20 Most Controversial Games of the 2020s (So Far)
11. Six Days in Fallujah
Six Days in Fallujah was a military shooter first announced way back in 2009 and sparked immediate controversy for being centered around the Iraq War from the American perspective.
Beyond the obvious tastelessness of producing glossy entertainment based on ripped-from-the-headlines pain and suffering - and from the imperialist perspective no less - there's the fact that the Iraq War was still ongoing in 2009, which made it seem especially tacky and tasteless.
Original developer Atomic Games ultimately went bankrupt in 2011, seemingly ending development, but in 2021 it was unexpectedly resurrected by Highwire Games and released in early access in June 2023.
Though this reworked version of the game clearly attempted to address the controversy by including a campaign from the Iraqi side, many were still opposed to its release as a work of apparent U.S. propaganda, the Council on American–Islamic Relations even calling for Sony, Microsoft, and Valve to ban it from their storefronts.
Ultimately, though, the biggest surprise is that Six Days in Fallujah's early access release barely registered a blip, those few who bothered to review it largely dismissing it as a generic, forgettable military sim.