20 Most Controversial Games of the 2020s (So Far)
2. Stellar Blade
2024's acclaimed action game Stellar Blade became a lightning rod pre-release for the ongoing debate about about sexualised designs of female characters in games, given that protagonist Eve sports a voluptuous figure and spends the game kitted out in a figure-hugging outfit.
Director Kim Hyung-tae ultimately defended the game's meme-worthy focus on Eve's posterior in particular, claiming that because players spend most of the game looking at Eve's back, he wanted to make the view appealing.
On one hand some felt that Eve was yet another misogynistic product of a predominantly male-developed team - a relic of a bygone era where developers assumed every single person playing was an unrelentingly horny teenage boy.
Others, however, argued that Eve was an empowering character, while some felt that Eve's sexy appearance was a well-earned throwback to the PS360 era of character action games and also a riposte to the downturn of sexualised characters in mainstream video games.
Whichever side of the argument you fall down on - or, perhaps, you just don't care either way - it's safe to say that the discourse about Eve and her jiggle physics was interrogated far more intently than anything else in the game.