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Assassin's Creed Shadows
1
One of the game's dual protagonists Yasuke, an African samurai, is the first main character in the Assassin's Creed series to be based on a real historical figure, but his real-life identity and status serving under Japanese daimyo Oda Nobunaga has been the subject of a contentious debate among historians. There are few scholarly/historical resources available describing him and his life and no known resources that refer to him as a samurai, with the most common conclusion being his title was a retainer to Nobunaga.

His reveal as a main character in the game caused polarizing reactions worldwide on social media. Fans critical of the decision claimed Ubisoft misrepresented Japan, which had never been covered in-depth in the globally-spanning game series, by not having both protagonists be Japanese (the other protagonist, Naoe, is Japanese) and claim that Yasuke was not actually a samurai, while those in support of Yasuke's role and claim that he was actually a samurai called these objections racist and based on narrow-minded arguments and inferences, with some going so far as to opine that Asian samurai protagonists in media were oversaturated. This intense fighting lead to Yasuke's English Wikipedia article entering an edit war, with administrators publicly calling the Talk page "a complete dumpster fire". As of May 19, 2024, the consensus that was reached on the Talk page appears to be that there is still no historical evidence confirming that Yasuke was a samurai, and the article does not call him one when talking about his documented life.

The lack of clarity on his life allowed popular culture/media to take creative liberties in speculating who he was, often depicting him in adaptations as a high-ranking samurai, and Ubisoft seemed to be going in a similar direction. The advertising for the game at its announcement on May 15 described Yasuke as a "samurai of historical legend", and a press release stated:

"Ubisoft Quebec wanted to include a Samurai, and Yasuke's story was open-ended enough to allow for creativity; there are still plenty of questions and speculation surrounding him. The fascinating facts, though, were undisputable: of African origin, he arrived in Japan enslaved by the Portuguese; he impressed with size, strength, and wits; he served under the Japanese daimyo Oda Nobunaga. There must have been something exceptional about Yasuke to succeed in the service of a personality like Nobunaga's, [...] and the goal has been to expound on this in Assassin's Creed Shadows through his curiosity, openness, respect for values and tradition, valor, warmth, and charisma."

While the header for this section is called "Yasuke: A Real-Life Samurai", this description seems to be carefully worded to stop short of directly calling him a samurai, with the use of "historical legend" elsewhere suggesting that they were aware of its unconfirmed status and were fictionalizing Yasuke for the game.

In a set of developer interviews with Famitsu published the same day, creative director Jonathan Dumont elaborated that they also chose Yasuke to fit with the game's story of a foreigner who fights off oppressing forces like the Portuguese slave trade affecting Japan while exploring a country unknown to him, stating that they "were first looking for "our samurai," someone who could be our non-Japanese eyes". The following day, the Famitsu article was edited to change direct quotes in the interviews where Yasuke was referred to as an "outsider" to being a "foreign-born samurai", and also completely removed the aforementioned quote, for unknown reasons.
person MehDeletingLater calendar_month May 19, 2024
Game website:
https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/assassins-creed/shadows

Ubisoft press release:
https://news.ubisoft.com/en-us/article/2LH4Ael4X1TlNJY3B3aYg5/assassins-creed-shadows-launches-november-15-features-dual-protagonists-in-feudal-japan

IGN articles:
https://www.ign.com/articles/when-and-where-is-assassins-creed-shadows-set
https://www.ign.com/articles/assassins-creed-shadows-yasuke-asian-protagonist

Time article:
https://time.com/6978997/assassins-creed-shadow-yasuke-controversy/

Forbes article:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarder/2024/05/15/japanese-fans-are-puzzled-that-yasuke-is-in-assassins-creed-shadows/

Yasuke English Wikipedia article (Note: while much of this controversy occurred on English language Wikipedia, bear in mind that Wikipedia articles by themselves are not reliable sources for historical research, and the English article is not a uniform representation of the information on Yasuke across the different language versions of Wikipedia that have this article. There are varying primary, secondary, historical and pop culture sources used in all of these articles either backing up verified information about him, or making different claims that may not be accurate.):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasuke
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Yasuke

Wikipedia administrator discussion:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240518220622/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Talk:Yasuke_is_a_complete_dumpster_fire

Earliest archive of original Famitsu interview (in Japanese; English machine translations for all archives of this article compared between Google Translate and DeepL prior to publishing this submission) (May 15):
https://web.archive.org/web/20240515185159/https://www.famitsu.com/article/202405/5194

Archived edited interview (May 16):
https://web.archive.org/web/20240516194746/https://www.famitsu.com/article/202405/5194

Latest archived edit (May 18):
https://web.archive.org/web/20240518034336/https://www.famitsu.com/article/202405/5194
Fortnite
subdirectory_arrow_right Epic Games (Company)
1
In May 2024, the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) fined Epic Games €1,125,000 for using "unfair commercial practices" aimed at children in Fortnite. The investigation found that Epic Games "exploited [the] vulnerabilities" of children through design choices in the game's Item Shop. Examples include the use of demanding phrases like "get it now" or "buy now" on certain advertisements, which the ACM deemed an "illegal aggressive commercial practice", as well as countdown timers that were used on some ads for items still available in the shop after the countdown ended, exploiting a fear of missing out by making items that were still available for sale falsely seem scarce. Epic Games immediately made changes to the game in response to this report, including removing countdown timers worldwide and adding time indicators for shop refreshes and item removal dates. As of May 24, 2024, players under 18 years of age in the Netherlands can only see items available for 48 hours or more in the store. However, the company still planned to appeal the decision, claiming that the ACM's findings contain factual errors about how Fortnite and the Item Shop operate.
PokéRogue
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2
Stellar Blade
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person chocolatejr9 calendar_month April 27, 2024
Sexualization complaints:
https://www.denofgeek.com/games/stellar-blade-controversy-explained/

South Korean rating:
https://en.as.com/meristation/news/stellar-blade-gets-an-adults-only-rating-due-to-nudity-and-explicit-gore-n/

Design choice quote:
https://fandomwire.com/hyung-tae-kim-stellar-blade-avoid-controversy/

Day 1 patch censorship:
https://esports.gg/news/stellar-blade/players-outraged-at-unexpected-stellar-blade-outfit-censorship/

Compilation of outfits in base game before Day 1 patch (uncensored versions of Cybernetic Bondage at 2:30, and Holiday Rabbit at 4:52):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMT6z9xejeA

Compilation of outfits after Day 1 patch (censored versions of Cybernetic Bondage at 1:03, Holiday Rabbit at 2:19, and Moutan Peony at 3:02):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAcvYBGPoGk

Nano Suit tutorial pop-up montage with uncensored Moutan Peony costume (this is the only footage I could find of anyone sitting through this video start to finish):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHJhViruQKM?t=3761

Stellar Blade uncensored claim tweet:
https://twitter.com/StellarBlade/status/1781976139688534449

Video of Hyung-Tae Kim defending update changes:
https://www.reddit.com/r/stellarblade/comments/1cdlllp/directors_answer_to_the_change_in_the_outfitvideo/

GameAbout interview with Kim (article in Korean):
https://www.gameabout.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=87017

IGN interview with Yoko Taro and Kim:
https://www.ign.com/articles/stellar-blade-x-nier-automata-taro-yoko-hyung-tae-kim
The Witch and the Hundred Knight
1
A major bug in The Witch and the Hundred Knight that can occur at seemingly any time will force the game to return to the system menu, losing all unsaved progress as a result. This became a common critique in the game's reviews, leading it to not be received as favorably by some. While The Witch and the Hundred Knight: Revival Edition did not fully fix this glitch, it occurs much less frequently, with playing for extended periods of time being noted as a possible factor.
person chocolatejr9 calendar_month April 24, 2024
Fallout 3
subdirectory_arrow_right Bethesda Softworks (Company)
2
According to former character artist Jonah Lobe, the response from Fallout fans and the fan website "No Mutants Allowed" to Bethesda purchasing the series from Interplay Entertainment and developing Fallout 3 consisted of "a lot of excitement, a lot of enthusiasm, and a lot of death threats." Lobe claimed that while he and other employees at Bethesda were not "privy" to most of the details on the threats due to the company shielding them from its workforce, as a result of the overwhelmingly vocal and mixed responses from fans, Bethesda had to hire a security guard for the first time in its 21-year history.
Platform: Virtual Boy
1
In a 2011 Iwata Asks interview, Shigeru Miyamoto expressed discontent at the Virtual Boy being marketed as a video game console. He believed it was simply a novelty toy and that it succeeded in that field despite its commercial failure as a game console:

"It was the kind of toy to get you excited and make you think, 'This is what we can do now!' […] as just a fun toy, it's a big success if you break just 50,000 […] [Its] sales generated some buzz, and crossed 100,000, then 200,000, then 500,000-quite a good pattern […] [But] when you think of it as a gaming platform, it becomes a failure."
Final Fantasy X
subdirectory_arrow_right Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster (Game), Final Fantasy X-2 (Game), Final Fantasy (Franchise)
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person MehDeletingLater calendar_month April 14, 2024
Unofficial Japanese to French to English translation of Final Fantasy X-2.5 ~Eien no Daishō~ (3 page forum thread):
https://ffx3chat.createaforum.com/general-discussion/~eternal-cost~-french-to-english-translation-47/

Final Fantasy -Will- (links include Japanese audio, English subtitles, and English audio):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpWZ4bli70Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJd3Tfu5ulY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXf2RqR3lM4

Amazon link to the novella with mixed user reviews:
https://www.amazon.co.jp/FINAL-FANTASY-X-2-5-~永遠の代償~-ノベルズ/dp/4757541570

Article about novella criticism:
https://gamerescape.com/2014/01/03/final-fantasy-x-novella-causing-a-stir-among-japanese-fans/

Satirical article criticizing the novella:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150325022124/https://www.p4rgaming.com/square-enix-accidentally-publishes-fanfiction-for-the-final-fantasy-x-2-5-novel/

Videos covering X-2.5 and Will:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbELoIdX7Hg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDb7hsrcZUY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lT7Qr0oG1SA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3ecZEPkemE

Blog posts discussing the plots of X-2.5 and Will:
https://marathonrecaps.wordpress.com/2021/03/18/final-fantasy-x-2-5-price-of-eternity-big-bad-book/
https://marathonrecaps.wordpress.com/2021/03/25/final-fantasy-x-2-5-price-of-eternity-violence-in-sports/
https://marathonrecaps.wordpress.com/2021/04/01/final-fantasy-x-2-5-price-of-eternity-kick-the-puppy-love/
https://marathonrecaps.wordpress.com/2021/05/13/final-fantasy-x-will-literally-listen-to-my-story/
https://marathonrecaps.wordpress.com/2021/05/20/final-fantasy-x-will-alls-well-that-ends-under-a-giant-whale/
Fallout: New Vegas
subdirectory_arrow_right Fallout (Franchise)
2
During an interview with Variety Fair, Todd Howard revealed that the 2024 live-action "Fallout" TV series was considered canon to the games, having wanted to tell an original story within the game's world rather than adapt any of the previous games. However, when the show came out, this lead to complaints from fans accusing the show of retconning the events of Fallout: New Vegas. Specifically, the sixth episode "The Trap" featured a shot of a blackboard seemingly depicting the fall of Shady Sands (the capital of the New California Republic) as taking place in the year 2277. Fallout: New Vegas takes place in the year 2281, yet Shady Sands is stated to still exist in the game without any mention of a fall (although the city cannot be visited in-game). Emil Pagliarulo, a design director for Bethesda, would try to assure fans on Twitter that Fallout: New Vegas is still considered canon, claiming to being overprotective of the series' lore and going as far as to post a timeline of the Fallout series. While the timeline not only featured both Fallout: New Vegas, the TV series, and also confirmed that Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel is considered canon to the series, it did not address the timeline inconsistency brought about by the blackboard scene in the show. This reportedly lead some fans to accuse Bethesda of holding a grudge against Obsidian Entertainment for making what many fans consider to be the best Fallout game and using the show as a way to spite them. However, it's worth noting that there are three other possible explanations for the inconsistency:

• Whoever wrote "2277" was misinformed due to the post-apocalyptic setting forcing many to rely on guesswork for event dates.
• It could be a simple mistake in writing for a series with large amounts of lore to it.
• It could be a reference to the "Lonesome Road" DLC expansion for New Vegas, where the player is given the option to nuke the NCR, though there is no confirmation that this ending is canon.

Howard would later defend the TV series and insist the game is still canon in an interview with IGN, claiming he had an emotional reaction when the TV series writers brought up the idea of bombing Shady Sands (which he also clarified was not a nuclear bombing) and carefully talked through the decision with them. When asked specifically about the 2277/2281 inconsistency, his response was that they were "threading [the needle] tighter there" to make it land in the TV series, move the Fallout series forward, and insisted that the fall of Shady Sands took place just after the events of the game. He reiterated that Bethesda was careful about sticking to the series timeline, admitting that there "might be a little bit of confusion at some places" and claimed that what was most important to them was what was happening in the time period of the TV series.
person chocolatejr9 calendar_month April 14, 2024
Beatmania IIDX 4th style
2
According to a tweet by dj TAKA, the song "ABSOLUTE" was originally called "Special Thanks". The name was changed after CG Designer VJ GYO and illustrator GOLI thought the name was "lame".
person aa1205 calendar_month April 13, 2024
Street Fighter 6
1
Attachment When Street Fighter 6's preliminary logo was revealed, it was mocked for a variety of reasons, particularly a disconnect from previous series logos and aligning with a widely criticized trend of generic, minimalist or "oversimplified" logos. Some fans noted that the logo strongly resembled an $80 design for an "SF" logo posted on the Adobe Stock Image store by user xcoolee, which had previously been used for a sci-fi convention in France. xcoolee did offer to sell exclusive rights to the logo to Capcom, but was seemingly denied. It was also discovered that a Taiwanese electronics and appliances retailer, Sunfar, had a similar hexagonal logo. On the day after Street Fighter 6's logo reveal, the front page of their website displayed an advertisement with the logo featuring a paint splatter reading the number 6 promoting gaming products, most likely as a promotional parody. It is unknown if either resemblance was a coincidence on Capcom's part, and xcoolee did not state if they knew whether Capcom bought anything from their store or not. The logo of Street Fighter 6 would be updated to appear more stylized before the game's launch in response to the negative reception, although the fan reception to the new logo was not much more positive.
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month April 11, 2024
Cooking Mama: Cookstar
subdirectory_arrow_right Yum Yum Cookstar (Game)
2
Yum Yum Cookstar appears to have been made as some kind of contingency over Cooking Mama: Cookstar's infamous legal disputes, being made by the same developers and publishers and having gone on sale on Steam a mere week before Cooking Mama: Cookstar was withdrawn from sale. While it is not known to what extent Yum Yum Cookstar is based on Cooking Mama: Cookstar, it does have a substantial difference in gameplay, having a psuedo-rhythm element that does not exist in the latter game.

Some prints of the box art have a printed sticker noting the game's connection to Cooking Mama: Cookstar, in spite of the controversy. The official website, TikTok account, and trailers for Yum Yum Cookstar proclaim the game to be made by "the creators of the best-selling hitgame[sic] Cookstar" (without acknowledging the Cooking Mama series by name) and use the slogan "This ain't your mama's kitchen!". The veracity of the claim of the first Cookstar being a best-seller is not known as sales figures have not been released.
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month April 11, 2024
Fruit Ninja
subdirectory_arrow_right Fruit Ninja (Collection)
2
According to Fruit Ninja creator Luke Muscat in a comment on a YouTube video comparing the 1993 and 2023 Super Mario Bros. movies, there was a massive push following Fruit Ninja's success to have it be adapted for TV or cinema, something he attributed to other members of the studio feeling that the other 2 mediums were more "legitimate" in the face of an era where games were not taken as seriously. All of the characters and stories added to Fruit Ninja were made for the purpose of facilitating these unmade adaptations, something Muscat described as "divisive" and compared to having to try and adapt a film that does not exist into a game rather than the other way around.
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month April 2, 2024
Video comment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn3Yo5ea5L8&lc=UgxhZPo859-w_okK-3B4AaABAg

Comment archived in case it gets deleted (YouTube link contains a comment hyperlink tag):
"Great video Patrick and team. I was the designer / creator of Fruit Ninja, which obviously had absolutely ZERO story or character development. After the huge success of the game, (and as I was leaving the project), a push started to get film and TV adaptions made. For some at the studio, getting an adaptation made the whole thing more legitimate, like the property had "made it". Games were still struggling to be taken seriously despite being such a huge global business, but film and TV didn't have that problem.
But given how narratively thin the source material was, new characters and story started getting added into the game specifically to support those future jumps to film and TV (and merch I guess). This was very... divisive. It was like having to adapt a film into an existing game... except the film didn't exist yet. It was a time."
Baldur's Gate 3
5
Baldur's Gate 3 was originally revealed with a CGI trailer at a conference for the Google Stadia cloud gaming service in June 2019 as part of an Early Access exclusivity deal that would ultimately be cancelled when Stadia was shut down in 2023. The game's director Swen Vincke touted the service at the time for its purported accessibility, and the potential for in-game community feedback to directly affect the game's development and playthroughs via Stadia's Crowd Choice feature. However, Vincke later expressed regret over having the game be revealed this way, calling it "a really stupid deal" due to the challenges of releasing an Early Access build to a second platform, but that "it allowed me to pay for the CGI."
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month March 29, 2024
Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter
subdirectory_arrow_right UDraw: Dood's Big Adventure (Game), THQ (Company)
2
Attachment The uDraw was conceived after THQ employees noticed how difficult drawing was with the Wii Remote in the Wii version of Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter, and was originally called the Drawn to Life Pal. Multiple pitches for other licensed Drawn to Life titles in the same vein as Drawn to Life: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition were made, with Marvel Comics, Pixar, Star Wars, and Conan the Barbarian being pitched as examples. However, no Drawn to Life game with uDraw compatibility would ever release, though one uDraw launch title, Dood's Big Adventure, bears a fair resemblance to the series. No reason has been given for the series' absence or why a new IP was made with Dood's Big Adventure instead of using the brand recognition of Drawn to Life, but it may be connected to the controversial ending of the DS version of The Next Chapter and its finality for the core Drawn to Life Raposa universe.
Company: Funomena
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person chocolatejr9 calendar_month March 26, 2024
1
On April 8th, 2022 (the American release date for the film "Sonic the Hedgehog 2"), former Archie Comics writer Ken Penders revealed that he was contacting his legal team in regards to the Echidnas and their backstory featured in the film. According to Penders, both Knuckles' unnamed father and the workings of the film's depiction of the Master Emerald were derivitive of two of his characters, Locke and Enerjak. Despite the fact that the powers of the game version of the Master Emerald had been established back in 1994 with the release of Sonic & Knuckles, Penders has claimed to have legal ownership over the ideas he created in 1996. However, as of March 2024, no lawsuit has materialized.
person chocolatejr9 calendar_month March 25, 2024
The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
1
In 2012, The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie was ported to the PlayStation 3's PlayStation Network under the PlayStation 2 Classics line. However, it was taken down shortly afterwards with no official explanation. Audiences quickly inferred that the port's withdrawal was due to the poor reception it drew thanks to various emulation issues involved with it, though it may have also been due to THQ going bankrupt and Activision acquiring the license to make games based on Nickelodeon properties around the same time. Among these emulation issues, the 16:9 display (which was the default option) stretched the game rather than properly re-rendering it at a higher aspect ratio, the audio for in-engine cutscenes frequently stuttered and fell behind by up to a second, certain textures were noticeably blurry due to the game being displayed at a higher resolution than what it was designed for, and gameplay suffered from prominent input lag compared to the original release.
person VinchVolt calendar_month March 25, 2024
Platform: ZX Spectrum
1
The ZX Spectrum is more widely remembered today as a video game console rather than its originally intended purpose as an affordable computer for word processing and real-world problem-solving. Hardware creator Sir Clive Sinclair reportedly considered games to be "fundamentally unserious" and was horrified that the computer he invented was becoming primarily seen as a gaming platform.
Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales
2
The developers of Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales got very agitated with having to listen to Bubsy's catchphrases on loop, and would repeat them to one another mockingly. For one of producer Faran Thomason's co-workers, Bubsy's catchphrase "What could possibly go wrong?" became a 20-year long in-joke with other developers of the game (in spite of said catchphrase not even being said in Fractured Furry Tales outside of the ending text scroll).
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