Back in the more innocent days of... January 2026? That can't be right... Well, back beyond the reaches of my fragile memory, I wished for everyone to roll around in their big, sloppy Hot Messes. What I left unsaid is that it was a joke, goddamn, people. I always debate how early I should type one of these blogs up each year, and honestly I feel like I could have posted this one three months ago and banked a full entry. So take a trip down memory lane with me, basically in the order in which I wrote in my Notes app, and let's splash through this fine river of excrement together. Note that some of these took place in December 2025, but it wouldn't be an award if we actually stuck to the calendar, would it?
Affordability - This is a little bit of a cheat, because the RAMpocalypse really started in earnest at the end of 2025. But surely you know that RAM prices increased dramatically over the course of a few months. The cause-and-effect train barreled through seemingly every stop. The Steam Deck stopped being for sale thanks to high component prices, and whenever it becomes available again, its prices will have gone up by 40%. The Xbox ROG Ally X raised its price by nearly $200 in Japan and Australia, and popular ROM site Myrient was forced to shut down thanks to enormous cost overruns to keep the servers online. Even Nintendo, which felt that it had priced general economic issues into the Switch 2 launch price, announced a global price increase. In general, consumer options have been heavily reduced thanks to component scarcity, with one primary consumer-grade memory provider (Micron) shuttering that side of its business altogether in late 2025. Given the long-term supply issues, this is going to be a mess we have to deal with for years to come.
Larian - Do you remember when Swen Vincke was all the rage in gaming circles? Well he apparently entered some Brewster's Millions-style competition to spend all that goodwill, first giving a bizarre pro-generative AI interview. After fan backlash, there was some backpedaling within official Larian channels, but then of course Vincke stated during the damage control that they would still use genAI. Now it's unclear how much it will impact their future games, and a lot of people are looking at what they submitted to Larian during their notoriously long and writing-intensive job interviews and going "hmmmm".
Meta - They closed several gaming studios and ended new content for Horizon Wolds. You know, the metaverse project around which they entirely based their new company name?
Roblox - Not content with their Community Write-In Winner prize in 2025, the execrable child exploitation engine was at it again. Their new age verification program funneled users of similar "estimated" age together, with no controls for users manipulating the AI governing it. The head of parental advocacy said parents should "chip in" for kids' online safety, which sure is a bad look for a company being sued in multiple states. I'm sure there are other stories I missed, but I black out with rage when I hear the name Roblox these days.
SNK - This seems almost quaint now (and in comparison to SNK shenanigans of the recent past), but they used extensive genAI footage in their Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves advertising.
Monster Hunter Wilds - A user discovered that the game performance was potentially being degraded because of the incredible volume of DLC, and the processes by which the game checks for it. Another tame entry, but since the enduring legacy of this game appears to be "runs awful", it sure seems misguided to have prioritized seeing who bought more of your endless cosmetics.
Ubisoft - It wouldn't be a year of Hot Mess without these chuckleheads. They closed their Halifax office as a potential union-busting maneuver, and later closed a Stockholm studio as well. During this run of mismanagement, they announced an enormous restructuring that resulted in them cancelling 6 games, delaying another 7, and somehow name-dropping Beyond Good & Evil 2 in their ongoing projects list. They also announced a cut to their headquarters staff to the tune of 18% of employees. Given the vibes around Ubisoft lately, nobody expects this to be the end of this story in 2026.
Arknights: Endfield - A game glitch caused some users to incur perpetual PayPal transactions, resulting in those players accidentally spending thousands of dollars for minor purchases. These were later refunded, and really I just included this one as a mood lightener.
RGG - Just about everything surrounding Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties seems like a huge bummer, not least of which because it seems like a crappy remake and accompanying one-off. The studio changed the voice actor for an important character to a(n alleged) serial sexual harrasser, then defended the choice by saying they needed a creep to play the character. Dark Ties, meanwhile, has a quest where you clean up the image of someone who committed sexual assault. Bad!
Discord - Their decision to roll out global ID / face scan requirements prompted a huge backlash, resulting in the company announcing a delay to implementing it. Further news about their partner company showed gaping security flaws, and as a bonus it was revealed to be connected to sentient shit-from-a-butt Peter Thiel.
Highguard - Yes, that was this year. The majority of the development team was laid off within two weeks of the game's release. A week later, the game's website went offline as well. A couple months after that, the game shut down entirely. News emerged during this disastrous lifecycle that Tencent reportedly had been funding the developer, in spite of the studio's public insistence that they were fully funded. Now people can only wonder what will be the next game to receive the Keighley Kurse.
Ashes of Creation - This game gathered $3.3 million in its Kickstarter phase, but it ended a 9-year development cycle by laying off its developer team. The creative team lead is now accused of embezzling money instead of spending it on the game, accumulating a debt of more than $100 million in the process.
Sony - Closed Bluepoint as part of a staggeringly mismanaged push into live service titles, shutting down multiple Bluepoint game pitches in the process. Incorporated "dynamic pricing" into their store, pushing us closer to a true consumer nightmare (more on that one below). Closed Dark Outlaw Games development studio without producing a game, and also a planned car with Honda. Because all of these layoffs weren't enough, they hit Sony Pictures, Entertainment, and corporate with yet more job losses. They took a $765 million impairment loss against Bungie due to Destiny 2 and Marathon "failing to meet expectations", and Bungie announced the end of new content for Destiny 2 shortly thereafter. Layoffs are likely on the way for Bungie, and Jason Schreier has reported that they could be "significant". Lastly (for now), Sony delisted Destruction All-Stars and plans to put it on life support in the short term.
TikTok - Beyond being a social media hellscape controlled in the US by living scum, the platform allowed people to post genAI-modified ads for venerable publisher Finji, which contained racist and sexualized content. Then when asked about the ads by journalist, the company extensively lied about what had happened.
VideoGamer - Used AI to write a review for Resident Evil: Requiem, and created an AI-generated reviewer profile to the byline. They might have gotten away with it if they hadn't forgotten to erase the image source data that listed "Chat GPT". As a result, Metacritic dropped the outlet as a source for scores altogether.
Microsoft - The champions return. A major shakeup at Xbox caused Sarah Bond to leave the company, rather than take the long-anticipated step into Phil Spencer's position. After the new head of Xbox was noted as coming from the AI division, the company allegedly banned the word "microslop" from its services, which of course only drew more attention to it. Former Halo Studios developers shared that the studio leadership (allegedly) committed unethical and potentially unlawful activities to terminate employees.
Build A Rocket Boy - A returning honorable mention too! The developer announced redundancies while still insisting that MindsEye only failed thanks to corporate espionage. To prove their claims, they revealed they installed secret surveillance software to investigate their own workforce. Thanks to this being highly illegal when you fail to disclose it in any meaningful way, employees announced they were suing the company. But don't worry, because they released DLC of a new mission that will "share evidence of the sabotage with the community"! It... did not do that.
Arc Raiders - Accessed private Discord DMs for players who have linked their accounts to the game. And they didn't even have the decency to release DLC about it either!
Amazon - Incorporated surge pricing, raising the cost of physical copies of Pokemon: Pokopia on their storefront. At least Sony just kept it to discounts, yeesh.
EA - Laid off staff that worked on Battlefield 6, aka the highest selling game of 2025. For real, what hope does anybody have in this industry if not the team that makes a #1 seller?
Nvidia - Unveiled "DLSS 5", which purported to enhance graphics solely through lighting tweaks. People figured out pretty much immediately thereafter that it was actually altering images and videos with genAI, and it looked incredibly bad the entire time it did so. The CEO blamed gamers for the negative reaction to the technology, which will surely end well.
Krafton - Continuing its bizarre 2025 run, Krafton lost its court battle with the former leadership team at Subnautica developer Unknown Worlds. After being reinstated, they accused Krafton of defying their court order by announcing an early access date without consulting the leadership team first. Unknown Worlds removed Krafton's name as publisher from Subnautica 2's Steam page, which is still the case at the time of this writing. And after all this chicanery, it sure looks like they're going to cut the check for $250 million as originally agreed upon.
Epic - Laid off a staggering 1,000 employees, citing expenses and lack of engagement. Needless to say, the latter reason appeared to be completely false based on available tracking data.
Gunzilla - Allegedly failed to pay contractors for months, including some still doing unpaid labor over a 6 month span. The CEO naturally responded in a sober and thoughtful manner took to Twitter to blast "a new narrative from haters".
GameStop - Sentient ketamine vial Ryan Cohen made a bid to purchase eBay despite not having enough assets to, you know, do that. His bizarre interview with CNBC tanked his meme stock, and eBay eventually rejected the bid as "neither credible nor attractive". Funny, everyone says the same thing about Cohen.
Valnet - Informed its staff that all articles would need to reach a certain number of views before the writer would be paid at all, effectively turning them all into freelancers overnight. Coupled with incoming massive changes to Google search, some writers have opined that this amounts to a mass soft layoff.
As unbelievable as it might seem after that list of messes, I'm perpetually concerned I miss something big. Are there any messes on your radars I didn't cover? And potentially more helpfully: are any of these entries simply not messy enough to hang in Part 2? I'm not sure what the character limit is for this blog, but I ho