When I started this series in 2022, it was to resurrect a defunct feature of Game of the Year discussions that I’ve enjoyed in the past. After 2023 and 2024 so far, it’s clear why Giant Bomb staff past and present shelved it. The real winner of Hottest Mess in the game industry is the forces that continuously abuse, exploit, and dispose of industry labor, including within the media that covers it. In the last 15 months, this has manifested as unprecedented layoffs that have ranged from studios that released supposedly underperforming games, to Game of the Year contenders whose parent companies decided to arbitrarily shed 8% of the workforce. It’s led to the closures of studios and media outlets, all for the sake of an infinite profit engine that is as capricious as it is impossible. The issue is so dire that it has its own Wikipedia page. And afterwards? Bullshit excuses are given, and the leadership that made the poor decisions leading to layoffs almost always escape all accountability. It’s a total garbage fire and unquestionably the largest challenge facing the industry as a whole.

I wanted to give that explanation before discussing the reason I run this series a few times a year now. If the ultimate form of Hottest Mess is tracking layoffs, I’m not interested in writing any more about that. The types of Hottest Mess I enjoy are things like the Unity trash fire from last year or chasing that dragon: the Randy Pitchford USB stick at Medieval Times saga. Most of the following candidates are bad news, but they don’t feel quite as soul-crushing as the layoff counter racing upwards on a weekly basis. Here’s what I’ve been tracking over the first three months of the year:

• Apple unveils a new anticompetitive app policy that gets slammed by the EGDF and Microsoft. Later, Apple terminates Epic’s developer account temporarily, prompting an investigation by the European Union. Finally, the US Department of Justice sues Apple over a smartphone ‘monopoly’, accusing the company of preventing developers from offering cloud gaming apps on the App Store.
• Dragon Ball FighterZ unveils one of the worst rollback netcode patches ever implemented.
• Dragon’s Dogma II releases with major performance bugs; the game also offers microtransactions that appear to contradict the development team's intent with how the game should be played. Capcom later apologizes for its launch state.
• Foamstars uses Midjourney, a highly unethical AI tool, to generate art and music; the game reviews poorly on release.
• Last Epoch uses machine translation that is so terrible, the Polish translation includes ChatGPT requests (in English) for more information in response to a prompt.
• Nintendo sues Yuzu’s Switch emulator out of existence, with Yuzu Discord instructions cited as proof of malfeasance. Citra and Pizza Emulators also shut down out of fear for being sued by Nintendo.
• PEGI and other ratings boards spontaneously change Balatro’s rating for being a gambling game, which it is decidedly not. This change temporarily removes Balatro from digital storefronts in many countries.
• Rockstar forces employees back into the office to finish Grand Theft Auto VI, prompting blowback from their workforce.
• SAG-AFTRA seems to bypass actual voice actor feedback and agree to deal that allows use of AI voice copies for its members.
• Skull & Bones fails to hit 1 million total players even after offering a free game trial.
• Sony loses an estimated $10 billion in value after profit margins and console units sold substantially underperform to expectations.
• Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection launches in an extremely rough state, including only having server room for less than 1% of its PC audience; Aspyr has also allegedly stolen modder work without credit.
• Steam opens the AI game floodgates, and it’s unclear if Valve is capable of moderating stolen content.
• Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League gets pulled from early window launch for giving players full story completion on startup; after releasing to poor reviews, it gets lower concurrent numbers than previous games in the Batman franchise.
• Warner Bros. continues its assault on its own IP by delisting Adult Swim games from Steam.
• Xbox bans users that upload sex scenes from Baldur’s Gate 3.
• Xbox offers a confusing response to rumors about several games changing from console exclusives to multiplatform, allowing speculation to run rampant on whether they will continue to exist as a console.

As some window into my process, I also track developing and debunked stories. I’ve got the following early candidates entered into my Notes app:

• Debunked: Altec Lansing accidentally reveals the Nintendo Switch 2 launch window while trying to announce an AI-driven GameShark reboot. There’s no way Altec Lansing would be privy to this launch date, and also they probably missed the mark by 6+ months.
• Developing: Borderlands movie, which has the potential to be absolutely terrible.
• Developing: The Palworld and Pokemon saga, which is bound to turn up some bizarre mess, right?
• Debunked: Palworld steals digital assets from Pokemon. This was revealed as a hoax from an artist that’s a Pokemon fan.

Have I missed anything so far in 2024? Do any of the candidates feel out of place and not worth considering in December? I’ll probably update this in June unless something absolutely batshit happens in the meantime.

(Editor's Note: an earlier draft of this blog had links for all the relevant stories, and it returned a 403 Forbidden error. I like to cite my messes, but I wasn't able to this time.)