Yeah. It’s weird, almost all of these have some level of controversy. Starfield. Hogwarts Legacy and Rowling’s transphobia controversies. There were attempted boycotts of Atomic Heart by Ukraine sympathizers for a variety of alleged reasons. Some lifelong fans of The Last of Us were reneging of the franchise after learning that its creator Neil Druckmann was inspired by Israel-Palestina to create TLOU and recently posted an Israel flag in his Instagram. There was controversy about Dave the Diver being considered an indie game by most casual people (and being nominated as such for awards) and further discussion about what’s an indie. SIFU was criticized by journalists for negative portrayal of a foreign culture and briefly became a bit of a darling for online right-wingers that hate video game journalists. Even Baldur’s Gate 3 was milked a bit as a darling by people that generally dislike current video game devs and accuse them of being lazy. I also even saw someone using solo-developed Lethal Company as a bludgeon against other developers. Only ones I don’t remember seeing controversies about are Labyrinthine and Red Dead Redemption 2.

It almost feels like the classic coordinated troll-voting campaign by 4chan or whatever but those tend to have a right-wing bend and I don’t know if they would’ve voted for Atomic Heart (I don’t know if the would have voted BG3 either but I assume that one’s kinda unstoppable). It’s kind of weird because a couple years ago when Trump was praising Russia right-wing gamers might have voted for the Russia game to piss off liberals. But with the current wars there’s a lot of right-wingers supporting Ukraine and Israel. So I don’t know.