Splash Damage

GameStop stocks are on the fritz after Wall Street manipulated the market, and, like always, GamerGate is being blamed. We discuss the stock situation and also talk about Ninja’s stance on streaming with women and teaching viewers about racism, the representation of trans people and women in Cyberpunk 2077 (again), Twitch’s policies that protect some while leaving room to attack white men, Ubisoft calling chicks “womxn,” and more.

A games journalist stirred up controversy this week when she made the laughable claim that men don’t like playing as female characters, using some of the most popular video game franchises as examples. We discuss the very predictable fallout from this strawman in addition to people overreacting to making Cyberpunk 2077 characters romanceable, New York Times reporting on screen addiction, a Mortal Kombat 11 competitor being banned over nothing, an Italian board game developer being canceled over out-of-context comments, and more.

After removing its most popular emote from the site, Twitch announced a different streamer would become the new PogChamp each day. Three days into this policy, Critical Bard was PogChamp and landed in hot water for his questionable comments on race. We discuss Twitch’s double standards along with the irony of Capcom cracking down on “questionable” fan content, CD Projekt Red’s leadership taking the blame for the Cyberpunk 2077 mess, IGN’s leading interview questions about the game’s launch, Polygon’s and Kotaku’s latest terrible articles, and more.

The narrative has jumped from “video games cause violence” to “video games cause fascism” as the riots at Capitol Hill are being blamed on gamers. We discuss why this is a ludicrous idea along with the other game-related fallout from the riots, plus Kotaku’s “gamers” of the year and the push to censor Top Hat Studios’ Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story.

Cyberpunk 2077 had such a horrible launch on last-gen consoles that the game is being refunded, no questions asked, and has been pulled from Sony’s digital storefront. We discuss the fallout from this unprecedented disaster along with Devotion being censored again, Twitch banning the words “simp” and “incel,” what happened during The Game Awards, and Kotaku’s hilariously bad takes on everything from Dragon Age fanfiction to Soulsborne games.

Nearly every major review of Cyberpunk 2077 shoehorns in long tangents about trans representation, for some reason. Video game critic Sophia Narwitz, who happens to be trans herself, joins the show to discuss the gaming media’s activist mentality and clique-like nature. Listen as we discuss trans voices, in-game ads, “fetishization,” nonbinary options, and other nonsense games journalists can’t shut up about.

Cyberpunk 2077 is only days from release, but Polygon wrote an article of pent-up angst about the game’s marketing over the past two years. We make fun of their offense over such a progressive game and also discuss Polygon’s failure to condemn people who harassed an Animal Crossing player over her hairstyle of choice, Twitch getting rid of the tag “blind playthrough,” why inverted controls have nothing to do with empathy, and Feminist Frequency’s latest attempt to ruin the gaming industry.

An Animal Crossing: New Horizons player was accused of racism and cultural appropriation for wearing a black hairstyle as a white character. We discuss this asinine controversy along with Brianna Wu’s hypocrisy regarding harassment, ZombaeKillz’s attempt to silence critics, Sony’s censorship of PS5 users’ tweets, gaming companies using the cringe term “Latinx,” and plenty more.

Journalist Jesse Singal made waves last week when he pointed out most gamers don’t want politics injected into games despite the fact games journalists can’t stop shoving their ideologies down gamers’ throats. We discuss the age-old topic of politics in games, including Nintendo asking companies to stop making Animal Crossing political and why a communism experiment in Cities: Skylines failed. We also talk about Demon’s Souls’ nonexistent easy mode, why the beautiful characters of Hades aren’t fat or disabled, why it sucks to use your skin color and genitals to get a free PS5, and plenty more.

Ubisoft has updated Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla to remove “offensive, ableist language” referring to a burn victim as “disfigured.” We discuss the future of gaming in a world that caters to the perpetually offended along with weird political takes on new video game console reviews, more games people being canceled over benign opinions on gender identity, race obsession in Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Biden’s plan to waste tax dollars on stopping online harassment, and plenty more.