10 Overblown Video Game Controversies

10. Divinity: Original Sin – Exposing Armour

Armour is worn to protect the player from devastating attacks, and trying to impress other players into thinking you're the coolest dragon-slayer on the server, even though picking fights with rats and boars are a big problem for you. Protecting yourself in medieval-themed games is always a necessity.

Advertisement

Admittedly, female characters aren't as lucky as the men. On some occasions, their armour seems to offer the same amount of protection as a male's attire, while exposing more of their flesh. Divinity: Original Sin's original front cover depicts a fully-fledged male holding the hand of a female with her navel and breasts partially exposed. Armour like that doesn't exactly scream "warrior".

According to Larian Studios' Thierry Van Gyseghem, the criticism received for the artwork over Kickstarter was minor at best, and he also noted the team's trip to E3 2012 was free of hatred towards the cover. Nevertheless, it was still controversial enough to persuade some people to send threats and harassing e-mails to the team.

Gyseghem told BlogJob in an interview, regarding the threats that were being sent, “When you own a pizza place and one day the mob enters your little shack, threatens you by saying if I don’t stop selling pepperoni pizza’s they’ll do anything in their power to make sure you go out of business, then what should we call this? Blackmail? Censorship? Harassment? Extortion? or simply a trade embargo?”

While they made something of a faux pas with the revealing cover design, the backlash the developers received was far disproportionate the the crime.

Advertisement