lock
- Cyberpunk 2077
- poor performance, bugs. BUGS. No 3rd person camera, cut content
- Starfield
- poor performance, lacluster gameplay, bugs
- No Man’s Sky
- performance issues, content not what was promised
- The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition
- horrid performance, technical issues
- Diablo 3
- always online, in-game auction house (real money & in-game currency)
- Diablo 4
- seasonpasses, mtx, etc. IMO, on the surface level it looks like it’s monetized like F2P game.
- Diablo 2 remake/remaster
- “p2p matchmaking, we promise” -> “oh hey, blizz servers only, no offline. kthxbai”
- Diablo Immortal
- “don’t you guys have phones?”
- pay-to-win gatcha game
- Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League
- whatever is going on with this game. Seems like the usual shitshow with haters hating and coping users coping, trolling eachother.
- Basically any 2k sports game, possibly others too
- at minimum 60 £/€/$ entrance fee to virtual casino
- HATRED
- caused a concern storm about in-game violence (shooting civilians/innocent etc)
- Haven’t played it myself, but it looks like a nothing burger. Fairly mid twinstick shooter with edgelord paint over it. Wasn’t Postal already doing this eons before?
- Payday 2
- “we promise we won’t add lootboxes” -> “Oh hey, we added lootboxes”
- Aliens: Colonial Marines
- apparently was quite the shitshow on launch
- isn’t stellar now either, but on heavy discount at 5€ or so, it aint that bad for coop.
Wasn’t Colonial Marines the game that gearbox “stole” budget from so they could fund Borderlands 2?
Iirc, it also had absolutely abysmal AI, with Alien(s) standing perfectly still in clear view, not reacting until they had been shot multiple times.
Then someone found that there was a single value in one of the game’s ini configuration files you could change from 0 to 1, and the AI would become competent. The switch had been there since release, over multiple years the game was never updated to flip the “make the AI not braindead” switch. As far as I know, it still hasn’t been updated to flip it.
Not a clue about budget stuff.
Iirc the config value key was mistyped, it was supposed to read “tether” (like, alient ai “tethers” to player, so it can find a path to the player, or somesuch), but it was mistyped in the config. ref: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Aliens:_Colonial_Marines#Improved_Xenomorph_AI
haven’t tried the fix myself yet, not THAT keen on replaying it. :D
Fo76 basically was a shitshow to the point it was false advertising. (Fucking canvas bags)
and moldy powerarmor helmets, which were a potential health hazard.
But even bigger issue, IMO, is the pvp/“mmo” aspect of it, which I don’t care one bit. If anything I’d like p2p coop Fallout.
- Arkham Knight
Super Columbine Massacre RPG was pretty damn controversial (Wikipedia link).
Soldier of Fortune. Look it up. SoF Payback was a fun game too.
Hot take on Payback, maybe it’s worth a revisit. I remember that game being a dog after the awesomeness that was 1 and 2. Especially with 2’s crazy rogue’esque mission generator and stellar multiplayer. We ran a heavily modded MP server for years and it was a blast.
Too bad what happened to Raven. Once in awhile you can still feel and see their spirit in some of the CoD details.
I still play SoF2, I like to grab a few random maps here and there!
Ion Fury came with some controversy
https://www.eurogamer.net/ion-fury-studio-apologises-for-sexist-and-transphobic-comments-from-staff
Since it hasn’t been mentioned yet:
THRILL KILL had some heady controversy around that time as well, for the same reasons.
No mention of Postal yet?
I remember Carmageddon making the news in 1997. It made the game immediately a lot more interesting.
Showing my age here, but the OGs of Doom, Mortal Kombat and GTA turned all the millennial gamers into murderous sociopaths who can’t tell the difference between video games and reality. That’s after Dungeons & Dragons turned us into murderous sociopaths who can’t tell the difference between board games and reality. If I recall correctly, the hoopla around all of that made national news in the States.
No, no, no, Dungeons & Dragons turned us into devil worshipping heathens. The murderers all came from videogames.
I thought rock ‘n’ roll did both a long time ago. Who would Charles Manson have become without the Beatles’ White Album and Helter Skelter?
Doom
Duke Nukem
Mortal Kombat Fatalities
Conkers Bad Fur Day
Catherine
Manhunt
Bully
Postal
Modern Warfare: airport scene
Leisure Suit Larry
Catherine
GTA : rampages, interactions with hookers
Dead or Alive
What is the hoopla around Palworld?
People are likeing it to Pokemon and big daddy N are very heavy handed when it comes to its IP.
Damn pokemon fans have to be the biggest weirdos around. Even nintendo was like: look, we know, we looked into it, stop mailing us. And the pokemonkos just keep crying to their overlords because people enjoy themselves, sending death threats around. I was listening to the jimquisition podcast and she absolutely hated it for no apparent reason, other than it’s not pokemon and a cheap pokemon rip off and she would rather play pokemon, than this game that is pro slavery and you van even catch humans. Which, completely fair imo, but just one week later she talked about yakuza and how they have a full fetched pokemon rip off in their game where you catch humans to fight for you, and it’s the best thing ever.
A small but vocal subset of turbovirgins loudly denouncing it for plagiarizing pokemon, who even the pokemon company themselves is fed up with lmao. The pokemon company’s investigation of the game is basically them saying “we’ll do our due diligence but please shut up they don’t seem to have done anything wrong”
Depends what you mean by controversial. Shooting innocent civilians in an airport in Call of Duty or Spec Ops.
Ark releasing DLC for a game that is still in early access.
7 Days to Die, a game that is still in alpha after 11 years.
EA releasing over $1000 in DLC for Sims game most of which is just different colours of the same item.
GTA: Hiring a hooker and after the hanky panky you murder her for the cash back.7 days to die has been making progress though .I remember picking it up and thinking I made a huge mistake then I played it a couple years later and loved it
