These games get candy canes, but those games? They get coal.
2025 is nearing its end, but as we approach the Christmas season, we have one important question that needs answering: which games were naughty this year, and which games were nice? You see, we have all these stockings filled with candy canes and coal, and we need to start sorting them out! Many games were lovely this year, paying tribute to late fans, turning down awards out of honesty, and offering loads of community support.
Likewise, however, many games were also naughty. Introducing villains that were so comical that they achieved meme status, or causing community uproar with controversial changes; these are only a few of their crimes. Here are the naughtiest and nicest video games of 2025:
The nicest games of 2025:
Hollow Knight: Silksong (paid tribute to a fan who died of cancer)
By: Anna Bernardo
This isn’t just a feel-good moment; it’s also a tear-jerker. Team Cherry honoured a fan who battled cancer by immortalising him in Hollow Knight: Silksong, appearing as a character Hornet encounters during her journey.
Seth Goldman, known on Reddit as big_boi878, shared in 2018 that he was fighting Ewing sarcoma, an aggressive paediatric bone cancer, and hoped to meet Team Cherry. Not only did he get to meet the developers of his favourite game, but Team Cherry also invited him to help design a custom NPC for Silksong.
Tragically, Seth passed away in 2019 before the game’s release, as confirmed by a friend on his original Reddit post. When Silksong launched in September, players finally met Seth, not just as an NPC, but as a fully realised character with side quests and a boss fight. The battle’s sombre yet epic background music added a deeply emotional layer, leaving many players with tears welling up.
Seth can be found in Eastern Greymoor, hidden in a secret area within the Grand Gate.
Megabonk (for a moment of honesty at The Game Awards)
By Timothy Raj Augustin
The Game Awards 2025 is one of the biggest gaming events to keep an eye on, year in and year out. This year, an interesting incident occurred during the lead-up to the actual show: right after The Game Awards had unveiled its full list of Best Debut Indie Game nominations, one of the nominated games recused itself from the list.
Megabonk, a roguelike survival game created by lone game developer Vedinad, was nominated for Best Debut Indie Game, under the assumption that the game was in fact Vedinad’s first game. The developer quickly took to social media to clarify that Megabonk was not, in fact, their first game. The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley later confirmed that Vedinad was “an established solo developer who had been presenting himself as a new creator under the name Vedinad.”
Megabonk was then removed from the Best Debut Indie Game category, in a strangely wholesome moment of honesty from Vedinad, who might have won an award for their silence. Megabonk was even later nominated in the Players’ Voice category, though it didn’t end up winning.
Baldur’s Gate 3 (Larian Studios bids loving goodbye with Patch 8)
By: Jay Chan
For a game that was never designed to be a live service title, Larian Studios finally dropped its last major patch for Baldur’s Gate 3 in April earlier this year.
Patch 8 dropped a whole lot of new content, and improvements for the game alongside other features like cross-play, a photo mode, and updates to the modding tool kit, despite Swen Vicke, CEO of Larian Studios, telling the world that they would not be adding any new content to the game back in March 2024.
With 12 new subclasses, there are now a lot more ways to play Baldur’s Gate 3, adding to the already-impressive replayability of the game, and revitalising it in a manner that might be considered rare for other games these days.
I could imagine other publishers jumping at the opportunity to make a paid DLC out of the addition of 12 new subclasses, so kudos to Larian Studios for not going down the greedy path for this one. Baldur’s Gate 3 still routinely receives hot fixes, and with the ever-growing fan-made mod content, the longevity of Baldur’s Gate 3 might surpass some other live service games, eventhough Larian Studios has already moved on to its next new project Divinity.
Patch 8 was the best goodbye gift Larian Studios could offer to fans of Baldur’s Gate 3, and a testament to their belief that games with a well-written story do not always need more content in the way of hefty expansions.
The naughtiest games of 2025:
Infinity Nikki (widespread Issues led to a boycott campaign)
By: Sarah “kz” Zulkiflee
Infinity Nikki suffered a down period this year. The game was notoriously buggy, particularly after a disastrous 1.5 update in April, which introduced game-breaking issues. Bugs appearing during major cutscenes not only disrupted immersion but also left players unable to experience highly anticipated story reveals.
There were baffling last-minute changes to milestone rewards, on top of disappearing pulls and currencies from players’ accounts. The game’s story was also plagued by draggy pacing and mediocre writing. And worse, the narrative seemed to lose direction entirely, with no real progress on the main storylines.
This cascade of issues ultimately led to a large-scale boycott just months after launch, sending Infinity Nikki’s Steam Steam rating to an all-time low of just 38% positive reviews.
Infinity Nikki still has a long road ahead if it hopes to redeem itself, but Infold shows no signs of giving up. Hopefully, this whimsical gacha title can turn things around and land on our nice list next year.
GTA VI (never came out)
By Timothy Raj Augustin
Rockstar Games’ open-world sequel Grand Theft Auto VI has achieved mythical status in the games industry at this point, if only because it simply hasn’t come out yet. We all know the data: it’s been a long 12 years since GTA V was released, and two entire console generations later, we still don’t have a sequel. Rockstar had originally set a 2025 release window for the game but alas, 2025 will come and go without a new Grand Theft Auto.
GTA VI was delayed not once, but twice in 2025: first, from 2025 to May 2026, and then from May 2026 to November 2026. That makes this the year of GTA VI delays, and that’s more than enough to send Rockstar’s highly-anticipated game right into our naughty list.
Persona 5: The Phantom X (for the Subway Slammer)
By Kurt Lozano
When Persona 5: The Phantom X launched globally back in June, the gacha spinoff of the hit JRPG made headlines for the wrong (or right, depending on your perspective) reasons thanks to the infamous introduction of the “Subway Slammer.”
Instead of your run-of-the-mill nefarious societal villain, the big bad of Persona 5: The Phantom X's launch content was just a guy who slammed into unwitting subway passengers. Okay, he might have nearly slammed someone onto actual subway tracks, but the really campy way he went about it turned what should be an actual menace into a Saturday morning cartoon villain. I mean, the guy literally exclaimed "The whole subway's mine for the slammin'!" before doing the whole “Escape the protagonist by blending into a passing crowd” disappearing act.
All things considered, there is a legitimate basis in real life for the Subway Slammer, known as a “butsukari otoko” or ‘bumping man’ in Japanese. It’s a real issue that should have been handled more seriously. Instead, the game made him so campy, that instead of raising awareness on a legitimate issue, the whole thing just spawned countless memes. Very naughty way to go about it. However, I have to admit; it was really funny at the time.
