
Apropos nothing in particular - beyond the routine controversy that arises on any particular day in the games industry - here are ten notable shock moments drawn from the boiling lavatory water of gaming hysteria.
Alas, KZ Manager was just the tip of a vast, anti-Semitic iceberg. Literally hundreds of underground, pro-Nazi games have been circulated in Europe over the last couple of decades - titles include Aryan Test and Anti-Turk Test. Inevitably, the origins of most are shrouded in a cowardly cloak of anonymity, or hiding behind developer names such as Adolf Hitler Software Ltd, and Hitler & Hess.
Horrid.
Admittedly, there was probably no way of discovering this other than trying it out, so we can't help but feel the onus should be as much on the players and reviewers as the developer.
The UK was - along with Germany - one of the latter, after the BBFC refused to release the original version of the game. The publishers spent the best part of a year appealing and pleading, before the BBFC relented. Other countries were less lucky - it never even got released in Brazil.
Developer Infinity Ward went to great pains to give the player the option of skipping the "disturbing content", but nevertheless caused something of an outcry - and kicked off a bit of a verbal scuffle in Parliament, amid accusations that it was glorifying terrorism.
A spokesman for the British Muslim Forum even likened it to the Nazi propaganda films of Joseph Goebbels, while Alex Goldberg, chief executive of the London Jewish forum, stated: "Let’s face it – it’s children playing this game. In the Holy scriptures, when Cain kills Abel, God asks him one question: Are you your brother’s keeper? The rest of the bible is an answer to that – and it’s a big yes. When I play this game I don’t get that answer – I get upset.”
Don't play it then, you big baby.
At the time, Glen Bowman, senior lecturer at the Department of Anthroplogy at the University of Kent, gave his opinion to Videogamer: "I think the knee jerk reaction that says if you use black people as bad characters you're being racist is actually itself a kind of inverted racism which says that you can't have scary people who are black."
The BBFC were to have the final word on the issue, stating: "We do take racism very seriously, but in this case there is no issue around racism".
A lawsuit - accusing Rockstar Games of deception and abuse - was even filed by an 85 year-old New York grandmother, who had bought the Mature-rated title for her 14 year-old grandson.
Even Richard and Judy waded into this row, trying to pass off their own apathy as some sort of moral outrage on This Morning, while Digitiser's Violet Berlin stepped in to defend it.
Tim Collins, a former lieutenant Colonel of the 1st Battalion Royal Irish Regiment, was asked to express his fury, saying: "It's particularly insensitive given what happened in Fallujah, and I will certainly oppose the release of this game."
Developer Atomic Games countered by insisting: "It's not about the politics of whether the U.S. should have been there or not. It is really about the stories of the Marines who were in Fallujah and the question, the debate about the politics, that is something for the politicians to worry about. We're focused now on what actually happened on the ground."
Ultimately, the game was put on indefinite hiatus and now - some six years after the waves of anger first washed over its boots - is unlikely to ever be released.
Consequently, the storm that blew up around the game - its main crime was being, at worst, mildly sexist - resulted in Sega of America removing it from store shelves, and led directly to the formation of America's Entertainment Software Rating Board. So. That's good then.