Game news The 7 biggest scandals in video game history! GTA 5, Call of Duty, Diablo, Cyberpunk 2077, there’s something for everyone…
From its beginnings until today, the video game industry has been strewn with scandals of all kinds. While some are laughable, others have truly shaken the industry. Discover here the 7 cases that shook the video game sphere.
Whether it concerns violence in video games or additional paid content, the video game industry is regularly the victim of cases of all kinds. Why did some brand players, when others still affect them today? Find out all about it in our column.
Cyberpunk 2077, the unfinished
Since its update and the arrival of the excellent Phantom Liberty expansion, CD Projekt Red’s event game Cyberpunk 2077 has truly achieved success. However, when it was released a little over three years ago, the findings were much more mixed. On PC but especially on console, the game is riddled with bugs and some parts of the content promised by the developers are missing. Worse, the game sorely lacks polish, to the point of being almost unplayable on PS4 and Xbox One, despite the huge sales recorded on these platforms. PlayStation even removed the title from its online store. As a result of this disastrous launch, CD Projekt saw its stock price fall dangerously. Despite this, the studio released regular updates and free DLC, fixing the majority of bugs and improving certain aspects of the game.
The Phantom Liberty expansion finally put the game back on track, proving that the studio had learned from its mistakes and knew how to correct them. We will now have to wait for future communications from the studio, whether they concern The Witcher or Cyberpunk, to find out whether public confidence has been restored. We will then know if fans are still willing to spend their money.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the controversy
If there is a subject on which video games are regularly attacked, it’s violence. One of the spearheads of this opinion is found in an Activision game. In 2009, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was released, a new version of the popular FPS series. Despite the quality of the title, it is mainly talked about for one of its missions: No Russian. This offers players the opportunity to take part in an attack at a Moscow airport, under the guise of infiltrating the ranks of a terrorist group. A single instruction from their leader Vladimir Makarov: “Remember, no Russians”. The player, in order not to blow his cover, is then invited to open fire on civilians. Despite everything, at the end of the mission, the player will be discovered and killed… but the damage has already been done. It is possible not to titrate, but the outcome will be the same anyway. The mission obviously caused a scandal, Activision (the publisher) and Infinity Ward (the developer) were strongly criticized, considering the scene unnecessarily violent.
The latter having caused a lot of talk about her and the game, the developers tried, for the following episodes, to reiterate the buzz. In Call of Duty: Ghost, it is possible to kill prisoners of war, or even carry out a poison gas attack against civilians in the Modern Warfare reboot. However, these scenes are much less trashy than the mission which sparked the controversyand in a sense, that’s good.
These controversies are among those which have marked the world of video games. To discover the other scandals that shook the medium, do not hesitate to watch our column above.