Putting together this list of the 10 Biggest Video Game Scandals was
an interesting experience. Some of the scandals shed some light on games
and the gaming community. They even taught us about gaming history,
like how the ESRB formed. Other gaming scandals are merely incidents of
senseless violence, or of politicians trying to push an agenda and
exploit a tragic event while doing so. These scandals show off some of
the lightest parts of gamer history, when gamers stood up for themselves
and said they would not be manipulated by publishers or developers, and
the darkest, when employees are needlessly fired and people hurt each
other for juvenile reasons. These are the 10 Biggest Video Game
Scandals. Read them, and think long and hard about how the gaming
community is evolving.
South Korea Starcraft Match Fixing
South Korea has a booming
professional gaming scene, respected almost as much as professional
sports are. How do we know this? Because they have their fair share of
illegal gambling scandals. Only a few years ago, 11 e-athletes were
accused of throwing Starcraft matches for payoffs. They were in league
with illegal gambling cartels that ran “training centers” which really
just taught Starcraft players how to throw matches for money. The
scandal was so big that the South Korea government got involved! It was
called the biggest scandal in e-sports history, and that’s why it’s on
our list of 10 Biggest Video Game Scandals.
Street Fighter X Tekken On Disc DLC
When Street Fighter x Tekken came
out, players were hype to finally see these two fighting game franchises
go at it. Unfortunately, that hype faded quickly as data miners very
quickly found out that all of the game’s downloadable content which was
scheduled to come out several months later was already included on the
disk. With a little bit of hacking, gamers played as these complete
characters in expanded costumes with no problems whatsoever. Capcom
continued to try and defend their choice to put everything on the disk,
but in the end it caused the company’s Better Business Bureau rating to
fall three points.
Microsoft Reverses Its Policies on the Xbox One
It’s a pretty recent scandal, but
it’s a scandal nonetheless. When the Xbox One was coming out, rumors
were flying around about some pretty draconian DRM. Players would need
an always on internet connection, they couldn’t sell used games to each
other, the Kinect couldn’t be shut off, and indie studios couldn’t
self-publish. Then E3 came around and Sony milked Microsoft’s mistakes
for all that they were worth, even making parody videos about how easy
it is to share games on the PS4. While Microsoft tried to explain away
their decisions, they eventually caved and adopted almost every policy
that Sony had before.
The PS3 Security Breach
Speaking of Sony, one of the
biggest gaming scandals was the PS3 security breach that happened a few
years ago. This was about the time that the first jailbreak dongles for
PS3 hardware were developed. The hacker that first helped to develop
them, George Hotz, a.k.a. GeoHot, had come under fire by Sony’s legal
team. Shortly thereafter, Anonymous, the internet activism group,
attacked Sony, possibly for related reasons. The attack caused the PSN
to go offline for several weeks, and possibly even compromised
PlayStation users’ personal info. Hotz denied any involvement with the
attack, but the two just seemed too coincidental to be unrelated.
Kane and Lynch Review Gets GameSpot Employee Fired
The next on our list of the 10
Biggest Gaming Scandals is a sad story for game journalists everywhere.
Back in 2007, GameSpot was running a massive Kane and Lynch banner ad,
probably worth quite a hefty sum of money. When reviewer Jeff Gerstmann
got his hands on the game, he gave it an honest but relatively bad
review. Shortly thereafter, Gerstmann was let go from GameSpot.
Officially, it was never revealed that Gerstmann’s termination was
linked to his poor review of Kane and Lynch, but it’s what nearly
everyone believes at this point. Gestmann and several other former
editors at GameSpot later went on to form Giantbomb.
The Mass Effect Sex Scene
We Americans love a god sex
scandal, and video games have a ton of them, which is why this entry is
on our list of the 10 Biggest Video Game Scandals. Mass Effect was
branded as an, "alien sex simulator" by the many pundits on Fox News who
had absolutely no idea what they were talking about and never played
the game before. They were referring to one scene in the game that
involved a romantic bed scene with an alien girl, complete with very
tasteful censorship. Yet, to the hordes of scare tactic pundits, this
was the pornographic video game of the year.
Grand Theft Auto's Hot Coffee
Now this is the game you go to if
you really want some hardcore porn! Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas had a
famous “Hot Coffee” scene that allowed you to have explicit on screen
sex with a woman by participating in a rhythm mini-game. The mini-game
was taken out of the final product, because it was deemed too risqué.
Unfortunately, all it took was a little bit of hacking and modding and
suddenly the mini-game was visible for all to see. Despite the fact that
the hot coffee scene was literally taken out of the game because of its
explicit nature, conservative America came down on its developers for
even having considered it in the first place.
Mortal Kombat, Night Trap, and the Founding of the ESRB
Believe it or not, there was a time
when the ESRB didn’t exist. At this time, video games were all unrated.
They were just sold, like toys, to whoever wanted to buy them. Some
great games of our time came out during these days, like Super Mario
Bros. 3, while plenty of unrated piles of crap also came out, like
Custer’s Revenge. However, two games really put the fear of the video
game gods into parents everywhere; Mortal Kombat with Sub Zero’s
spine-rip fatality, and Night Trap, whose entire premise was vampires
trying to attack a girls only slumber party. These two games are largely
credited for the formation of the ESRB as we know it today.
Columbine Shooters Played Doom
Whenever a tragic shooting happens,
people rush to blame it all on video games, as if watching a violent
act always turns someone into a murder machine. Heck, it was accusations
like this that made Jack Thompson’s career. However, the biggest
scandal was traced back to the one school shooting that has become
synonymous with school shootings in general: Columbine. The shooters in
this tragic event apparently were fans of Doom, and many tried to say
that they trained themselves on this FPS in order to get the courage to
open fire on their classmates. Frankly, the very idea of this is
sickening. It feels like people are abusing a tragic event just to
further their own agenda.
Any Number of Game Related Murders
Finally, our number one on the list
of the 10 Biggest Video Game Scandals is unfortunately too commonplace
to list just one instance. They are game related murders, essentially
any person killing another person over a video game. A teen was found
guilty of killing his parents over Halo. MMO players have frequently
been found guilty of assault and murder over stolen loot. Even a few
weeks ago, an eight year-old boy was suspected of killing his
grandmother by shooting her in the head, after playing Grand Theft Auto
IV. A brief Google search will turn up countless reports of violent acts
linked to video game disputes. Sorry to end this list on a downer, but
we as a human race need to grow up quick, because no one deserves to die
over a Call of Duty match.
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