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?
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.
Good points, but a few of these are mixing up controversy with genuine critics.
- Arkham Knight’s performance was terrible at launch. But many Ubisoft games could make this list, they were quite famous for their buggy games for some time.
- Along with the Diablo 2 remake, you could add the Warcraft 3 remaster as well which was nonetheless apparently abysmal, but which also removed the original game from Battle.NET. We may also add most remakes and remasters, it feels like an exception when a remaster is generally appreciated.
- Like Starfield, Fallout 4 was also heavily criticized at launch for the same reasons: unengaging story, always the same bugs, lackluster roleplay due to the voiced character… But maybe that’s always the case with every new Bethesda game.
- If I remember correctly, on of the main issues with Alien: Colonial Marines wasn’t so much that it was a terrible and unfinished game (which it was), but that the demo released was very engaging, and a completely unfair representation of the actual game, which was considered false advertising.
it feels like an exception when a remaster is generally appreciated.
Don’t think I ever heard something bad about the Starcraft remaster.
The Yakuza Kiwami games are supposedly good too, but I never played them or the originals.
The Resident Evil games are more like remakes, the only bad thing I heard is about 4. But that was from the perspective of challenge runners, apparently some weirdness going on there. But supposedly absolutely fine for casual gaming, but I never played any of these either.
- Arkham Knight
