Top 20 Dumbest Video Game Controversies

Top 20 Dumbest Video Game Controversies

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Top 10 Dumbest Video Game Controversies

Welcome to WatchMojo and today we’ll be counting down our picks for the top 20 dumbest video game controversies. For this list, we’re looking at the most nonsensical scandals that have wracked the games industry over the years. Let us know in the comments which you think was the most pointless thing to get upset about.

Popular 2D fighting game “Skullgirls” has been going strong for years, and one notable member of the gaming community is an avid fan and player: SonicFox. SonicFox is one of the most talented fighting game players of all time, and was honored when “Skullgirls” gave them a cameo in one of the arenas. The problem was that SonicFox is a gay, non-binary furry, something they’re totally unapologetic about, and a lot of people got worked up about their inclusion in the game. People were so worked up, in fact, that “Skullgirls” got itself review-bombed and some suggested adding a toggle to remove the cameo to avoid causing offense.

Both of “Portal 2’s” antagonists, GLaDOS and Wheatley, have a large repertoire of adoption jokes to subject Chell to depending on which of them is the villain at the time. But one father took issue with the antagonist of the game being cruel and unreasonable and complained about Valve’s treatment of adoption. This is despite the fact that GLaDOS even criticizes Wheatley for making an adoption joke in the same scene he was complaining about, something news outlets conveniently cut from the clips they showed. Everybody forgot that villains do and say bad things in every form of media because they are the villain.

Was 2020’s “Cooking Mama: Cookstar” released in an effort to covertly use the Nintendo Switch to mine large amounts of bitcoin for its developers? Well, no, that theory was ultimately debunked; but it still caused a lot of fuss upon “Cookstar’s” release from people terrified that their Switch was being hijacked by a malicious video game. As well as that, “Cookstar” was also very quickly taken off sale on all platforms in North America because it didn’t actually have the “Cooking Mama” license, which was removed very shortly after the game was released because of a legal dispute. Its removal further fed the rumor mill that the game was trying to harvest cryptocurrency, in one of the weirdest controversies on record.

“The Slaughtering Grounds” (2014)

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Everybody should be able to call out a game that’s bad and trying to rip people off; that’s what influential games critic and YouTuber Jim Sterling did when they played “The Slaughtering Grounds”, another game from the infamous shovelware developer Digital Homicide. But Digital Homicide was so offended by Sterling saying its bad game was bad that it tried to take them to court for defamation and libel to the tune of $10 million. Of course, Sterling won the lawsuit, which was dismissed by the court with prejudice for being a completely insane waste of everybody’s time.

“Destiny” (2014)

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The troubled launch of “Destiny” may not have been helped by Peter Dinklage’s performance as the AI Ghost that assists you with missions, objectives, and feeds you lore. In fact, responses to his voice work were so lukewarm that Bungie eventually announced it was going to be hiring video game veteran Nolan North to redo all of Ghost’s dialogue. Despite the fact this seemed to be what some players asked for, others took great issue with the removal of the “Dinklebot”, as Dinklage’s Ghost came to be known, with many petitioning that Bungie either don’t go through with the plan or give players the option to choose which actor they wanted to listen to.

A few puritans were deeply offended by “Stubbs the Zombie” back in 2005 over what they perceived as a game encouraging cannibalism because you need to eat brains to recruit new zombies and regain lost health. They’d apparently been living under a rock since the 1960s and had no idea what a zombie was or why it was necessary for a game about zombies to feature zombies eating people, missing the point of the game entirely. It was lambasted as being offensive and dangerous to children, despite the fact it had an M rating and children shouldn’t have been playing it anyway.

“Fortnite” (2017)

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In 2020, Epic Games tried to take Apple to task for taking a 30% cut on all sales and microtransactions in the App Store, despite the fact that this is standard for every single retailer, digital or physical. The reason this controversy is so silly is that Epic, which is a giant corporation as well, positioned itself as a hero of the people fighting back against the tyranny of the App Store and Google Play. And we’ve already seen enough of Epic’s own shady business practices that taking a side in the lawsuit to help Epic line its own pockets definitely isn’t a good look or helpful to consumers.

“Grand Theft Auto IV” (2008)

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In much of the promotional material and loading screens for “GTA IV”, protagonist Niko Bellic can be seen sporting a pair of fingerless gloves to help him withstand those Liberty City winters without sacrificing his ability to shoot a gun. Unfortunately, players quickly found out that there aren’t any fingerless gloves you can wear in “GTA IV” – outrageous! It’s widely believed that Rockstar cut the fingerless gloves before the game came out, but there are still people baying for the gloves to make a return to “GTA”. Thankfully, if you’re playing on PC, you can install mods that do what Rockstar couldn’t, if you, too, just can’t live without seeing Niko wear fingerless gloves while he commits crimes.

“Destiny” (2014)

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Fans were up in arms yet again when, in 2015, Bungie announced “The Taken King” and a collector’s edition for “Destiny”. The problem was that this collector’s edition included all the expansions but also many exclusive emotes, gestures, and cosmetics, which could only be obtained by purchasing the $80 collector’s edition. This meant that dedicated fans who’d already bought all the “Destiny” expansions as they were released would have to buy all that content again if they wanted to unlock all the cosmetics. It was a bad move on Bungie’s part, but equally strange to witness was players getting this worked up about not having every dance emote in their game.

“Mortal Kombat 11” (2019)

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Depending on what character you use to beat the final boss, you’ll get a different ending in “MK 11”. When playing as Jax, he goes on to use time travel to go to the past and stop the transatlantic slave trade from happening. Though this seems like a net positive, a small minority of “MK” players got very upset and claimed that this was equivalent to racism against white people, accusing NetherRealms of fuelling racial divisions. It’s strange to imagine anybody was offended at the idea of preventing and ending slavery, but this vocal corner of the internet backed themselves into a bizarre, pro-slavery stance in their objections.

“Starfield” (2022)

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Bethesda’s next big RPG was announced before news broke that Microsoft was seeking to acquire Bethesda’s parent company, ZeniMax, in a billion-dollar deal. The acquisition went through, and people spent months speculating on whether Bethesda’s games would suddenly become exclusives to Xbox and PC – which ultimately turned out to be exactly the case, where “Starfield” was concerned at least. The problem is that the same people upset about Microsoft preventing PlayStation players from getting their hands on a AAA release were the same people who spent the better part of a decade mocking Xbox for having no exclusives. Be careful what you wish for.

“Halo Infinite” (2021)

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Originally slated to be a flagship launch title for the Xbox Series X, “Halo Infinite” languished in development for at least a year beyond its initial release date. When the beta finally dropped in summer 2021, it had a lot of fans – but it had just as many passionate critics who wanted to find everything wrong with it. That went beyond legitimate gameplay criticisms and devolved into people complaining online that the fruit in “Halo Infinite” doesn’t explode as good as the fruit in other FPS games such as “Call of Duty”. How dare Microsoft make a game without realistic fruit-destroying physics.

“Back 4 Blood” (2021)

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After years without a new “Left 4 Dead”, the original developers came back with a game that was “Left 4 Dead 3” in everything but name. However, during the beta period for “Back 4 Blood”, players were quick to notice that some of the zombies seemed to be using highly offensive racial slurs. Was this a clever trick to encourage players to fight off the zombie hoards with even more verve? Well, no; Warner Bros. was forced to issue a statement that the slur was heard when two different zombie sound effects played together, something that hadn’t been caught by the devs and which would be rectified before the game’s full release.

“Overwatch” (2016)

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A few weeks ahead of “Overwatch’s” launch and some people were up in arms about one of Tracer’s victory poses because it appeared to be very butt-centric since she had her back to the camera and was wearing skin-tight pants. People thought it was objectifying and Blizzard ultimately opted to remove the animation – though developers claimed they were already going to do so before the backlash. However, the outrage didn’t really spread very far, and to many, it looked like a lot of fuss over nothing; after all, pretty much everybody has a butt, and it’s not like any of “Overwatch” is actually explicit.

“Battlefield 3” (2011)

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A world-leader in getting offended at things nobody else finds remotely disturbing, PETA took great issue with “Battlefield 3’s” segment where the player must kill a rat to progress. They saw this as glorifying and even encouraging animal cruelty and campaigned against DICE and EA. As usual, everybody ignored PETA, since the organization has allegedly been embroiled in many controversies over the years. But we all know that the bigger problem was DICE choosing to include a ridiculous, rat-killing quick-time event in the first place.

Rockstar probably saw this controversy coming when it opted to call its game set in a high school “Bully”, but decided to do it anyway and, predictably, people were upset. Jack Thompson, the attorney most famous for railing against violent video games and Rockstar in particular, claimed that the game glorified and encouraged bullying – despite the fact Jimmy spends the game taking down Bullworth Academy’s unpleasant factions. But there was yet another controversy still to come, one that actually got the game banned in some places: if you so choose, Jimmy can kiss a boy at the school as well as the many girls, something which ruffled a few feathers.

“Super Smash Bros. Melee” (2001)

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If there’s one thing sure to upset a “Smash” player, it’s somebody opting to play as Jigglypuff in a competitive setting. That was pro-gamer Juan “Hungrybox” DeBiedma’s crime when he was assaulted in a very unusual way during a “Melee” tournament in 2019. After Hungrybox won a match against fellow player Mango, somebody in the audience was so insulted by his victory that they threw a dead crab at him. Nobody was hurt in the crab-throwing incident and the person who did it was ultimately banned from attending any more tournaments. Hungrybox took it in his stride however and later ate a crab during a livestream.

“Grand Theft Auto V” (2013)

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Over the course of four years, Hollywood star Lindsay Lohan tried to bring a court case against Take-Two Interactive for using her likeness in “Grand Theft Auto V”. The costly lawsuit dragged on until 2018 when it finally lost in the New York Court of Appeals. The crux of the suit was that the character Lacey Jonas constituted using her likeness without permission, and it was finally ruled that even if the character was a parody of Lohan – something that couldn’t actually be proven – it would count as a “portrait” and thereby wouldn’t be using Lohan’s likeness without consent. It seems Lohan just wanted a piece of the “GTA” pie and failed dramatically.

“Mass Effect” (2007)

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Back in 2007, sex scenes and romances in video games were still relatively novel; it wasn’t that they didn’t exist – we’d already had “San Andreas’s” hot coffee scandal after all – but for some reason, “Mass Effect” was the title that really got people riled up. Fox News ran an attack piece against the game with the headline “Sexbox” not only because the game included sex scenes, but that the most egregious sex scene was between two women – FemShep and Liara – and that one of those women was an alien. It didn’t matter that there was next to no actual nudity or that you only reach a sex scene after embarking on a relationship with that character.

“Marvel’s Spider-Man” (2018)

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When “Spider-Man” released in 2018, it quickly made history as one of the greatest superhero games ever made and perhaps the greatest Spider-Man game, a PlayStation exclusive that further cemented Sony and Insomniac’s reputations for putting out outstanding titles. That’s why it’s hard to imagine now the pre-release controversy about an alleged graphical downgrade. The reason behind all this? There were two images of the same puddle of water circulating, and the more recent image showed less water on the ground. Insomniac was forced to explain that the puddle was simply made smaller and that there was no downgrade, but people still spent a few weeks complaining.