The gaming industry has seen its fair share of wild stories over the years, ranging from truly bizarre choices that sent companies to liquidation to dangerous and, in some cases, criminal acts. A few of the most unbelievable stories, however, have stood above the rest in our memory, often acting as case studies on what not to do if you're making video games. We've rounded them up below, and be sure to let us know which other unbelievable industry stories you remember in the comments.
Cooking Mama: Cookstar fiasco
Cooking Mama: CookstarCooking Mana is a franchise you probably associate with the DS or Wii, perhaps a game you saw in the collection of the children down the street who weren't allowed to play anything with explosions or lasers. It was wholesome and pure--which is why the fiasco surrounding the game Cooking Mama: Cookstar was so bizarre.
Publisher Planet Entertainment, which IP-holder Office Create had licensed to release the game, launched Cookstar in 2020 without Office Create's knowledge. The latter company said it had required correction of a "range of deficiencies" before it would be approved, yet it said the game was released without these issues being addressed. Despite the drama and threats of legal action, the game is currently available for sale--with Planet Entertainment's name on its website--for both Switch and PS4. Oh, and the PS4 version was never approved by Office Create, with the company having no knowledge it was coming prior to Planet Entertainment announcing it.
Silicon Knights uses stolen Unreal Engine
Too HumanSilicon Knights looked like it was going to be the next major third-party developer, having produced the excellent Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem and the remake Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. The problems started after that, first with Silicon Knights suing Epic over apparently missing features in Unreal Engine 3. In a countersuit, Epic Games accused the company of using an unauthorized version of the engine to produce Too Human and the then-unreleased X-Men: Destiny.
The court largely ruled in Epic Games' favor, with an order saying Silicon Knights "deliberately and repeatedly copied thousands of lines of Epic Games' copyrighted code, and then attempted to conceal its wrongdoing by removing Epic Game's copyright notices and by disguising Epic Games' copyrighted code as Silicon Knights' own."
On top of all of this, Too Human and X-Men: Destiny were both bad.
Hot Coffee
Grand Theft Auto: San AndreasVideo game code is extremely complicated, but if you don't tell the truth about what's on your game discs, someone will eventually figure it out. Shortly after Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas' launch, a minigame called Hot Coffee was discovered that allowed players to have sex with one of the characters. Though clothed, it was still fairly explicit, and Rockstar blamed it on the work of modders.
It's true the content wasn't available by default in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, but evidence exists that points to the minigame actually being created by Rockstar itself and locked in the code, rather than being the work of the modding community alone. By today's standards, the content seen in Hot Coffee isn't actually all that graphic, but it came at a time when Grand Theft Auto's influence on young people was the talk of US lawmakers, and it didn't exactly help Rockstar's case. For a time, production was halted and the game's rating was changed to Adults Only until the content could be removed, as the ESRB said it was present on the game discs.
CSGO Lotto
Counter-Strike: Global OffensiveGambling has morphed drastically since the dawn of the internet, and not only via online poker and sportsbetting. People have also tried to cash in on digital items sales in games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and a few YouTube creators found themselves in hot water for their role in one website.
CSGO Lotto was a website that allowed Counter-Strike: GO players to toss weapon skins together into a digital pot that would then be randomly awarded to one player--and third-party services could then be used to sell them for real cash. The problem is that Trevor "TmarTn" Martin and Tom "ProSyndicate" Cassell had been making videos showing them using the website without disclosing that they co-owned it. Martin mentioned that he "found" the site in one video, implying he did not have a stake in it. Because they owned the site, any videos showing them "winning" money had the potential of being staged, as well.
Even worse? The FTC let them off the hook without even a slap on the wrist, only threatening a fine if they didn't disclose such conflicts of interest in the future.
Intellivision Amico
Intellivision AmicoOne unbelievable story that is still ongoing involves a console brand brought back from the dead… maybe. The Intellivision was a game system Mattel produced in the 1980s to compete against consoles like the Atari 2600. It was never a huge hit, but nostalgia is still powerful, and game composer Tommy Tallarico revived the brand in 2018 with plans for a new console: the Intellivision Amico.
What followed was an embarrassment on just about every level. Multiple delays--not of months but of years--have kept the console from actually releasing as of June 2022, and Tallarico has moved away from his CEO role into a different position. An investment campaign earlier this year was halted after only a tiny fraction of the requested funds were raised, and it will frankly be a shock if the Amico actually makes it to preorder backers, let alone to store shelves.
Aliens: Colonial Marines code error
Aliens: Colonial MarinesAliens: Colonial Marines was one of the biggest gaming disasters of the 21st century. It wasn't the worst first-person shooter ever made, but it released just months after developer Gearbox Software had launched the acclaimed Borderlands 2. Expectations were high, with studio head Randy Pitchford billing the game as the official, canonical sequel to Aliens, but the game that came out was not worthy of that status. Among its more notable problems was poor AI, and the fix for it was comical: fixing a typo. Modders discovered that enemies behaved far more aggressively after a slight edit to the game's code.