Some of the biggest recent videogame controversies

The videogame industry, just like any industry these days, has its fair share of drama.

Controversies that cause a stir in the industry, games that caused outrage due to their explicit scenes, racist remarks and overall sexist stance are just some of the more recent controversies, and that’s without even dipping your feet into the minefield that is eSports.

To get us started along the path of controversies in the videogaming industry, we thought we’d put out but a few after the past few years.

From #GamerGate and a church filing complaints about a war between man and alien, to Lindsay Lohan causing a stir in GTA V.

Here are some of the biggest controversies in the video game industry over the past few years:

Resistance: Fall of Man

Resistance: Fall of Man was one of the first titles to ever hit the PlayStation 3, back in 2007, when the console launched.

It depicted a war against an alien threat as the last hopes of humanity fought through the streets of England, all to end a seemingly endless Chimera invasion.

One particular scene within the game tasks you with a stroll through the Manchester Cathedral in England.

You would visit this location with the objective of destroying a Chimera breeding ground, which just so happened to be within the cathedral itself.

Like all shooters this lead to a gunfight, which caused the Church of England to file a complaint against this portion of the game.

Demanding that Sony remove the portion of the game due to “desecration” and copyright infringement, Sony pulled the game off the shelves.

After a formal apology, Sony managed to calm the situation and everything went back to normal.

#GamerGate

The biggest controversy in the video game industry since Manhunt hit shelves took the industry by a storm in late 2014.

It all started with a game developer, Zoe Quinn, who released a game based on the journey through depression, Depression Quest.

After great reviews of the game hit the web, rumours started to rise that Zoe actually had a relationship with Kotaku journalist Nathan Grayson, leading him to grant the game a favourable review.

That was just the beginning of the drama as the GamerGate hashtag was born, a movement behind ethics in video game journalism, but in the worst possible way.

The GamerGate movement was a group of people that believed that feminists in the industry were a threat to video game culture, and that something needed to be done to stop this from happening.

The movement went about this in the wrong manner with harassment, threats, abuse and even the hacking of private information on those targeted by the movement.

Three main feminists at the centre of attention were Zoe Quinn, Anita Sakeesian, a feminist and cultural speaker, and Briaana Wu, a video game developer who was against the movement.

GamerGate was a big problem that saw many female industry professional leave the industry.

Grand Theft Auto V

It’s no surprise that Grand Theft Auto is on this list of “The biggest controversies in video games”. Not one Grand Theft Auto title releases without drama following close on its heels, and Grand Theft Auto V is no different.

Lindsey Lohan, a world-famous child star, now questionable celebrity, filed a lawsuit against Rockstar after the release of GTA V.

This was after Lacey Jones, an anorexic actress who asks the player for help dodging the paparazzi, was said to resemble the star.

Lindsey Lohan also filed a lawsuit against the game’s promotional artwork after she believed that the female showing a peace sign was also her.

The suit explained that “The Plaintiff has been using the peace sign hand gesture for years before and after its use in the video game”.

Saying that, Lindsey believes that the studio has used her indirectly in their promotional art, disc and other merchandise. This court case is still ongoing.

6 Days in Fallujah

Announced on April 5^th, 2009, 6 Days in Fallujah was a game created by Konami and Atomic Games that was said to be “a super-realistic military survival horror” depicting the events of the Iraq War.

Just 22 days after the game’s announcement, it was canned, due to the public saying that it was insensitive.

At the time of the announcement, the war was still ongoing and at its peak of violence, so the game did come across in very poor taste.

Atomic Games felt the cancellation of their game the most, shedding some staff as a result, ultimately causing the studio to shut its doors.

6 Days in Fallujah will never see the light of day, but today we often see depictions of the Iraq War indirectly in franchises like Call of Duty and Battlefield.

What controversies in the industry grabbed your attention the most? Let us know in the comments and forum.