Hottest Mess 2025: Part 3 (The Final Candidates)

As unbelievable as it may seem, 2025 is drawing to a close. While I'm sure there will be absolutely dogshit developments for humanity as a species in the final 50ish days, I can't think of a recent year I'm more anxious to put in the rear view mirror. Based on the sheer number of entries (and the sheer length of some of those entries), a lot of you probably feel the same way. Entertainment is often an escape from horrors visited upon us by hateful, stupid leaders, but the encroachment of said hateful / stupid people into entertainment was one of the major storylines of the year. Between every tech company gladly bending the knee to a dementia-riddled aspiring dictator and the Ellisons purchasing every company somehow, the mainstream media landscape has never felt more bleak. There were definitely some bright spots in this year, but this isn't the place to talk about them.

Back in July, I tried a new format to track who might be leading this crowded pack. But seeing as this will be the reference point for the Hottest Mess 2025: Community Poll, I'm sticking with the tried-and-true alphabetical order of years past. If much of it looks familiar, I assure you that the liberal usage of copy-paste is the only way I can get this thing done at all. But a lot of it is new, even if I personally feel like our top 3 was basically settled early in the year. I'll try to get the poll out next week, but it might slip to just before American Thanksgiving.

The Candidates:

• AbleGamers - Founder Mark Barlet is allegedly a huge misogynist creep who mocked individuals with physical disabilities. He also allegedly wasted massive amounts of donation money on personal spending. Steven Spohn, COO of AbleGamers, allegedly discouraged former employees from speaking to IGN by using "manipulative language". You can read all of these details in the IGN article, but be warned that it's severely depressing.
• The Alters - The developer failed to disclose the use of generative AI for images and text, then lied (allegedly) about the genAI items being placeholders. People seem to have mostly forgotten this one, but I didn't want to delete entries.
• Amazon - Sunset New World immediately after a well-received expansion was released, in accordance with massive layoffs throughout the company. You'll never believe what that money is being reallocated to.
• Apple - The tech giant was found in contempt of court after failing to implement orders from the Epic vs. Apple case from several years back. They blocked or slow-rolled the addition of Fortnite back into iOS, and it's unclear how large a hit the ruling will end up being to Apple's profit margins.
• Bungie - First, the developer stole assets from artists for in-game posters in the Marathon alpha. Bungie tried to blame a single former employee for the theft, culminating in a disastrous apology livestream. And about those stolen assets, one way the public found out was because an artist had hidden a "Loss" reference in their work. The company delayed Marathon indefinitely after a lackluster reception to their alpha, which employees found out about the same time as the public. Finally, Sony reported that Bungie was responsible for over $200 million USD in impairment losses.
• Christopher Barrett - The former Bungie developer sued his ex-employer in a payment dispute, only for him to be exposed as a serial sexual harasser in discovery. I broke this out of the Bungie section because it might be the only win they got this year (see above).
• Collective Shout - Along with other extremist organizations, they pressured banks and credit card processors to force digital storefronts to pull "porn" and LGBTQIA+ games from sale. Vice published an expose, then retracted it under unknown pressure, causing the author (and others) to resign.
• Discord - The app used begrudgingly by most of its base required some users to scan their faces for "age verification". They also managed to lose over 2 million photographs to hackers, which included government identification (though they swore it didn't). Seems like a huge problem!
• Electronic Arts - (Deep breath) The concept art for the next Battlefield game used a real-life photo of an explosion in Gaza. The company blamed its underperformance last year on Dragon Age: The Veilguard and EA FC not meeting expectations; it later added Apex Legends to that list when it laid a bunch of people off. It gutted Bioware and made them all-in on Mass Effect 5 for their survival, while simultaneously misleading reassigned staff about what they would be working on. Back to Veilguard for a sec - the CEO also claimed it would have done better as a live service game, which is certainly a unique sentiment. Finally, it launched its Sims 1+2 Remaster in an extremely rough shape. Hours after my first Hottest Mess 2025 post, another round of layoffs hit EA. The company also pushed a full return to office and froze remote hiring. Then, the Black Panther game and developer Cliffhanger Games were shut down. Nobody seems to know what's happening with Codemasters, aside from shelving future Need for Speed games. They removed opt-out information for EA College Football payouts. In a genuine 2025 trend, EA introduced an AI tool that costs more to use than it saves, while programmers fear they're just being used to train automation justifying their eventual firing. Finally, the bombshell development of EA announcing they had been purchased by the Saudi PIF and Jared Kushner's firm, and that it would carry $20 billion USD in debt it has to pay off. It's not hard to see this hole as too steep to climb in the near future.
• The First Descendant - An ad campaign used AI likenesses of non-consenting streamers to promote the game on TikTok. Oh right, "allegedly" did that.
• Fortnite - The game introduced an AI Darth Vader, using James Earl Jones' voice, which was quickly tricked into saying curse words and slurs. Hard to call the game a mess given its incredible success later in the year, but I didn't want to let this one slide.
• GameStop - The company closed stores in France and Canada, blaming "liberalism, socialism, progressivism, wokeness, and DEI". It announced a pivot to bitcoin as its primary business, with retail stores a stated second priority. Overall, a pretty quiet year for this stalwart of the Hottest Mess blog, but there's still time before the poll.
• Gamurs - Quiet layoffs conducted over multiple months led to the mothballing of entire websites, such as Attack of the Fanboy and PC Invasion. It also siloed The Escapist into basically just publishing Roblox guides, later adding pro-gambling articles to its repertoire.
• Green Games Showcase - Showcases a number of AI games and has tons of decidedly non-green industry affiliations. But don't worry, they may have also used fraudulent carbon offsets! Please go read that @gamer_152 blog, it's great.
• God Is A Geek - The entire editorial staff resigned after the site's owner performed a Nazi salute at a right-wing rally. Back in April, I wrote: "Good on the staff for that; the owner can eat a rake sideways." The offer yet stands.
• Krafton - The publisher dismissed the leadership team of Unknown Worlds, which is developing the hotly anticipated Subnautica 2. Jason Schreier reported that pushing the game to 2026 potentially costs the studio a $250 million USD bonus owed to them by Krafton. For their part, Krafton alleged that the former leadership team was dismissed for poor performance, then weirdly publicly confirmed the accuracy of a leaked slide deck from 2024 showing the game severely behind project milestones. The result of said slide deck was that the Project Director left, and Krafton never backfilled the position. The ex-developers sued Krafton for breach of contract, and Krafton retracted the justification for its own lawsuit against them once they failed to produce proof of their claims during discovery. The cherry on top was Krafton announcing it would become an "AI-forward company", because it's 2025 and of course they did.
• Microsoft - The company that can't ship games prioritized an idea "generating" AI that's trained on their own games, which they feel have underperformed. Meanwhile, Activision fished for game survey responses via fake ads with AI-generated art. Microsoft proudly unveiled a suckass AI-powered Quake preview. In the face of the company's support of the ongoing genocide in Palestine with its cloud services, there was a boycott and at least one self-delisting. Microsoft eventually changed the nature of their deal with Israel, but the boycott has not been lifted. According to the Zenimax union, Microsoft has also not bargained in good faith on a labor contract. Despite reaching a contract agreement with the union eventually, another massive round of layoffs hit the company, with Perfect Dark and an unannounced Zenimax MMO the most notable casualties. Rare was also hit hard, and Everwild and Contraband were finally put out to pasture (despite Phil Spencer claiming work was progressing on the former less than a month prior). The Liverpool studio that had been working on Contraband was closed two months later. Worse yet, the Seattle Times reported that these cuts served even more investment in Microsoft's AI projects, which are stupid and shitty. Speaking of AI, former King employees alleged that they were being replaced by AI tools they designed to make their work easier. The ROG Xbox Ally was beset with technical issues at launch, and it won't play anything that isn't part of Xbox's Play Anywhere list, something they did not at all make clear. Microsoft saddled the Xbox division with a laughable demand to make a 30% profit margin, well above other companies and potentially unreachable in even the greatest circumstances. Finally, they raised the price of Game Pass Ultimate by 50%, which resulted in the subscription cancellation page crashing from all the traffic it received. It's tough to imagine a worse year for Xbox, and it looks like a ton of that is thanks to their delusional parent corporation.
• MindsEye - The game launched with multiplayer maps, but multiplayer is months away according to the pre-release roadmap (so uh, take that one with a grain of salt now). Mark Gerhard, one of the most This Fuckin' Guys in a year full of This Fuckin' Guys, suggested the negative reception to a trailer was paid for in a "concerted effort to trash the game and the studio". Meanwhile, developer Build A Rocket Boy accumulated an abysmal 2.1 rating on Glassdoor, citing tons of overtime and mismanagement with no clear identity. Two senior executives at BARB departed the company a week before the game released. The Steam page briefly listed $60 USD and $80 USD editions, with no description provided to explain the difference. User reviews were mostly negative due to myriad issues, including terrifying graphical glitches. BARB started the consultation process after launch to lay off more than 100 people, per United Kingdom law. Gerhard (this fuckin' guy again!) also blamed workers at the studio for being "lazy and incompetent", while Leslie Benzies later alleged that the issues facing the game and BARB were due to "internal and external saboteurs". Union workers filed a lawsuit against the company for "a disastrous handling of redundancies", including mandatory overtime and forbidding leave after launch due to "high priority" work, along with basic mistakes in the redundancy process.
• Moon Studios - Head of the studio Thomas Mahler claimed that "review bombing" No Rest for the Wicked may lead to the closure of the studio, then he backtracked while blaming the media for misrepresenting his words. The studio never appeared to have actually been review bombed, so it's unclear why this whole situation arose in the first place. It probably did remind people of how toxic the developer's work environment is, though.
• NetEase - The publisher of Marvel Rivals fired its gameplay director and their team despite the game being a massive success.
• Niantic - Last time, I wrote: "Sold its business to Scopely (Saudi Arabia) and laid off employees. [...] I don't know if this one will appear in Part 3." Well, here it is.
• Nintendo - Charged $80 USD / 90 Euro for its upcoming new games and Switch 2 upgrade versions of old Switch games, while (some) physical carts appeared to only contain authentication keys for digital download. They also charged $10 for their new demo, and the prices for Amiibos skyrocketed to comical numbers. They bricked some consoles that played used games. And not to be left out of the layoffs game, they ended hundreds of customer support jobs in the US to outsource them elsewhere.
• Puzzles & Dragons - Publisher GungHo Online Entertainment accused a former executive of embezzling $2.3 million USD in "outsourcing fees".
• Randy Pitchford - The GOAT returns! Pitchford responded to concerns about a potential $80 USD price tag for Borderlands 4 by saying "if you're a real fan, you'll find a way to make it happen". After the launch of the otherwise-successful game, Randy went on multiple social media tirades against anyone experiencing performance issues with it. He offered the legendary quote that "Borderlands 4 is a premium game for premium gamers", which is why Hottest Mess loves having him around.
• Riot Games - Opened up League of Legends and Valorant to sports gambling, with the faintest veneer of responsibility for the financial ruin it enables. They also sold $100 skin packs in 2XKO, which is... I'm gonna go lie down.
• Sega - Called the cops on a person who inadvertently bought a WiiU development kit from a scrapyard, which had been accidentally thrown out.
• Sony - Cancelled Bend and Bluepoint live-service games, with the employees finding out through news reports. It raised the price of PS Plus in Canada as well. I can't really put the PS5 price increase on them (see the US Government entry below), but here's a reminder that happened if you feel differently. The Bungie stuff (see above) also feels entirely separate, but again, vote however you feel.
• Splitgate 2 - The studio lead wore a stupid hat to Summer Game Fest, then said he wouldn't apologize for the hat. Later, he apologized for the hat. The game received mediocre reception on launch, so it was bizarrely pulled back into beta (prompting layoffs, naturally). The game is allegedly coming out at the end of this year, but come on.
• Square-Enix - Announced plans to have 70% of playtesting and QA performed by AI by 2027, and then it announced layoffs throughout its western studios.
• Steam - February NextFest was full of AI slop, further muddying the waters for growing small developers. A later NextFest reported over 500 games (roughly 17%) used generative AI, so this trend is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.
• Take-Two Interactive / Rockstar - Fired dozens of people in an alleged union-busting effort, though they've since claimed the people were fired for "gross misconduct". Their evidence appears to be a Discord server, but we'll see more about this in the months to come. For now, morale within Rockstar is guttering out, and the company is experiencing internal pressure from the remaining developers.
• Ubisoft - Created a new subsidiary with Tencent that houses their top 3 IPs (Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six), raising a lot of questions about every single one of their other properties. The company laid people off "voluntarily" from Massive using the shittiest kind of corporate speak, probably through AI.
• The United States Government - As quaint as it seems now, the USA got off to a rollicking start by banning TikTok in the country. This ban temporarily restricted access to Marvel SNAP, which is published by a subsidiary of ByteDance. After it came back online, the developer announced it wanted to find a new publisher for the game (which it eventually did). Tariffs raised the price of video games, delayed the Nintendo Switch 2 preorder in the US and Canada, and the ESA denounced them as having a "real and detrimental impact" on the video game industry as a whole. Companies such as Razer and RetroTINK halted orders based in the US due to uncertainty on whether they could deliver the items at anything less than an exorbitant loss. The global impact of the tariffs even raised the price of the PS5, a system that is nearly 5 years old. As a final fuck you to basically everyone who makes a living in games media, Congress failed to continue Affordable Care Act subsidies, which will make healthcare premiums substantially higher for all freelancers and independently owned companies.
• Unity - Had a critical security flaw in their assets that required a broad array of developers to pull their games from storefronts while the vulnerability was patched out.
• Valnet - Purchased Polygon from Vox and promptly laid off the majority of its staff. It also failed to train a DualShockers reviewer on the rules governing the embargo around Silent Hill f, though that seems to have only helped the game sell copies.
• WB Games - Shut down three studios (Monolith, Player First, and WB San Diego) and cancelled the Wonder Woman game after years of mismanagement. This guarantees the Nemesis System stays behind closed doors for an indefinite period of time as well. They announced a restructure around four principal IPs (Game of Thrones, Mortal Kombat, Harry Potter, and the DC Universe), prompting concern about everything else.

One final note: I don't know what the future holds for Hottest Mess 2026 and beyond, given that the new site is still in beta. At the very least, I'll start a forum thread and post whenever I have an update or new entry. Ideally, I can still make this a blog and find some way to get a poll going, at least until I'm bought out by one of the most evil people on the planet and turn this feature over to them. (Editing Note: do not include plan to sell Hottest Mess and invest money into dumpster fires / AI in final draft)

We are going to make it. THROUGH THIS YEAR.

Christ. Extra depressing to see all the tire fires rolled out like this, but thank you for staying on top of and collating the grim tidings— hopefully without too much of a hit to your mental wellbeing? In order to hold odious assholes accountable we should try to not forget. Even if I'd like to sometimes. Cheers!

Of course Ubisoft goes out there and announces "the postponement of the release" for its fiscal report and a freeze on trading THE DAY AFTER I post this blog. More to come on them, apparently.

Man.... it seems to get worse every year. The funny thing is, since you made it part of the list, the US Government might actually win here. Not only did the tariffs cause a domino effect that resulted in a lot of bad stuff happening in the video game industry. He, who must not be named, literally held food aid benefits and federal jobs hostage to force the other side into voting for a bad bill to end the shutdown. A bill that includes a huge pay bonus for senators, just because.

Can we get a special addendum made for Soulja Boy selling a Retroid Pocket Flip 2 and calling it a SouljaGame Flip?

What an incredible collection of hot messes. It says a lot that some entries which would've cruised to a win in previous years barely registered with me this time around. Christ.

These are all bad, but I feel like Microsoft is on another level of messitude than most of them, and the US Government is several orders of magnitude beyond that.

Tough, bc some of these are very much not like the others.

It really is wild that even if the future-history-books-level mess that is the US govt wasn’t on this list, Microsoft would be a mess on a whole other scale than all the rest anyway. Not to downplay how horrible everything else on this list is, but Microsoft has achieved a level of all-around, relentless corporate malfeasance, mismanagement, and detachment from reality that kind of feels historic in its own right, especially from one of the few companies whose name is basically synonymous with “computers”.

That just screams "The year is not over until it is over" to me. A lot can still be fouled up in the rest of this lousy year.

@mach_go_go_go: Well, it's a mess, just nowhere near hot enough compared to the global impact makers on the list above.

According to PC Gamer, the CEO of Krafton allegedly asked ChatGPT how to avoid paying the Subnautica 2 developers their bonuses, due to the "professional embarrassment" of overpaying for the studio. ChatGPT (allegedly) replied that he was probably stuck. I think I speak for everyone here when I say that I hope this is a true detail.

No to be rude, but my guess is God Is A Geek exodus was going to happen any even if they owner didn't give a salute. The writing that appears on the site was not exactly pulling in teh views and the writing on the wall for that sort of 'written format' story publishing.

I did see that article. I too would like it to be true, but the claim is made out of the blue with no supporting evidence at all, so I find it hard to take that seriously.

While might not having the same weight of stuff happening at Microsoft, Mindseye have a bit of everything mess inside of it.

Beyond that, from the video I saw, the game itself is bizarre, and raises even more questions, like how anyone would expect that game to compete with GTA 6 when in Mindeye, beside the bugs and all of its other problem, also have the most empty and linear open world where everything you do that isn't following the next step of the story will render you a game over.

Like serious, steal a car - game over, step too outside a certain area - game over and so on. Also, the game is a sci-fi story... if you stretch the definition. Again, there are some really good videos about it.

And even more, people trying to make over ambitious GTA clones, that either fail or become scams are a sort of cottage industry, much like some year ago, it was people trying to make over ambitious MMOs, but in general most people don't hear about (but I have seen youtube recommend some videos about it).

@allthedinos: Haha, sometimes wishes do come true! You'd think it was too silly to be true, but here we are. Truly the era of the business idiot.

@manburger: Reacting to this news by adopting a rictus grin so wide that it eventually wraps all the way around my skull.

Thank you to everyone who commented; my goal is to post the official poll tonight (or at least as the American Midwest would define "tonight").

@manburger: Say what you will about tech CEOs who love AI.

I think this might be a slightly weaker crop than last year's? Sure, Ubi and Microsoft are in fun little holes, but they've been digging those holes for a few years now -- this year they just finally moved a cot in and got comfy. AI is clearly the hottest mess because of the sheer number of new and different ways it gets messy -- slop in games, slop as games, dubious financial advice, being a massive money hole that demands sacrifice from other departments. "Most Troubling Mess" I'm probably going with Collective Shout, assuming that effort had any lasting momentum (I'm not going to validate them by looking into it).