• The year kicked off with a bang as Epic Games launched their very own web store to end the latter's monopoly on hentai games. The Epic Game Store may not have launched with much in the way of quality of life features or customer support or actual games but that's ok, they'll patch in all in in post.
  
• The award for first controversy of the year went to Pokémon developers Creatures Inc. who decided to spend their critical first hatsumode of the year at Yasukuni Shrine, a monument to Japanese imperialism although in fairness, Pokémon Go shouldn't have left a Zapdos there.
  
• Never one to shy away from controversy Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford was sued by a former legal employee under accusations of defrauding Gearbox for millions of dollars. Revealed in the lawsuit are details of Pitchford holding recordings of underage camgirls which have been justified under the desire to work out the “magic trick” that is female ejaculation. Ok look, I know this looks back but it's early in the year and there's a long time to bounce back. I'm sure we won't be hearing from Randy again.
  
• A gross error occured at Activision when someone puts down the gun threatening the masters of the Marathon trilogy and Bungie managed to escape their partnership. Long-time fans of the FPS genre were saddened to learn they will retain full rights and commitment to the Destiny franchise.
  
• After being hailed by critics for its level of character choice (including a top 10 spot in our 2018 poll!) Assassin's Creed Odyssey remembered that it was an Ubisoft game and threw that all away with a series of DLC that forces homosexual and asexual versions of Cassandra to get married and have a baby. Luckily this draws few complaints from women as they are all too busy being stuck in the kitchen.
  
• Aware that they had a reputation to maintain after putting out Something Awful's #1 game of 2018 Capcom were right back in the thick of it with the release of the remake of Resident Evil 2, wetting a whole new generation of pants around the world.
  
• After a spat on Twitter with everyone's favourite transphobe Graham Linehan left-wing Youtube hbomberguy took to Twitch to stream a 100% run of Donkey Kong 64 to raise money for the pro-trans charity Mermaids. He garnered mainstream attention and guests including ContraPoints and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez while raising $350,000. Beaver status: bothered.
  
• It was another successful financial year for Activision-Blizzard as they posted profits of $800 million. Executives celebrated by laying off 775 staff members which coincidentally is the same as the number of people still playing Heroes of the Storm.
  
• UNIONISE!
  

• Respawn Entertainment shocked the world when they announced the same-day release of free-to-play battle royale Apex Legends. They then shocked the world a second time when the game turned out to not suck.
  
• The popular Team Fortress 2 Youtuber Sketchek posted his first new video in over three years which would have been a cause for celebration if his previous video hadn't announced that he was about to die from a rare nerve system disease.
  
• Respawn weren't the only ones shocking us with same-day drops this month as Nintendo released Tetris 99, a TETRIS BATTLE loving ROYALE.
  
• It was a sad day for Twitch after part streamer part gimmick DJ Deadmau5 quit the platform in a heated gamer moment after being suspended for calling another player a 'cocksucker'. Pour one out for a real homie.
  
• There was controversy around the rerelease of Atlus's cult-classic puzzler Catherine after a tacked on update with a new happy ending which features the trans character never transitioning which is a terrible way to treat the demographic that makes up a good 40% of your weeaboo audience.
  
• A small group of persecuted gamers bravely spoke out after new promotional material for Mortal Kombat 11 displayed female characters in non-sexualised attire, a heavy attack on 'boner culture'.
  
• After 15 years in the role Reggie Fils-Aime stepped down as President and COO of Nintendo of America. Taking over the position is Doug Bowser who will now finally make enough of a salary to support eight kids as a single father.
  
• BioWare dropped the biggest release of the month as Anthem made its way to shelves. Despite reports of developers putting in major crunch time the game still had clunky menu systems, uninspired mission structures and a non-existent story. The player base departed in droves and even with high initial sales the game was quickly considered a huge failure.
  
• UNIONISE!
  
• THQNordic managed to do an AMA on a site even worse than Reddit as they spent an afternoon yukking it up about paedophilia on actual Nazi-site 8chan. Ever ones to act maturely in a crisis, Valve responded to the controversy in a compassionate manner as they put THQNordic's Wreckfest on discount. Mark got a shoutout though so it was all worth it.
  

• The fashion industry came under threat as Cranium Apparel released the first Esports dress for female gamers. Unfortunately the dress quickly came under criticism for its hyper-sexualised image and the company was forced to admit that we were still waiting for the first Esports dress designed by female gamers.
  
• Capcom graced us with another hit of their apparent endless supply of hits as Devil May Cry 5 reached shelves. The character action game displayed finely tuned combat that let you shoot shadow birds and demon robots or whatever. This was combined with a balls to the wall plot of such insanity that they even managed to redeem Ninja Theory's emo teen version of Dante.
  
• Pierre Taki, Japanese actor and star of Yakuza spin-off Judgement is busted by police for possession of cocaine. Due to the serious nature of this crime Sega, the game's publisher, is forced to pull all marketing and take the game off sale in an unprecedented move as a new release is delayed for an entire revamp of the character's appearance. Shareholders are disappointed by the loss to profits but understand that this is the kind of freak occurrence that will definitely never happen again.
  
• In a vicious and horrifying terrorist attack a 4chan user streamed a mass shooting at a Christchurch synagogue on Facebook. As the video began he urged viewers to 'subscribe to Pewdiepie', referencing a meme developed by the alt-right fanbase of Youtube's most popular Let's Player.
  
• Baba is Out. Game is Good. Meme is Born.
  
• Shane Dawson did not have sex with his cat and he would like it very much if everyone could please stop talking about it, thank you very much.
  
• Another big tech company entered the video game industry as Google announced plans for the release of Stadia, a new streaming service that would let you play with your favourite content creators. Just as long as you're in the 11.9% of the population that has access to fast enough broadband.
  
• Gamers around the world clenched their buttocks and asked their mums for hugs as FromSoftware released its latest challenge of gitting gud, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. The game is hailed as a masterpiece with beautiful landscapes and a powerful ending that none of us need to discuss because we've all obviously completed the game so there's no need in anyone talking about it. Good? Good.
  
• Another company wallowing in the excesses of capitalism this year was EA who announced lay-offs of 350 staff for the financial year despite posting a net income of over $1 billion. Turns out you don't need much of a workforce when all you do is pump out yearly gacha sports licenses.
  
• UNIONISE!
  

• The moderators of Reddit closed down r/games for April Fool's Day to raise speak out about toxicity in the games community including racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia. The good people of Reddit take this as well as would be expected.
  
• The discourse was blessed with royalty when the UK's Prince Harry spoke out calling for every teenager's favourite character dressup and dance emote game Fortnite to be banned as it was of no benefit to anyone and of course, as a member of the Royal Family he would know.
  
• Tweets from SquareEnix staff sadly revealed that Final Fantasy VIII could not be released on Switch as the original code for the PC version had been lost and even more sadly revealed that the original code to Final Fantasy XIII was still very much on file.
  
• The wellness app Ovia was found to be working with employees of Activision-Blizzard to work out when their staff boning down and making babies which is presumably how they spent the money saved from laying off 775 employees.
  
• UNIONISE!
  
• Following revelations that Billy Mitchell, the current Donkey Kong high score holder, had used an emulator to record his world record the sanctioning high-score authority body Twin Galaxies scrubs his result from the record books while the rest of the world looks on in shock at learning an arcade score body of authority exists.
  
• Another company jumped on the mini retro console bandwagon as Capcom pushed out an arcade board containing a number of classic games which would have been a great idea if not for the stolen emulator software at the core of the project.
  
• Seven years after the closure of game servers a secret private version of City of Heroes is revealed to exist for an exclusive cadre of players. Showing a duly justified response one uninvited gamer compared being denied access to the recent Notre Dame fire. Server operators later received death threats from gamers who would probably been more at home in City of Villains.
  
• Microsoft announced the XBox One SAD, their own take on a streaming-only console, because there is no company that can shoot themselves in the face without Microsoft jumping in front of them to take the bullet.
  
• Fight game fans received a big boost with the launch of Mortal Kombat 11 which is quickly embraced by the fanbase apart from some gamers who were upset by one non-canon endgame which eliminates racism from society. Unfortunately the game's left-wing cred was destroyed after reports from Kotaku that staff suffered extreme crunch, systemic sexism and diagnsed PTSD.
  
• UNIONISE!
  
• Sony released open-world zombie fest Days Gone thereby answering the question of if a game released in a forest with nobody around still gets 7/10.
  
• Fears were raised for Twitch streamer Etika after he streamed himself being detained by the police which was all too reasonable in a year when 150 black people were shot to death by police in America.
  
• Sega aimed to emulate the success of the Detective Pikachu trailer as they dropped the first teaser for the Sonic movie which would have worked out great if they hadn't forgotten to make sure Sonic wasn't depicted as a Cthulhian nightmare with HUMAN loving TEETH.
  

• With the success of a still unbanned Fortnite buoying their finances Epic Games purchased games developer Psyonix. Their biggest game, Rocket League, was immediately removed from sale on Steam drawing much outrage from gamers who don't know how to cope with both a Netflix and a Hulu account.
  
• Everyone's favourite Esports furry SonicFox was banned on Twitter after a public altercation with Joanna Cherry, British MP of Edinburgh South West for the Scottish National Party, over rampant examples of transphobia which led to a picture of Lily from the popular anime Zombieland Saga holding a gun being discussed in the House of Commons because it's 2019 is what even is life any more.
  
• In an interview with Game Informer Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford promised that upcoming release Borderlands 3 will not ship with microtransactions. It would however ship with low-cost cosmetic DLC but that is obviously not even close to the same thing.
  
• After being rocked by a number of sexual harassment cases at Riot Games staff discovered clauses in their contracts that any lawsuits brought against their employer will be dealt with through forced arbitration leading to mass walkouts because as the creators of League of Legends they know an organised collective will always beat one lone crybaby impotently calling out slurs.
  
• UNIONISE!
  
• In fears that Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford would go a week without being subject of a new scandal the former voice actor for Claptrap, David Eddings, spoke out about being physically assaulted by Pitchford during GDC 2017 and then being stalked by Pitchford on social media.
  
• The Republican Senator for Missouri, Josh Hawley, introduced a bill in the Senate to ban all lootboxes and microtransactions in the game industry. The bill promised to be a radical set of regulations that would restrict the exploitative practices of video game publishes so this is of course the last you will ever hear of it.
  
• As part of promotion for the latest expansion in their popular MMO, The Elder Scrolls Online, Bethesda released a pen-and-paper RPG adventure module. Unfortunately the module had to be pulled soon after once it was discovered to be a plagiarised version of a Dungeons and Dragons adventure. Now clearly comfortable with plagiarism Bethesda also copied their response to the scandal from other video game companies by announcing they were investigating the matter and then never explaining a thing.
  
• It continued to be a banner year for Youtube's gaming community as ProJared announced an amicable divorce with his wife only for her to immediately accuse him of cheating and soliciting nudes from underage girls under the pretence of body positivity.
  
• Barely recovered from their previous scandal Bethesda released Rage 2 which quickly drew criticism for using imagery suggestive of cleft lip syndrome to depict its mutants. 1 in 1000 babies in the United States is born with a cleft lip.
  
• In a quiet month for new releases it was left to A Plague Tale: Innocence to carry most of the attention as its moving story and unique setting of medieval France during the Black Plague set it out from the crowd. Avoiding the hordes of diseased ridden creatures was difficult but eventually you could get past the other gamers in the store and buy a cope of the game.
  
• In the brand new battle for digital store front supremacy Epic Games Store ran their first sale event which went really well right up until developers began pulling their games from the store after discounts undercut the price of their game on other store fronts. At least there were bargains to be found for the consumers who were able to load up on games on the cheap right up until their accounts were suspended for buying multiple games at discount.
  
• The developer of the popular tactical RPG franchise Disgaea, Nippon Ichi, announced that it was in severe financial trouble and was unable to pay staff wages in a big blow for fans of anime titties everywhere.
  
• In attempt to distract the world from the previous three scandals he had been involved in this year Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford tweeted a video of animal abuse. The shocking video contained images of a kitten being pinched by a crab and forced to play Aliens: Colonial Marines.
  
• A former Rockstar developer accused an executive, Jeronimo Barrera, of sexual assault because apparently he believes real life is a loving Grand Theft Auto game.
  
• The Pokémon Company unveiled their latest project, Pokémon Sleep, which will level Pokémon based on the user's sleep cycle and will finally give gamers all the justification they need to never get out of bed.
  
• One of the most popular Fortnite Esports players, H1ghsky1, revealed that he was aged just 11 years old and was therefore below the legal age to compete, which would never have happened if we'd just listened to Prince Harry.
  
  
  
  
• Seven years after a very successful Kickstarter campaign the developers of Barkley Shut Up and Jam 2 announced that development had been halted and with all funding already spent backers of the game would not receive refunds. In the end the only things that got chaos dunked were our hearts.
  
• The best and the brightest gathered in Los Angeles for E3 for every video gamer's Summer Christmas. Google made their debut appearance to present Stadia's framerate issues and input lag, EA's biggest news was the return of FIFA Street, Microsoft showed off the underground bunker Bill Gates will live in once climate change hits, Bethesda were the latest publishers to sacrifice a beloved franchise on the altar of free-to-play gaming, Devolver Digital were Devolver Digital, Tom Clancy's Ubisoft presented a non-political collective antifascist game non-politcally set in a post-Brexit London, SquareEnix apparently only does re-releases now, Konami tried to cash in on the classic console graft and Sony couldn't even be arsed to show up. All of which left Nintendo to take the win from this year's conference by announcing a bunch of games you actually want to play.
  
• But E3 has never just been about the big contenders. It's always been a chance for the little guy to get some attention as Intellivision president Tommy Tallerico proved when he announced the company's innovative new advertising strategy of marketing their new console to people who don't play video games.
  
• Away from the corporate shilling E3 was still an enjoyable experience for gamers apart from Twitch streamer Dr. Disrespect who had his E3 credentials revoked after streaming himself going to the toilets for a wee on five separate occasions. It turns out that's the kind of stream nobody wants to see!
  
• Just when it looked like they could go a year without getting caught up in controversy a new E3 demo of CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 showed an in-game advert featuring the sexualisation of a pre-op trans woman as well as a prevalence of stereotypical black criminals. The footage opened up a wider debate around the nature and boundaries of trans identity although most agreed that a nuanced discourse could not be expected from a company that had been making jokes about assumed genders just a year prior.
  
• There was also further potential for E3 controversy when the pro wrestler Kenny Omega seemed to endorse noted bad gamers Dr. Disrespect and Boogie although the incident ended up passing quietly by virtue of no one in the gaming community knowing who he was.
  
• New DLC drops for Borderlands to bridge the gap between the game and the upcoming sequel. Included in the DLC is a scene in which Claptrap begs for his old job back, referencing the public dispute between David Eddings and Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford who is heavily developing a lawsuit fetish.
  
• In a meeting of the UK's Commons Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport representatives from Epic declare that they are unable to track how much time users spend playing Fortnite. Meanwhile the VP of Legal and Government Affairs at EA renames lootboxes as “surprise mechanics” and compares them to Kinder Eggs although at least with Kinder Eggs you get to eat some dodgy chocolate before the inevitable disappointment.
  
• New footage of Final Fantasy VII Remake showed that Tifa's breasts had been reduced for the upscaled game drawing ire from teenage boys both young and old.
  
• With fans continuing to have concern over his wellbeing Youtuber Etika posted a video detailing his struggles with suicidal ideation before disappearing. Police found Etika's belongings on Manhattan Bridge four days later leading to fears he has jumped. His body was discovered the next day. If you are feeling at risk please contact someone from the international list of suicide helplines.
  
• The PC manufacturers Razer stepped in to stand up for prejudice against gamers after Brazilian streamer Gabriella Cattuzzo spoke out against being sexualised by men. The company bravely withdrew their sponsorship from Gabriella and were very fortunate to escape the situation without receiving any death threats, unlike Gabriella.
  
• Another game developer's exploitative business practices were exposed as Kotaku released an investigation on rampant crunch culture Treyarch, highlighting a stratified work environment between salaried employees with benefits and contracted staff being underpaid on wages for skilled labour.
  
• UNIONISE!
  
• Gamers around the world were encouraged to unleash their creativity with the release of Super Mario Maker 2 which thanks to responsive controls and an expansive toolset makes making Mario Maker Marios easier than ever before!
  

• The developers of upcoming medieval multiplayer game Mordhau announced plans to include women and POCs as playable characters in a strong show of representation as well as toggles to turn these options invisible to ensure the sensibilities of fragile white males were not shaken.
  
• Enterprising business woman and occasional video gamer Belle Delphine began selling her own bath water to fans thereby proving that we are living in a late capitalist dystopia.
  
• There were new opportunities to be found at Activision-Blizzard as they advertised recruitment for a new Hearthstone community manager which must have gone down well with the entire Hearthstone community team that had been included in the corporate lay-offs at the start of the year.
  
• Following a rise in negative sentiment against Steam key-reseller G2A the company were caught attempting to skirt marketing laws by procuring undisclosed solicited articles from media outlets. Once caught with their hands in the cookie jar G2A proceeded to blame the unsuccessful crime on a rogue employee who had taken the action completely on his own, who had now left the company and who had been working in the Canada office anyway so you totally never met him.
  
• With models of the Switch still flying off the shelves Nintendo announced the Switch Lite, a smaller and slimmer paired down model suitable for those on go and gamers with small hands, finally allowing Donald Trump to get into gaming.
  
• And speaking of Trump there was big news in the political sphere as Ace Watkins began his run for candidacy as America's first ever Gamer President. #VoteAce2020
  
• The latest addition to the Overwatch roster caused a stir online as Sigma was a tank hero covered head to ankle in heavy armour but with bare feet exposed to the world. An online comment from the concept artist indicated the look was intended to evoke a classic mental asylum uniform in a sensationalistic attitude to mental health as outdated as the idea of Blizzard being a good game company.
  
• Tea became everyone's new favourite past-time with the release of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the latest game in the dating sim franchise. With numerous story paths and a solid tactical combat mini-game the game did well but was somewhat marred by the erasure of gay couples as same-sex relationships were qualified as platonic while leaving the option of heterosexual marriage open. Listen boys, you can do this as much as you like but the gal pals are still not going to date you.
  
• Lorne Lanning, creator the pro-worker anti-capitalist Oddworld franchise, claimed that unions would drive small companies out of business and equated them to the death penalty, conveniently ignoring that couldn't afford to be dead to its own staff probably deserved to be dead.
  
• UNIONISE!
  
• Retro fans and gaming historians were excited by the release of the classic Doom games on Switch until in typical Bethesda fashion the publisher managed to turn a slam dunk into a faceplant when they pushed out the games with always online DRM. Nobody at the company could quite explain why this was necessary for a game that was over 25 loving years old.
  
• The developers of Grand Theft Auto, Rockstar committed some grand theft of their own as a TaxWatch report revealed that the company had paid exactly Ł0 in UK corporation tax over the last decade despite claiming Ł42 million from the government in subsidies. The $5 billion revenue from GTA5 was, presumably, all being spent on the executives' Wipe Your Bum With A Twenty motivation program.
  
• The most famous gamer in the world, Ninja, signed a deal to write a book describing how to become an unstoppable gamer. The book, which launched later in the year, contained such vital tips as 'buy a good keyboard' and 'refuse to participate in Twitch streams with women'.
  
• Twitch was hit by a burst of activism as female gamers organised SlutStream to highlight sexual harassment and abuse on the streaming platform. Women involved were sadly the subject of torrents of violent and explicit insults from entitled men which made it exactly the same as every other day.
  
• A marketing push for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare focused on the use of white phosphorous in multiplayer as a major selling point because nothing says thoughtful treatise on the horrors of war than calling your opponent a gamer word while you watch their skin burn all the way to the bone.
  
• The long awaited remaster of Crash Team Racing received an overwhelming number of positive reviews with particular praise spared for its lack of microtransactions. Which made it all the more galling a month later after the review cycle had moved on when Activision patched a whole bunch of them back into the game.
  

Rarity fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Dec 9, 2019

• In another victory for mediocre white men everywhere Ninja signed a sponsorship deal with Microsoft worth $932 million to jump ship to their new streaming platform, Mixer. For more information on what Mixer is and how it works just Bing it.
  
• After their game struck a deal to go exclusive on the Epic Games Store developers of Ooblets told unhappy Kickstarter backers that they were “entitled baby gamers” who should care about climate change instead although if they were really concerned about the planet's environment they shouldn't have been the source of so much hot air.
  
• In the wake of this year's E3 the Entertainment Software Association published online the personal data of over 2000 journalists and content creators. In the ensuing criticism people learn that they had been notified of the issue back in February showing that the only thing less responsive than the ESA is MS Kinect controls.
  
• Following a day in which mass shootings occur in both El Paso, TX and Dayton, OH the minority leader of the House Kevin McCarthy, along with such important names as Donald Trump and Boogie, blames the incidents on violent video games for dehumanising individuals instead of the lack of some actual loving gun laws.
  
• With the continued push by Microsoft to make Mixer a legitimate thing the service revealed clothing guidelines stating that any women wearing croptops or showing visible shoulders would be classified as an 18+ only stream which might sound like Victorian puritanism but was really just Ninja making sure his wife was comfortable with him working on the platform.
  
• Hopes were raised and at EVO where a Tekken advert teased the inclusion of Solid Snake. Gamers were excited by the news until event organisers were forced to admit the teaser had been created as a joke without any authorisation from Konami or David Hayter. Organisers were later seen emulating Solid Snake a second time as they hid in cardboard boxes from Konami's lawyers.
  
• Reports on Twitter that multiple attendees at the EVO after-party had been date-raped passed with little fanfare because that was in fact completely normal for an event after-party.
  
• With indie developers still receiving heat from gamers for taking exclusive deals with the Epic Games Store the store front released a statement denouncing the harassment of their developers and ask for “healthy, truthful discussion” in a fundamental misunderstanding of their key demographic.
  
• Further investigations discovered that as well as mishandling visitor data from 2019 the Entertainment Software Association had also published personal data from 2004, 2006 and 2018. This breach of data protection laws was very serious but also incredibly boring and thus quickly ignored.
  
• Nintendo revealed new British-inspired Galarian versions of classic Pokémon for the upcoming Pokémon Sword/Shield. Included among the new looks was a version of Weezing that transformed it into an old-timey 19th century capitalist that abuses Pichus and Togepis for child labour.
  
• UNIONISE!
  
• After posting leaks for Borderlands 3 on his Youtube channel SupMatto found himself being subject to a 10-month investigation from PIs hired by Take-Two and Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford, who only approves of leaks when they're magic tricks.
  
• America continued to reassess its relationship with video games in the wake of the El Paso and Dayton. ESPN and ABC postponed an Apex Legends Esports tournament while Walmart thoughtfully removed all advertising for violent video games from its stores. Of course the violent video games themselves remained very much on sale. As did the guns.
  
• In a first for video games Planet Digital, developers of the upcoming Cooking Mama: Coming Home announced that the game would feature integrated blockchain rewards so listen to Mama and don't sell now because steakcoin is only going up up UP!
  
• The 16 year old winner of the Fortnite World Cup, Kyle Giersdorf, had a Twitch stream interrupted when the police were fradulently called to his house, a new form on online harassment called swatting. Luckily Kyle was white so the call-out passed without incident.
  
• With their biggest streamer no longer active on the platform Twitch used Ninja's profile to stream two hours of pornography. The adult-rated content did accidentally get sent out to underage viewers but on the other hand it did have more female representation.
  
• A developer for 90's FPS throwback Ion Fury posted misogyny and transphobia in coded alt-right comments on the company's Discord channel leading to a string of negative criticisms on Steam from women, queer gamers and allies. In a controlled and measured response the company purged all but the most glowing of reviews in a clear sign that the company the only things they loved more than 90s gameplay was 90s hate-speech.
  
• There were an ignominious couple of days at BioWare as the company lost the lead developer for Dragon Age 4 and the lead developer for Anthem in the space of 48 hours as the company's name value continued to plummet faster than Anthem's player base.
  
• Content creators on Youtube uploaded Minecraft videos with pornographic thumbnails although they easily get lost in the endless sea of swearing Peppa Pig and Elsa/Spider-Man clickbait.
  
• After days of negative PR the Ion Fury developers were forced to issue an apology for previous comments, vow to cut homophobic content from the game and donate $10,000 to the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ+ youth charity. Their Steam page is bombarded by a further round of negative views from chuds and shitheads angered by the apology. These reviews mysteriously go undeleted.
  
• Years of secrecy come to an end as the first gameplay footage for Hideo Kojima's new project, Death Stranding, revealed that the game has deep urination mechanics. Godammit Kojima, you beautiful bastard, you've done it again!
  
• In response to the second round of negative reviews the Ion Fury developers, backed with the support of publisher 3DRealms, apologised for their previous apology and reiterated their commitment to keep the game's homophobic content citing a refusal to submit to censorship. The response drew praise from many gamers who were glad someone was finally standing up for straight white men.
  
• Gamers around the world said quit their jobs and said goodbye to their families as World of Warcraft Classic launched. The faithful recreation of the vanilla version of the world's most popular MMORPG was an immediate hit with two hour long queues on certain servers. Players were delighted to revisit the halcyon days of their youth but were disappointed to learn the game actually make you any younger.
  
• There was embarrassment in the JRPG community as the subreddit for Fire Emblem was forced to issue a statement cracking down on fan-made child pornography, swiftly followed by a second statement cracking down on fan-made child pornography because they just couldn't stop themselves the first time.
  
• Five years removed from the Gamergate abuse Zoe Quinn put herself back in the public firing line as she joined Nathalie Whitehead in publicly naming men that had sexually assaulted them beginning a tide of #MeToo allegations an undercurrent of sexism rife in the video game industry that was already obvious to anyone with a pulse and most people without one.
  
• Initial excitement over the announcement of Yakuza 7 turned to sheer confusion as the game was revealed to be a turn-based RPG although fans were probably less confused than those wondering why the next Dragon Quest was suddenly a third-person brawler.
  
• Having been named and shamed by Zoe Quinn's #MeToo allegation Alec Holowka was found having taken his own life. The Holowka family took time out of their mourning to request that Quinn be left alone so naturally she ends up having to delete her Twitter to get away from all the angry men calling her a murderer.
  

• A year of hard work and endless scandal for Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford came to its fruition with the release of Borderlands 3. However reviewers were purposefully sent early builds of the game instead of the final product and sites like Kotaku and GiantBomb were skipped entirely due to previous negative coverage of Pitchford and Take-Two. Even so the game received many negative reviews which Pitchford then dutifully signal boosted with retweets on the Twitter because not understanding how PR works is the least of this man's troubles.
  
• In one of the weirdest pieces of advertising all year KFC launched corporate synergy dating-sim I Love You Colonel Sanders, it was finger-lickin' good!
  
• The long protracted death of physical media continued as Gamestop announced that they were closing 200 stores with more likely to follow over the next couple of years drawing celebrations from every gamer who's nan had been pushed into buying the new Madden game for them at Christmas.
  
• With his reputation in tatters Billy Mitchell files a defamation lawsuit against Twin Galaxies demanding that his Donkey Kong high score be restored although the suit soon ran into some issues when it turned out everyone thought he was an rear end in a top hat anyway.
  
• An advert for NBA 2k20 directly compared lootboxes to casino fruit games although the only real direct comparison was the bit where you ended up three grand in the hole in debt to the house.
  
• Yet another game publisher's work practices were exposed as Kotaku published an investigation into Nicalis founder Tyler Rodriguez and the toxic culture in the company that encouraged bullying, racism and antisemitism .
  
• UNIONISE!
  
• In a rare example of positive self-reflection PewDiePie pledged a donation $50,000 to the Anti-Defamation League only to pull it at the last minute after a torrent of antisemitic complaints from his alt-right fanbase and thereby completing defeating the purpose of what was already a naked PR move.
  
• Crowd-funding platform Kickstarter fired three staff members taking key roles in the workforce's attempts to unionise. Kickstart claimed the firings were based on performance related issues although this is somewhat belied by a five page letter to creators that claims the union dynamic will not solve any problems at Kickstarter.
  
• JUST loving UNIONISE!
  
• There were celebrations around the world as twenty years on from the first time he picked up a Pokéball, Ash Ketchum, won the Alola Pokémon League and completed his quest of becoming a Grand Master. With his name written in the record books Ash retired from the Pokémon scene, presumably to find out which genetic disease has prevented him from growing any older than a ten year old boy.
  
• In a ruling with potentially far-reaching consequences judges in France declared that Steam users should be able to resell their digitally owned games. This was great news for gamers but terrible news for publishers who could no longer rely on the platform to prevent lost profit from the second hand market and so obviously has yet to be implemented.
  
• The meme makers had a field day as Untitled Goose Game became the biggest hit of the year The charming title detailed the adventures of a goose as it ransacked its village causing trouble for its local residents. With a simplistic art style and ingenious stealth quests it wound up becoming OH WILL YOU JUST SHUT UP AND LET ME FINISH YOU GODDAM STUPID GOOSE.
  

• Already the subject of scrutiny following recent allegations Nicalis doubled down on their behaviour by pulling Ittle Dew 2 off of Steam and ghosting the developer as a hardball tactic for a dispute over property rights. It may not have been the most mature response to the conflict but as far as Nicalis were concerned it'll do.
  
• With subscription game streaming platforms becoming popular on the market Google launches Google Play Pass to bring the model to Android phones. However the setup threatens to put small game developers out of business due to decreased payouts based on time spent by users in game so the creator of Super Hexagon was especially hosed.
  
• Following a year in which Fallout 76 had been ridiculed and igored by the gaming community it managed to push itself back into the public eye when it turned out collectible helmets included in the promo launch editions would need to be recalled due to lethal levels of mould as it became the only game to gently caress up a launch a year after the game was out.
  
• After two years of building a reputation for legitimate video game journalism Kotaku threw it all away by publishing an article containing child pornography. The article was quickly pulled and an apology was issued during which the site argued for a rigorous moral debate around the use of underage characters in pornography.
  
• gently caress no. That's it. That's the debate.
  
• Sensing the chance to jump in on the hot new trend Focus Home Interactive pulled all of Frogwares's games from store fronts including the Sherlock Holmes series and the Sinking City as they refused to transfer over IP rights in a display of greed so naked even Sherlock couldn't solve it.
  
• The tough year continued for Randy Pitchford and Gearbox as the famous voice actor Troy Baker gave an interview stating that he wasn't used for vocal talent in Borderlands 3 as the publisher didn't want to use union voice actors because this company is the actual worst.
  
• The composer for Duke Nukem 3D, Robert Prince, discovered that his music had been used without permission and was forced to issue a lawsuit against – oh come on – Gearbox and Randy Pitchford. What are we even loving doing here?
  

• The developer of indie RPG Heartbeat listed the game for a Steam sale at a 41% discount following a series of transphobic tweets from both himself and his partner. 41% of transgender youths have attempted suicide.
  
• We waved goodbye to another game developer as AlphaDream, creators of the Mario and Luigi RPG series, declared bankruptcy bringing their superstar saga to a close.
  
• There were further developments in the burgeoning world of fast food brand/gaming crossovers as Wendy's produced Feast of Legends, a free tabletop RPG that failed to credit any of its designers and with a story ending with a paramilitary force executing McDonalds customers.
  
• The Monument Valley developer USTwo fired a founding member of Game Workers Unite UK after being questioned by management about union activities. USTwo denied that the firing was related to the union but conveniently chose not to comment any further.
  
• UNIONISE!
  
• In perhaps the first good bit of news for Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford all year the lawsuit brought against him for fraud was quietly dropped following an out-of-court settlement thankfully saving us all from having to hear Pitchford try to understand female ejaculation while on the stand.
  
• During a Hearthstone competition, professoinal Esports gamer blitzchung spoke out in support of the Hong Kong protests that had been rising against the Chinese government for most of the year. In response Blizzard removed from the competition, suspended his Battle.net account for a year and withheld payment of recent prize money that he had earned. They also fired the two producers responsible for streaming the event. Settle in, folks. We're gonna be here a while.
  
• With many Blizzard users upset by the company's open support of China they took to the Blizzard forums to register their concerns at which point Blizzard doubled down and probated or suspended their accounts.
  
• The fallout wasn't just contained to the Blizzard forums as Reddit was also swamped with posters sharing their opinions. In the end moderators were forced to close down r/Blizzard as they were not able to handle the task of moderating the discourse. Meanwhile on r/Hearthstone users were sharing guides on how to unsubscribe from your Battle.net account, not realising that you could just speak out in support of Hong Kong and Blizzard would do the rest for you.
  
• Students from American University competing in a collegiate Hearthstone competition held up a Free Hong Kong sign mid-match and were immediately disqualified from the tournament with producers banning all post-match interviews.
  
• All the popular Hearthstone streamers on Twitch refused to comment on the Hong Kong situation marking the first time a Twitch streamer has ever been known to shut up.
  
• Figures published by PCGamer showed that the Chinese game company Tencent had investments in a number of major Western companies including Ubisoft, Paradox, Epic, Riot and, to a total lack of surprise from anyone, Activision-Blizzard.
  
• Not even voice actors were saved from the furore as Elise Zhang, the voice of Mei in Overwatch, was called out after tweeting in denial of the ongoing Uighur genocide by the Chinese. Fans retaliated by co-opting Mei in memes and fan-art as a supporter of the protests. There are currently over a million Uighurs being held in concentration camps in China.
  
• After days of uproar Blizzard finally got their poo poo together and made an apology. To the people of China. They released a statement on the Chinese social media platform Weibo in which they promised to “safeguard the country's dignity” even though they themselves had clearly left dignity three exits back.
  
• Sony laid off dozens of staff from its European division citing redundancy of their roles which would have sounded a lot more convincing if they hadn't also revealed spec plans for their brand new console on the same day.
  
• With their player base still near the point of revolt there were further difficulties for Blizzard as staff members began organising daily walkouts in support of blitzchung as Blizzard's actions continued to draw criticism from literally everybody
  
• With continued scepticism over the ambition of their technology and a number of previous failed tech demos Google explained that Stadia would combat input lag by creating new technology that would create “negative latency” which would have been all right if negative latency was a thing that existed.
  
• After years of using the likes of Call of Duty and Battlefield as recruitment drives the US Army set up their own Esports team to really milk the large crossover between gamers and fascists.
  
• An anonymous Blizzard employee gave an interview with Vice about the ongoing censorship conflict in which they revealed that company executives had not come up with any long-term strategy or plan of action which is not surprising for anyone who's been keeping up with retail World of Warcraft.
  
• Over a week after the initial incident Blizzard returned blitzchung's prize money and reduced his suspension to six months. In their public statement they insisted that his infraction was veering away from discussion of the game in his post-match interview rather than for criticising China. The timestamp of the statement and lingual analysis indicated that the statement had been written in China.
  
• Social media for Fortnite announced the end of the game as their Twitter was deleted and their Twitch channel went dark. The trailer for Fortnite Chapter 2 eventully dropped after gamers spent days watching a blank screen which was at least more rewarding than watching someone stream Fortnite.
  
• Fallout at Blizzard continued as the launch of Overwatch on Switch was disrupted when a fan meet and greet was cancelled amid fears that it would be used as an opportunity for critics to denounce the company's censorship, all of which did nothing to reduce the number of critics looking to denounce the company's censorship.
  
• The American University collegiate team that had been disqualified for supporting blitzchung was also suspended for 6 months although as the team consisted of white men Blizzard did at least have the good grace to think about it for a week first.
  
• Discussion of censorship continued to run rife on the offical Twitch stream for Hearthstone until Blizzard started banning anyone who mentioned Hong Kong in the stream's chat, thereby solving the problem of censorship with even more censorship.
  
• Politicians began to get involved with the Blizzard situation as Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and a number of other House representatives signed a letter condemning Blizzard for their treatment of blitzchung as the fact politicans now knew who an Esports pro was showed just how badly Blizzard had hosed up.
  
• The annual release of WWE 2k20 is marred by a change of developer leading to a broken mess of a game that went viral with glitches including but not limited to detachable hair, ringside managers cloning themselves mid-match, 2v2 tag matches turning into 3v1 handicap matches, messed up face scans, the Shield floating during their ring entrance, invisible wrestlers, wrestlers having seizures, wrestlers getting locked in crouch walks and Becky Lynch losing her face.
  
• There was good news for fans of Japanese weirdness as Suda51 and Swery announced they were working on a game together. During the announcement they got Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama on text message to agree to join the horror collaboration. Minds around the world already began to collapse in mere contemplation of the bizarreness awaiting.
  
• With Fallout 76 becoming a commercial failure Bethesda set up a premium subscription account to wring the last bit of blood from that stone. In keeping with the game's traditions Fallout 1st subscribers were rewarded with private worlds that other players could enter and a storebox that permanently ate their items.
  
• Executives at NBC and CBS greenlit new sitcom pilots based around the world of Esports not seeming to understand that the world of Esports is Serious Business.
  
• Another indie title made a big splash this year as the fantastic anarcho-communist RPG simulator Disco Elysium came out and every other game just quit in protest.
  
• As Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, this year's entry in everyone's second favourite white supremacist franchise, hit the shelves players discovered that the storyline reframed a conflict with the Syrians in which Americans had committed to war atrocities to blame Russians and Kurds instead although no one could work out whether this was worse than the level which let you shoot a baby.
  
• In a show of collective action the entire writing staff for Kotaku resigned in solidarity with a Deadspin editor that had been fired by their parent company for encouraging political content thereby bringing an end to the recent years of good journalism produced by the site as well as the occasional post full of child pornography.
  
• There were further problems for Blizzard as the car manufacturer Mitsubishi cancelled its sponsorship of the company based on their mishandling of the Hong Kong censorship.
  
• Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time.
  

• After a disastrous October Blizzard could finally put the Hong Kong troubles behind them and step away from the public eye by running their very public convention, Blizzcon. The event was interrupted by daily protests outside the conference hall while the keynote speaker took time to apologise for the “Hearthstone situation” with so much ambiguity that he might as well have been talking about the latest nerf to Shaman decks.
  
• There were more troubles for Blizzard as they came under fire for taking 15 years to add extra ethnicities to World of Warcraft. They claimed this was because the most popular MMORPG in the world lacked the resources to do which was quickly called out as bullshit but it still must have been nice for the people at Blizzard to get a break from the censorship protests.
  
• Meanwhile there were also issues with representation at – oh for gently caress sake – Blizzard as the director for Overwatch indicated that the first black female hero for the game had to be held back for Overwatch 2 due to story reasons, completely ignoring the fact that they could have just created another black female hero in the meantime.
  
• With his fanbase failing to follow him over to Mixer Ninja claimed that successful streamers should receive special dispensation from rules on streaming platforms as having their accounts suspended threatened their livelihood indicating that his streams are more likely to include heated gamer moments than women.
  
• After years of patiently praying and trying to decipher Hideo Kojima's tweets gamers finally got their hands on Death Stranding and learned the game was a FedEx delivery man simulator with deep stumbling and carrying mechanics and a major product placement deal with Monster and yet still somehow one of the best games anyone had ever played.
  
• Leaks coming out of 2K indicated that Bioshock 4 would be a live-service game because after looking at the catastrophes that were Anthem and Fallout 76 that was clearly the kind of action they wanted to be part of.
  
• Bethesda continued to piss away every last inch of good will they had left as Fallout 1st subscribers to Fallout 76 started to find their accounts banned for reporting bugs. While being prevented from playing the game might have improved their lives the lack of a refund from Bethesda for the rest of their sub time certainly didn't.
  
• Taking time away from the all important task of telling Blizzard what was and wasn't acceptable speech China imposed a 90 minute video game daily curfew on their citizens raising interesting questions about why they would put so much investment in a form of media they rated so lowly.
  
• Controversy marred the release of Pokémon Sword/Shield as Dexit overtook the internet. With fans already mad that for the first time there would be no National Pokédex they only got more angry when it became clear Game Freak had not updated the Pokémon models and animations as previously announced meaning there was no excuse for the game not to include every Pokémon. After all, Gotta Catch Some of 'Em All didn't have the same ring to it.
  
• A full twelve years after Half-Life 2 Episode Two fans of the franchise were excited when Valve announced a new game in the franchise and then immediately disappointed as the game was announced to be in VR.
  
• Following months of negative publicity Stadia launched and immediately crashed with a weak games library, low sales figures and a final product with latency issues as bad as everyone expected from the company that gave us Google Glass, Google+, Google Video and Google Knol.
  
• Another franchise returned from the dead with the release of Shenmue III. The stilted acting and antiquated gameplay was a love letter for fans who had helped fund the project and completely incomprehensible to everyone else.
  
• Yet another indie publisher was exposed as fraudulent when the developer for Devil Engine announced that Dangen were refusing to pay him for his game marking the first time in history a game developer had encouraged fans to pirate the game for free.
  
• 2K announced plans to close down the servers for Battleborn, shocking a whole lot of gamers who had assumed the game was already dead.
  
• An involved party posted full chatlogs, emails and tweets on Medium detailing the extent of the Dangen CEO's abuse of developers and contractors in an extraordinary clapback who's receipts came with receipts.
  
• As a result of collective action Riot Games agreed to a $10 million payout to be shared between every woman to have ever worked for the company in an unprecedented settlement that still didn't make up for the fact that many named abusers were still with the company.
  
• UNIONISE!
  

• With Campo Santo now working on Half-Life: Alyx confirmation came through from Valve that their previous project, In The Valley of the Gods, had been indefinitely suspended and some staff members let go because producing a creative and thoughtful piece with artistic merit wasn't as important as making GBS threads out whichever gimmick Valve cared about this month.
  
• As ever game releases were slim on the ground in December leaving the arrival of Halo: The Master Chief Collection on PC to get the most attention. Gamers were hyped up to journey with the Chief once more until they played the collection and remembered it was the same tired gameplay they'd grown bored of a decade ago.
  
• After being bought out by Bethesda the creators of Rune 2, Human Head Studios found themselves sued by their previous publisher for abandoning the game's content plan although they could hardly be blamed for so quickly adapting to Bethesda's culture.
  
• Fans were relieved when Ice T tweeted confirmation that he stood with gamers although whether he would rise up with gamers remained unclear.
  
• Talks began between the creators of the Walking Dead and Dr. Disrespect to make a TV show based around his streaming persona. Presumably the scenes of him filming minors while they peed would not be included.
  

haveblue fucked around with this message at 07:23 on Dec 10, 2019

cheetah7071 fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Dec 10, 2019

Songbearer fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Dec 10, 2019

Mercury Crusader fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Dec 10, 2019