2017 gaming awards – App Trigger superlatives edition

Dumbest Gaming Decision of the Year – NeoGAF (Tyler Malka)

While EA has angered the gaming industry with a singular game that has even members of Congress drafting up possible suggestions for loot box legislation, the company’s stock has risen roughly 30% year over year. EA will be fine, but the decision to sandbag and downplay an allegation of sexual assault by Tyler Malka resulted in one of the biggest gaming forums, NeoGAF, having a majority of its membership abandon it overnight.

An allegation made on a person’s Facebook page turned into in a weird two-day standoff between NeoGAF’s users and management/moderation with nothing but deafening silence from owner Tyler Malka that had users in a weird standoff. His late, beleaguered response was to remove Off-Topic discussion boards, ban all future conversations of a political nature and publicly denounce the accusations in a manner counter to the standards of the site’s posting policies.

In a matter of days, the popular water cooler gaming forum for hardcore gaming enthusiasts, developers, publishers, gaming personalities and executives alike vanished in an instant, migrating slowly over to the newly-established ResetEra over the span of a week.

One of the most influential, well-moderated gaming sites, as a result, turned into a shell of itself that acts more as a regressive echo chamber for well-hidden members of the alt-right. Nothing can quite measure up to how baffling a decision Malka made that fateful October day.

Next: Game Of The Year 2017, as chosen by the App Trigger writers

Runners-up: EA (Angering Disney), EA (bumbling of Mass Effect: Andromeda)