Overshadowed by Controversy: Difference between revisions
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* The [[Gizmondo]] was one of the many attempts at challenging Nintendo's dominance in the highly-lucrative portable market, but it became more notorious for its manufacturer's links to a Swedish organised crime ring. Word has it that the console itself may have been a front for a money laundering scheme.
* While ''[[Minecraft]]'' drew in players of all ages due to its sandbox-style world creation and its blocky, pixelated aesthetic, its creator, Markus "Notch" Persson, became embroiled in a number of controversial statements about feminism and "white privilege", leading to accusations of him being an alt-right sympathiser. This led to the parodic "Hatsune Miku created ''Minecraft''" meme by fans of the game who sought to distance themselves from Notch and his ideologies. Similarly, series owner [[Microsoft]] [[Unperson|removed]] most if not all references to him from the games as a result of the controversy.
* ''[[JFK: Reloaded]]'', while marketed as an accurate recreation of the [[Who Shot JFK?|Kennedy assassination]] according to the Warren Commission's findings, was harshly criticised as depicting the assassination in a video game setting was viewed to be in extremely poor taste. Late Senator Ted Kennedy condemned the game as "despicable", and Joe Lieberman, who also happened to have co-led the Senate hearings which formed the basis of the [[Media Classifications|ESRB]], "was sickened by the game."
* ''The Guy Game'' would've been yet another run-of-the-mill trivia quiz game with a [[Fanservice]] theme taking the form of a live-action [[Full Motion Video]] game show, where players are treated to bare-breasted women should they give a correct answer. There was just one problem though: one of the women in the game going by the name Diane filed suit and alleged that she was unaware that her footage would be used in a video game, and she was [[Ephebophile|seventeen]] when the footage was taken, giving it the dubious distinction of being ''the only piece of underage pornography to be licensed for home consoles.'' Unsurprisingly, the game was pulled from shelves as it technically counts as [[Paedo Hunt|child porn]] (given the latter, it is presumed that all unsold copies and masters were destroyed to avoid any legal repercussions over the possession of illegal pornography as well as personality rights issues), though Topheavy Studios eventually re-released ''The Guy Game'' as an interactive DVD with the offending footage removed and replaced with other models.
* The vulgar humour in [[Acclaim]]'s ''BMX XXX'' was universally viewed as one of the worst if not the worst gimmicks to grace a sports game. It was said that Acclaim had [[Z-Axis]] [[Executive Meddling|turn]] what was going to be an extremely subpar game [[Sex Sells|into a raunchy sex comedy]], breasts, babes and all, in a vain and puerile effort to drum up publicity. The late extreme sports athlete Dave Mirra, whose namesake video game series formed the basis for ''BMX XXX'', balked at the decision and sued Acclaim for the use of his name and likeness, forcing Acclaim to release the game without the Dave Mirra branding. Sony also forced Acclaim to censor the PS2 release as they "didn't feel that the topless nudity fundamentally added to the gameplay experience." The obscenity controversy and negative reception towards ''BMX XXX'' eventually contributed to Acclaim's downfall and bankruptcy.
* Despite receiving critical acclaim from mainstream gaming press, ''[[The Last of Us Part II]]'' was [[Critical Dissonance|savaged]] by a number of gaming circles for its inclusion of LGBTQ+ content and themes, branding it a "[[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgement|social justice warrior]]" or a "woke" game as some perceive it as [[Anvilicious|pervasive agenda-pushing]] not unlike films featuring female, LGBT and racially diverse cast members. Kotaku's Riley MacLeod saw the controversy as a weak point with Metacritic's aggregation system, where he stated that the site "fails to take into account the diverse critical opinions of the game", instead focusing on the overall scores and seemingly padding it out to make the game appear better than it is, than the actual content of the review and provide a more even assessment of the game's critical both in the eyes of the press and the gaming public. It also didn't help that, like what happened with the ''[[Ghostbusters]]'' remake, the game's cast members were unfairly harassed and trolled by self-styled "edgelords" who take offense at anything remotely "diverse" or "feminist". Considering the disconcertingly divisive sociopolitical atmosphere in the United States in this day and age, the homophobic and anti-feminist sentiment thrown at ''The Last of Us Part II'' is unsurprising.
** The other part of the controversy was due to leaks of the game revealing that one of the main characters of the first game got [[Dropped a Bridge on Him|a very ignominious death at the hands of the new playable character]], while the other remaining characters received extreme [[Character Derailment]] compared with their previous characterization (and the actual release of the game revealing that the game has a bleak [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]] story–with a lot of [[Shoot the Dog|figurative and literal dog shooting]]–with a [[Bittersweet Ending]] very high in the bitter that gave little emotional resolution). The leaks forced a definite release date of the game after some years in [[Development Hell]], and the ensuing takedowns of leaks and early critics only irritated gamers that were already angry with both Sony and Naughty Dog. The above was not helped by the heads of the project responding to their harassment by calling any critics that didn't like the game "regressive" and "misogynists", [[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgement|whenever they actually were or not]].
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