Top Ten 2023 FAILS 

You know it was bad when EA gets the "Not as terrible as you could have been" award this year

I love how you didn't even need to talk about Number 8's entry normally, and just used a Simpsons clip to demonstrate and dramatize the whole Redfall fiasco. No joke, it was legitimately funny and greatly executed.

If you hire someone who was a CEO from EA, then you're just asking for trouble. Unity learned that the hard way.

About the Unity thing, I have to talk about ONE response in particular: the one from Developer Mega Crit, the guys behind Slay The Spire. Which concluded their official statement with this gem: "We have never made an public statement before. That is how badly you fucked up."

"AI CAN be used ethically, and should be used ethically." In a better world, Josh... In a better world...

Me & my wife can both speak as people who were a part of the SAG strikes. While the AI protections we won weren’t “great”, we will concede it was at least better than nothing. It’s an important stepping stone in the right direction so we can renegotiate for even better protections in 2026 when this contract expires. Also if the new deal we got ended up not being ratified, then we’d be going back to the 2020 deal which included literally NO AI protection whatsoever, PLUS losing all the other wins we got in terms of compensation, streaming bonuses/residuals, etc. While what we got after the strike in terms of AI isn’t perfect, what we could’ve lost was objectively worse.

To add onto the moral greyness of the whole Gary Bowser situation, he was pretty hated within the emulation space, including making people pay for hacked/jail broken consoles. The team he was on used already free hardware that was used to get homebrew working on it, attached DRMs to it and claimed it as their own. Even if that these were unreliable as they kept on constantly bricking switch consoles, with him even enforcing a monthly fee to keep them from bricking. And in comparison to others, he and his team weren’t shy at all that they were pirates and making money off it. He even was boosting about it and how he made tens of millions of dollars. Sure, you can make an argument saying the fine was too high, but he definitely wasn’t just an innocent pirate wanting to preserve Diddy King Racing. While yes the Pokémon and tournament fails are bad, The Pokémon Company is more to blame for the Pokémon fail than Nintendo, at least IIRC. If we are still bundling them, I would bump Nintendo down about one or two spots.

One more dishonorable mention: Larger game devs panic when gamers praised Baldur's Gate 3 and essentially telling them to "not have those high standards"

I agree 100% with your take on AI. It's a tool, neither good nor evil, and should be used ethically. Mindless hatred won't get us anywhere other than a Skynet Scenario.

It just doesn't feel like the start of a new year until Josh starts tearing apart the games industry for all the garbage decisions they've made from the previous one

To be fair with Nintendo, Gary Bowser wasn’t only imprisoned for emulating, but for selling modified switches that basically scammed the buyers, forcing them to pay a certain amount of money every month to keep using it (not to mention he was also a part of a pretty infamous hacking group). Still great video

2023 was a year with some of the highest highs of gaming… but also some of the absolute lowest lows of gaming failures. Let us all pray that this happy new year of 2024 will be a much more stable one for the gaming industry.

"I'm not smart enough to talk about this" I respect that.

Blaming purely Nintendo on the issues regarding Pokémon Scarlet and Violet feels kinda disingenuous. Im definitely not gonna defend them on any of the other shitty things they’ve done this year, but the whole Pokémon thing is purely the Pokémon Company’s fault. Nintendo may own the Pokémon IP, but they ultimately don’t publish the games nor are they behind any of the decisions surrounding Pokémon like the NFTs thing, it’s all the Pokémon Company. The whole reason as to WHY Nintendo is patching in a lot of bugs and glitches for a lot of their games like TOTK, but not Scarlet and Violet is because they’re not the ones in charge with the development of those games, it’s purely The Pokémon Company and their lack of regard for patching issues and glitches with games. TL;DR Don’t purely pin the blame on Nintendo regarding the issues with Pokémon, blame the Pokémon Company. Especially since it allows the Pokémon Company to get away with THEIR scummy and shitty business decisions.

Glad to see the Escapist exodus got an honorable mention. That really was a company sawing off its own foot and then wondering why walking is so much harder now. At least now we have Second Wind with nothing being lost. Everything either got carried over or they started/will start a new thing with the serial numbers filed off. Biggest loss to me used to be Adventure Is Nigh, but then in December we learned that Second Wind acquired the rights to it so the adventure goes on.

You know it's gonna be huge when you see the trailer

Seeing Josh roast Cinder during the live services segment was extremely cathartic to me. Animal Jam was one of my favorite games when I was a kid, and to see Wildworks scrap Fer.al in favor of that NFT disaster Cinder hurt me to my core.

Another fail of 2023 in my opinion is the Tighnari VA scandal. Trigger warning for anyone sensitive to this topic cause it includes the involvment of minors. When Sumeru was announced and showed the characters one of them was Tighnari the most sassiest fox person you can ever meet. And the person who voiced all that sass was Elliot Gindi. Now he seemed funny and overall pretty chill. However it was one day that a person on Twitter came out saying that Elliot is a sexual predator. And has screenshots of their conversations with him on Discord and the stuff he was saying is...disgusting. And most of the fans he chatted with are MINORS! Even some of the VA's spoke up about his weird behavior when they would do recordings. So obviously he tried to defend himself saying that "I didn't mean to hurt anyone." Yeah Hoyoverse didn't took it well and immediately kicked him out and the went to work to find a new VA for Tighanri. Yeah we had many dark moments in the Genshin community but no matter how divided we are we all agreed that whole thing was a sh*tshow.

You do know that hacker was a part of a much larger group that did a lot of scummy stuff right, and it was the courts that fined him that much, not Nintendo. Also Nintendo dosent have control over Game Freak and is only a part holder over the IP and have no influence over game devopment.

I know that I’m beating a dead horse at this point, but it still needs to be either on the list or at the very least an honorable mention. Sony Censorship Policy has been Sony’s biggest thorn on their side for 6 years. To those who don’t know, Sony’s censorship policy was made in 2018 when they moved to California. As the name suggests, the policy requires Sony to censor games from Japan. And some people would say, 'Oh they’re just censoring Japanese games, what’s the big deal?' Just wait, because this causes a sales flop to third party games on Sony’s platform console. Still not convinced? Well, how about the time Sony abandoned the Japanese marketing all together by shutting down their Japanese division. This resulted in many people being layoffed, including the creator of Gravity Rush. And if you are 3rd Party developer or a Indie developer outside of America and you want your game on their console, it can get infuriating. You need to have a meeting with Sony’s head hancho, at their Time Zone and if you can’t speak English then you need to have a translator with you, because if you don’t have one with you, their not going to allow your game onto their console. I know Nintendo has been called out for their actions and rightfully so, but when Sony has a fail that has been ongoing for 6 YEARS and no one has bothered to bring up how self destructive it can be, I really have to question not just gaming critics and journalists, but gamers as well.

Is anyone else tempted to sneak onto the stage at a game award show and hand the people at Activision/Blizzard an Razzie style award for being terrible three years in a row?

Considering that Hogwarts Legacy is in dishonorable mention or Joshscorcher not wanting to talk about it despite having passion in gaming just goes to show how MESSY this game was on all sides. And I respect that.

No other Top 10 compares to this annual Top 10 that I've always looked forward to every year! It's going to be interesting with how the 2024 Fails is going to look 🤔

If there's one thing we can appreciate in these fails lists is the great parody songs. They're great and creative as usual Josh! 👍

Hot take, Jirard deserved to be on this list WAAAAY more than Nintendo did when at the end of the day your getting mad at them for the reason a large chunk of artists are mad at AI, they don't want people taking their work without their permission to make money off of them or use it to support platforms they don't support And the Pokemon stuff is Pokemon Company International, not Nintendo themselves

Ah, what better way to start the new year than with a list of the Gaming Industry’s blunders of last year

Dude, if Viv would call it gratuitous, then that shows how much more swearing there is compared to Hazbin and Helluva.

I consider proper use of AI to be like measuring the dimensions of a building. You let it just determine the initial area of the building you want to build, and you can worry about modifying things later as you build on this starting foundation. In terms of game development, I'd say it's like making a template Misuse of AI is letting it do everything for you, walls, floors, windows, circuitry, everything, while you just watch and decide "This is good enough," even though the building is unstable and can cause problems. That's what corporations are approaching AI is to simply help, not replace.

I personally don't blame Josh for not wanting to touch the Hogwarts Legacy and NickMercs controversy. That's a dumpster fire that will have you lose friends regardless

That intro song was so, CATCHY, and fair. And yeah, this has been one of the best and WORST years in gaming. And I’m afraid, 2024 maybe worse…

Lemme guess what will show up: -Community fail (most likely being The Completionist 100%ing his career and then New Game +ing himself with the scandal) -Square Enix is a definite show-up, but perhaps an opportunity to talk about the problems with AI -A couple of games that dropped the ball very hard, such as Gollum and Kong -Naughty Dog, this is the 5th time you've worked on Last of Us these past years -Bobby Cocktik may be gone, but his crimes will never be forgotten -But in spite of what's been going on at ActiBlizz, I get the feeling that the whole Unity debacle will raise number one, especially with how many games have been affected by this (including Among Us)

Kotaku comparing their situation with Nintendo as WW2 makes me think of plundered art in that era.

Josh, Bro in Christ. If my 29 years on Earth has taught me anything and feel free to use this in future rants: "Never underestimate the power of STUPID."

"If I had a nickel for every time Larry the Cucumber made a quote that would age greatly, I would have two nickels. Which isn't a lot but it's weird it happened twice."

American McGee's Alice franchise demise was a hard blow to me. I loved the games

It's not really Nintendo's fault that The Pokemon Company screwed up Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, like seriously people stop blaming the wrong people for Gamefreak and The Pokemon Company's mistakes

"Imbeciles! Fools! Nincompoops! Can't you idiots do anything right?! According to THIS, your track record is PATHETIC!" -Uka Uka, Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex (2001) [Note: I intentionally left out the "for spreading evil" part of that quote for comedic effect.]

Thank you for your hard work and thanks to the editers and other staff too

10 seconds in and I'm already loving the video. Josh, you've got a great taste in music.

Josh, we can turn your top ten series into a drinking game with how many time activision is on the lists

I hope you had a fun New Year's Eve, Josh!

Lets be fair to Nintendo. Pokemon Gen 9 being a mess seems to be more attributable to Game Freak than Nintendo themselves. And yes the company can make stupid decisions, but we can at least say that overall Nintendo has a pretty clean record compared to certaub other companies.

I’m legitimately struggling to think of any flops from Nintendo this year. Shutting down the eShops? They were on life support anyway, plus hshop exists for 3ds. Everybody 1 2 Switch? I doubt a mediocre game no one bought counts as a fail

In other words, AI isn't Evil, it's the people who used it for Evil

Hollywood: spoils the entire movie in their trailer. Utube: wanna see what happens? Watch the video

I would like to nominate a fail regarding the black-and-white use of AI: The backlash against "Scooby Doo, Where are You? in... Springtrapped". A fantastic crossover between and tribute to Scooby Doo and FNAF. The creator, Eagan Tilghman, was a college student who made the video on little-to-no budget and so had to resort to using AI voices for some of the characters. This ended up catching the negative attention of some people on RU-vid and Twitter, who would then go on to inform Grey Delisle, who had previously voiced Daphne in a few animated series, who then threatened to BLACKLIST Eagan from the industry for using AI in the video (this despite the fact that the AI voice for Daphne was based on her 60s actress, NOT Grey Delisle 🤦‍♀️). MANY people called out her unprofessional response and behaviour regarding this matter and defended Eagan's decision to use AI, as he literally could not afford to hire any voice actors at the time. He has since released a version of the video that is completely AI free, but it still stands that the backlash was unfair and unwarranted (and Grey Delisle would get hit by karma soon after by accidentally commissioning AI art just a few weeks later 🤣).

You didn't mention Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast. Not video games, but still gaming, so worth a mention. They started the year with their D&D OGL that tried stealing fan content and got massive backlash (similar to the Unity scandal), an artist used AI art which got printed into physical books, and ended the year with a massive company layoff before Christmas. Just to name a few of their missteps.

Also another thing I’ve noticed. Even though John Riccitiello and Bobby Kotick are out from Unity and ActiBlizz respectively, even then it’s still not necessarily that big of a win in the end. Riccitiello may have been one of the main people behind Unity’s abysmal decisions but at the end of the day he was only one of several executives who all corroborated on that plan and he effectively served as the fall guy for the whole situation while the other big wigs try to fly under the radar. And while it’s great that Kotick is finally gone, he still left with a massive severance package and basically nothing more than a slap on the wrist, despite all of the horrible things he did and allowed to happen within the company.

35:47 I look forward to absolutely nothing changing. Wow, that just aged like fine wine.

Half the time I love being a Pokemon fan, and other times it *REALLY* hurts... 😫

Sometimes, I think Press F to Pay Respects will never die. Later shows a clip from Red vs Blue to emphasize the horse armor in Diablo IV costing money being similar to Oblivion.

Okay that Mr burns bit with redfall.......*chefs kiss* golden

Wait, where was the Skullgirls controversy? The one where the new developers retroactively censored stuff in the game for no reason, including Kickstarter goals and an art book people paid for? And did Josh really skip Hogwarts Legacy to not talk about Vtubers like Pikamee and Silvervale getting harassed for playing a damn game and thus calling out bad people from the LGBT community?

Still pretty upset that Mcgee's Alice 3 plans didnt work out, I loved those games and honestly one of my favorite alternate versions of the story and its characters. I've been a fan for a while now and have followed the development since almost the beginning?? The fact that even if there were people interested in a 3rd installment and all the concept art was gorgeous (the dress concept based on the original colored illustrations were Alice's dress was yellow is one of my favorites!) but it still got turned down saddens me.

There’s actually a bit to the Gary Bowser situation that isn’t touched on in this video and makes it a bit less of a gray area. Being that not only was Bowser part of an infamous hacking group, but sold modded Switches that ended up becoming bricked if you didn’t pay an expensive monthly fee. Which was definitely beyond scummy due to him both directly profiting from pirarcy and taking advantage of his own customers. Was Nintendo’s penalties for his actions a bit too harsh? Idk, that’s up to the individual to decide, but at least in this scenario it’s somewhat justified due to him not just being some poor random hacker, but a predatory leech. Other than that, despite 2023 being one of the best years for game releases, it was simultaneously the worst year for actually working in the industry with all the massive layoffs and boneheaded decision made by the greedy, out-of-touch executives. I can’t say if 2024 will be any better, but at least it’ll be truly hard to make it worse.

I only found out about the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny this year, so the fact that the opening was a parody of it was just amazing.

Graphic designer here! One of my professors actually brought up that thing you mentioned with AI-she said we could use it as a reference and she would have no problem. She only had an issue if we tried to submit it as our own and it would get us failed for plagiarism. We actually all agreed it was fair.

the fact that the song "the ultimate showdown" was used as the base for this parody has earned my like and comment on this video within its first ten seconds, good job Josh you finely cultured individual you~

Eh, Josh, I recommend you to watch Moon Channel's multiple videos on Nintendo because he explains why Nintendo felt the need to pull certain actions from the perspective of the law (a perspective that Nintendo would take into consideration when deciding to go with these action). Examples of his videos include: Explaining Ninteno's newest tournament rules (and why they aren't as bad) and explaining why Nintendo sues so often.

"EA BEVAHED, YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE!!!" words id never thought id hear Ever

The fact you brought up Andy and Leyley made me so happy!

I always look forward to these musical intros. Good shit Josh.

I am 99% sure Concord will be included this year as part of Sony's fails, pretty sure they can't do worse than that.

Something that probably won't make the list but is at least worth a mention is the Undertale music situation. Basically, a fangame called Undertale Yellow made a bunch of remixes of Undertale music and the publishers are throwing a hissy fit about it. A hissy fit that could result in the end of Undertale music being allowed to be used without obnoxious copyright claims.

Is anyone else scared of what the fails list of 2024 is gonna be like

I was looking forward to seeing what you would do for a music parody this time around, and as soon as I heard Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny, I knew it wouldn't disappoint. Well done again Josh, and Happy New Year!

To add onto Nintendo taking things down; the creator of Wapeach apparently had to hide all of the concept art he had been showing after Wapeach made the rounds online EDIT: Unless it caused him to break NDA. In that case, it was his fault.

These opening songs are getting better and better

Happy New Year to all of you guys. And to make a context, Josh. If you not feel comfortable enough to talk about the Hogwarts Legacy Controversy, we will humbly accept it. No pressure into it. But I am not surprised how Activision-Blizzard once again took the Number 1 spot, thanks to all of that BS they commited.

Also a fact about Riccottamo... Ricketyelmo... Whatever, the ex-CEO of Unity... Suda51 has quite the VERY personal history with the guy. Why? He was EA's CEO around the release of Shadows of the Damned. A game made by Suda. Which was UNFORTUNATELY published by EA. And the Damon character appeared first in Travis Strikes Again as Travis' punching bag. Play the game, and you'll understand the context.

I'm just amazed how much Josh sounded like Stewie Griffin at 6:50 while sounding like Mr. Burns intentionally. Dude really should consider part-time as a VA or impressionist.

Wow, that was an amazing top list. But at the same time: oh, what a smorgasbord of madness the gaming industry brought us this year. The last five entries especially, is where I had a hard time watching without getting simultaneously disappointed and exhausted. At this point the industry seems to digging deeper and deeper into a rabbit hole that seems to never end. Anyway, have a happy 2024 everyone!

To paraphrase somebody pretending to be Eggman: "I can't be anymore evil than them... and I am literally a cartoon villain."

Great song at the beginning! Also, regarding the "tiny loophole called exemptions to consent" at least that wasn't in the writers guild mentions so they writers are thankfully protected from AI. The Screen Actor's Guild on the other hand, yeah, definite reason to worry. I also see AI as being a tool that's good or bad depending on use, but it should never be used to replace people. I'm glad the writers got proper protection from it, and I only wish the SAG actors did as well.

i know people have those Pokémon SV glitches and yet, in all the times i played the game, pretty much not a single one... idk what i am doing differently, but something is different

I knew the Unity debacle would be in the top 5. I was worried at first about Cult of the Lamb being pulled as I had yet to play it then, but glad they didn't really plan to! With the new crossover and DLC, the future for Cult of the Lamb is bright! But good grief, that was a really bad move Unity. It's like Josh said, you know you failed when both customer and creator come together.

Also, on the dishonorable mention regarding that one dev getting doxxed: The reason for that had nothing to do with the game's themes or any behind-the-scenes stuff... But because some weirdo from 4chan thought said dev was trans and tried to "out" them. So yeah.

I have got to admit, I have been watching your videos and I've got to say, your writers are really good. There's doing a fantastic job, they come up with so many witty and comical content. I wish I could give them a tip.

0:23 Well, to be honest, this looks less like Nintendo's doing and more like The Pokémon Company's doing. Remember, The Pokémon Company and Game Freak tend to act differently from Nintendo. For better and especially for worse. For example, TPC rushes games a lot.

Fails (so far) for 2024: Palworld: Honestly, this controversy is funny at best and pathetic at worst. Copyrighting Undertale music: Taking a page from Nintendo, I see. At least Toby Fox is not having it. Chuggaaconroy: TL;DR: This situation was a mess. At least Tim is handling this maturely. Update: He's innocent 😭 Ubisoft wants gamers to get comfortable with not owning games: Fine, I'll just not buy them anymore. 😒 Nijisanji: After the Selen situation, Niji is basically Diet Activision-Blizzard. Thank God she survived. 😭 (Also, there's a lot more context to go over) Update 1: Uh, I saw just joking about the Activision-Blizzard comparison...😬 Localisers crying about getting replaced by AI: If you guys don't want to be replaced, maybe... do better at your job. 😒 Another New Year Square Enix letter: AGAIN?! 😠 Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League: Very fitting title 😒 Publishers want to charge $100 for games: Because $70 wasn't expensive enough. 😒 Skull and Bones is a AAAA game: Ubisoft, let's be honest. You would have canceled this game years ago if it wasn't for Singapore. Cristina Vee: Can people stop bullying VA's FOR FIVE MINUTES!? Nintendo suing Yuzu: Honestly, I can see both sides. The Sweet Baby Inc. Controversy: Ah, so this explains why a lot of games are failing. Update: Oh great, GamerGate 2.0 😒 Update 2: Disrespecting Akira Toriyama: Are these people even human? 😰 Update 3: I honestly don't want to update this anymore. There's too many. Arika Toriyama's Passing: We lost a real one...🥺😭 EA canceling Dead Space 2 Remake: It's been a while since EA did something bad. Sony forces PSN for Helldivers 2: They did backtrack but that was still really stupid. It doesn't help that the community managers just kept ignoring people. Microsoft shuts down Akrane Austin & Tango GameWorks: *sigh* 😤 12:48 About that... Update: They're back Nintendo shutting down Nintendo characters in Garry's Mod: I do agree this is dumb. It's honestly not that big of a deal. The guy who sent Nintendo bomb threats was arrested: Honestly deserved and over Splatoon 3 😒 Nintendo suing makers of MIG Switch: You guys can debate in the replies Concord shuts down within a week: "I'm good with this."

I don’t recognize the song you’re spoofing, but this might be my favorite Fails list you’ve done yet because of how on point it is. 2023 really was a wonderful year for games (not since 2017 have so many great ones come out in a single year) and a terrible year for the gaming industry, and I wouldn’t have been upset if you had made this a Top 15. Happy New Year to your and your family, Josh!

The pure fact you did the first part longer than a single verse of the song automatically deserves a like from the start!

Jesus... Activision Blizzard has been busy in 2023 of being the worst game company of all time, debunking EA from that spot.

Happy New Year, hope you all had a blast. Excited for the Fail list to happen again as this year had major fails. My biggest fail has to be the Skullgirls Censorship Patch in the effects of sabotaging a creator's own company and the series itself. Hope it gets mentioned, but still excited about the episode. Thanks FireryJoker for another great year.

i'm glad you didn't mock KO City. it was one of the most enjoyable games i've played on my Switch. It still bums me out that it ended right when it was establishing a pretty interesting lore

I always love these vids. Props for using an opening song that doesn't lend itself to easy lyrics, yet still smashing it.

3:22 - Number 10 5:09 - Number 9 8:34 - Number 8 9:46 - Number 7 11:22 - Number 6 14:09 - Number 5 18:51 - Number 4 22:40 - Number 3 29:22 - Number 2 32:43 - Honorable Mentions 34:50 - Number 1

The point you made that EA actually behaved itself this past year actually had me thinking. Unfortunately I realized you are correct, they somehow managed to not do anything scummy this year.

07:54 Isn't Jason Schrier the guy who said Dragon's Crown was made by pedophiles because the Sorceress had big breasts? If anything, he should've stayed, he's clearly at home in Kotaku.

Honestly replicating PLAYER'S voices in games can be really effective in horror settings and other games where distrust is a key factor.

Ok, I'll give some thoughts over the list (not mentioned means that I have no problem with it): 9.- Any claim that PC games are more expensive now MUST include an inflation calculator, because this is easily disprovable, especially when old games came at different prices even back then. 6.- I think it would be nice to read development stories, because I don't think S-E pulling good games and bad games could be because the heads up had absolute control nor is as simple as "it failed for being a live service". I'm fairly certain it is far more complicated, especially when we're talking about a Japanese Company that tries to cater to two different continents. Like, S-E dumped A LOT of money on Sleeping Dogs, (I think it was that one that is considered "the Best GTA" in existence) and S-E still lost money and this is the same company that dumped money on Yoko Taro and Drakengard until we got NieR: Automata. So, again, I have a feeling that corporate S-E isn't as simple as we think, or at least not comparable to US or even other Japanese companies, because most companies just don't dump money into a failing IP until it works (Nintendo doesn't count, Miyamoto just has a lot of influence over there) 5.- Oh yeah, "Nintendo doesn't want to preserve its games", sure, the company that has done a better job preserving the source code of even third party games (though that's a licensing issue if Nintendo wants to rerelease it) and has always managed to bring back games people thought forgotten (according to the internet) and even ported almost all their first party Wii U games to the Switch "doesn't want to preserve games". Calling it, in a couple years we'll see Nintendo 3DS games either on Switch or in Nintendo's next project. Unlike companies like EA, Activision and Sony, Nintendo does values its IP. And if this is the starting of the segment, boy, I think I'll actually write it on the comment section on the youtube video. The hacker was reviled by the hacker community itself. He was scummy, Nintendo was on the right here. 16:32 This is false. Nintendo only controls distribution and world wide publication (32% shares, the rest belongs to Creatures and GF). Nintendo doesn't control the Pokémon Company and has no ownership over GF, living in the same building isn't evidence of that. We're talking of the company that decided to buy Next Level Games over Luigi's Mansion and Monolith Soft over Xenoblade but has never bought GF. There is no evidence that Nintendo ever threatened Gamefreak or the Pokémon Company over the quality of Pokémon games. That was just internet rumor that was never confirmed. And I'm stating this because it gets very frustrating how people blame Nintendo over what Game Freak does when (1) Nintendo very rarely intervenes in the affairs of the companies it owns (not counting Nintendo branches) and (2) if Nintendo had any control over Game Freak or Pokémon the whole franchise would be looking very different today. If anyone wants to mention the apology letter from Nintendo earlier this year over Scarlet and Violet, that was only worldwide, since NIntendo publishes Pokémon games worldwide. In Japan, the one making the apology was Game Freak. As for the Patent, I'll first explain Warner and why it is justified: For a patent to happen, you must show that there's a really impressive level of skill, not easy to copy, and that require refinement for it. This is why "Platform" cannot be patented or even a fighting game mechanic. They aren't complex enough to be patented, you can try to file it, but it doesn't mean it will. The Nemesis System IS that complex to the point that, if other companies want to apply it, it must be just as detailed or complex or else it fails apart, not even something easy to implement into other games. So Warner is justified here. If the mystic ancient magic applied to Tears of the Kingdom is just as complex (and from what I understand, it is) then it is also worth, at least trying to patent it, because adding so many layers of physics into the game isn't as easy as one would think. I won't comment on the tournament part because I don't have enough information about it. I think Nintendo is way too high on this list. 2.- Massive lay offs should be taken with a grain of salt. Companies usually have temporary workers or employ people working from other areas just for that game alone and, once done, the partnership ends, which leads to lay offs. Also, before jumping to "corporate greed" or "bad business practice" I think we should try to look at the situation of the company and where did the lay offs came from. Loved this list.

What sucks about Redfall being on this list is that it had an AMAZING premise.

the fact that acti blizzard made it number 1 on the fails list 3 TIMES IN A ROW is just.............wow there's no saving this company is there

It took me 15 minutes just to get through the opening musical intro because I needed to see all of the references, and by the time the number 10 entry rolled around I realized that I have no idea what the entire song sounded like. So I had to go back and listen to it in full all over again haha.

Not sure if this counts as a Fail, as it was a more personal matter, but in April 2023, a Konami employee was arrested for the attempted murder of his boss via fire extinguisher to the head. It was supposedly due to longstanding issues of harassment and power imbalance between the two. Given what we know about Konami’s abusive and suffocating work culture, it was only a matter of time before someone finally cracked.

God damn, your opening song for this list is just so addictive!!! Even more so than your previous ones!!

Yes. Yes! YESSSS!!! Don't hold anything back josh. This year deserve every bit of criticism as it gets!!!

That opening unlocked a core memory, loved it, loved the video and I hope 2024 will be epic for you

28:24 Didn’t expect to see an Element Animations reference here!

RU-vid. Why wasn’t I notified about this upload. I have all notifications on, RU-vid. *pulls out knife* I just want to talk, RU-vid. I just want to talk. But seriously, amazing as always Josh. I look forward to these every year. It’s also remarkable cathartic to watch all of these back to back, I literally made a playlist for it.