Splash Damage

The last “respectable” video game journalist, Jason Schreier, admitted he knew about the sexual misconduct occurring at Blizzard years before it came to light. He claims he wanted to corroborate the allegations before reporting them, but that caution never stopped him from signal-boosting the paper-thin allegations against developer Chris Avellone. We discuss Schreier’s hypocrisy and agenda-based reporting along with the latest in the Blizzard controversy, Ash Parrish leaving Kotaku, Destructoid saying a lot of nothing about gender in games, Mary Sue bullying a Twitter nobody over his benign opinions, and Susan Arendt buying a game based on nothing but its protagonist’s appearance.

With Psychonauts 2 having an invincibility toggle, the debate about video game difficulty has resurfaced, with at least one games journalist proving how incompetent she is by saying she refuses to play on anything other than easy mode. Other topics covered this episode include the new lawsuit against Blizzard, updates on the Chris Avellone allegations, Kotaku embarrassing itself in more than a couple ways yet again, a game developer’s very bizarre Twitter thread about making female characters look less feminine, and plenty more.

People are finally beginning to realize Ash Parrish’s race-baiting antics for what they are; readers criticized a recent article in which she reduced a gamer’s record-breaking achievement to her race. We discuss how Ash is incapable of seeing anything but skin color along with Kotaku’s cringe take on the NYPD’s game truck, a game developer white knighting for a feminist who insulted him, how “adapting” Japanese games is just a codeword for censorship, Polygon trying to make Luca gay, and Kotaku shaming readers for contributing to climate change.

This past week, video game developer Chris Avellone broke his silence on sexual misconduct allegations leveled against him a year ago. Forbes writer Erik Kain was the first to report on this newsworthy event, and for his troubles, video game journalists trashed him. This wasn’t the only heat Kain faced this week; he also garnered attention for criticizing The Gamer’s awful take on a press event. We discuss these happenings, plus Patricia Hernandez’s confusing goals for the future of Kotaku, the failed cancelation of a Factorio developer, and Polygon’s hilarious attempts to retrofit homosexual themes to The Lord of the Rings.

Five Nights at Freddy’s creator Scott Cawthon announced his retirement after receiving death threats and harassment over his benign, right-leaning political views. We discuss games journalists’ reaction to his political donations along with the good and bad of E3, the laughable state of Kotaku since Patricia Hernandez became editor in chief, and a cringe VG24/7 article comparing Mass Effect 2 to the United States funding terrorist groups.

IGN wrote a piece this week criticizing Dice for saying Battlefield 2042’s story and setting themes exist only for gameplay reasons. We discuss game journalists’ penchant for demanding games take polarizing political stances, Kotaku holding a grudge against Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s ongoing success, the Tolkien Society going woke, and Wargamer’s reminder to not be racist while playing Dungeons & Dragons.

Only three days into Pride Month, Kotaku got upset with how gay characters are represented in video games. We discuss Kotaku’s regressive complaint about queer representation in Injustice 2 Mobile along with Patricia Hernandez becoming the site’s new editor-in-chief, Asian-American voice actors hypocritically expecting only Asians to voice anime, how dumb it is to have wheelchair-bound heroes in Dungeons & Dragons, and the Prison Architect board game being canceled due to a few offended fans.

In their never-ending quest to link video games to unrelated real-world issues, Polygon and Paste published pieces talking about Mass Effect’s police state mentality. We break these hilariously bad articles down and also talk about Twitch’s new hot tub streaming category and marginalized channel tags along with the fallout from gaming sites weighing in on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Vice was so offended by Mass Effect 2’s Overlord DLC that they published a piece calling for its outright censorship in the series’ Legacy Edition. We talk about how ludicrous it is to blame a fictional villain’s “ableism” on the writers who made him along with Anita Sarkeesian’s terrible take and IGN’s stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict, Devolver Digital supporting Sarkeesian’s grifting, Activision firing a sexist voice actor, the He-Man remake censoring and race-swapping women after its showrunner promised that wouldn’t happen, and the Power Girl co-creator ironically calling out “sexism” in manga.

Game Rant wrote an article based on a single streamer’s complaint that Valkyrie, the new playable character in Apex Legends, does not represent her Japanese heritage enough. We break down this silly complaint and also discuss ZombaeKillz and Girl From Canada being eaten alive by their woke allies, games journalists thinking it’s just fine to not be good at or finish the games they’re reviewing, and Doctor Strange being pulled from the WandaVision finale for the sin of being a white male.