We can sometimes forget, as we are lost in th൲e deepest dungeons of our favorite game or as we riding the hype train of the next AAA release, that developing video games is a serious business. Not only can it be incredibly expensive, it requires teams of trained coders, artists, story-writers, testers, and more to produce the big games. Fortunately, the industry is full of dedicated, hardworking men and women whose passion is obvious in a game's release.

But as with any big business, particularly when there is so much money on the line, there is often a dark side. Secret wars between publishers and developers, push-back between the creative crew𓆉 and the coders, and backlash caused by the egos of the biggest names in the industry... the list goes on. These battles can be quite nasty, even if company does its best to keep it quiet and put on a friendly face for the public.

The repressions of these private scandals can be serious and can cost companies millions, and us fans are sometimes left with an unfinished product, or worse, with no game🅰 at all. Only ไlater, when we are picking up the pieces, do we realize the fate that befell our favorite developer, or the game we were super hyped for.

Here are 20 of the biggest scandals to go on behind-the-scenes in video game d🍃evelopment.

20 Activision Fire൲s Infinity Ward Founders And Faces A Billion Dollar Lawsuit

Activision fired founders of Infinity Ward (the developer of the Call of Duty franchise) Jason West and Vince Zampella shortly after the release of Modern Warfare 2 due to “breaches of contract and insubordination.” Basically, they found out tha❀t West and Zampella had been in talks with 🗹EA to jump ship and develop a new studio. The story goes that the two were escorted out by security. Shortly after, more than half of the remaining Infinity Ward employees resigned their positions.

Turns out West and Zampella were owed substantial royalties from Activision (which they claimed was the reason they even began looking elsewhere) and they took up a lawsuit against their former employer, originally to the tune of $36 million, later being increased to $2 billion. For Activision's part, they called West and Zampella “self-serving schemers” and counter-sued for breach of contract. Everything wa🔯s eventuall🃏y settled out of court for an unknown amount.

19 Jeff Gerstmann Gives A Game A Mediocre Review… And Is Fire🅷d

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men was a perfectly average third-person shooter developed by IO Interactive, currently🍌 holding a 67% on Metacritic. So when GameSpot reviewer Jeff Gerstmann gave it a lukewarm score of 6/10, you would think it wouldn't be a big deal. The game's publisher, Eidos Interactive, didn't agree, as they were spending a large amount of money to advertise on GameSpot. To prevent loss of their advertising revenue, Gerstmann was fired.

Originally, GameSpot denied the allegations that pressure that Eidos influenced their decision, but five years later it was confirmed when Gerstmann's site Giant Bomb was purchased by the same parent company as GameSpot. Interestingly enough, Gerstmann went on to say this was not the first time advertisers had tried this, such as when Sony threatened to pull ad money over a less-than-perfect review score of Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction.

18 ꦿ Hideo Kojima Is Forbidden From Accepting His Own Award

To say the end of Hideo Kojima's career at Konami was bitter is an understatement. In 2015 the two seemed to be in constant battle, most of it quite public. From the cancellation of Silent Hills despite the massive interest created by the PT, to Metal Gear Solid V's ending getting cu🦋t off and being put on a bonus disc, to allegations that Konami was mistreating its employees, things got pretty nasty. In the end, Konami dissolved Kojima productions and cut their ties with the developer.

Nothing sums up the spite between these two parties better than when Konami's lawyers forbid Kojima from accepting an award for his game at the The Game Awards 2015. The cﷺrowd booed, and the host of the show, Geoff Keighley, even took a few moments to berate the company.

Kojima would go on to reform Kojima Productions as aᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤✱⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚn independent company.

17 🅷 Activision Is Sued For Guitar Hero Royalties ꧑

If you're keeping count, this is the second time on this list Activision was sued for unpaid royalties. This time it was for unpaid royalties for Guitar Hero III by former Guitar Hero developers Harmonix.

Harmonix had developed the first two Guitar Hero games for publisher RedOctane before splitting with them to work on Rock Band. Some time later, RedOctane was acquired by Activision and they wanted to put out another Guitar Hero. They s🌜truck a deal with Harmonix that featured a double royalty structure: a lower royalty if they built the new game from scratch, and a higher one if they incorporated Harmonix properties.

Activision ended up paying the lower royalty despite using Harmonix tech in the new game, so Harmonix sued them for unpaid royalties in the a༺mount of $14.5 million. They settled out of court.

This must have seemed im🧜portant at the time, when band 𓆏games were booming and it seemed Activision was trying to save millions in future installments, but with the genre mostly dead now we can say that perhaps they should have just paid upfront.

16 ꦺ 💫 L.A. Noire's Work Conditions Were Hell

L.A. Noire was a critical and commercial success, with many praising the meticulously crafted recreation of Los Angeles, the 3D motion capture technology used to recreate facial expressions, and fine storytelling. The game had spent seven years in development, and after the game's launch in 2011 several lea𒅌ks revealed the reasons why.

It started with a website that claimed 100 names had been left off or incorrectly listed in the𓃲 game's credits. This was followed by an IGN article in which some of Team Bondi's former employees discussed the high turnover rates due to brutal working conditions, including working 12-hour days and dealing with lengthy crunch time.

The controversy hit Team Bondi hard and they could not secure another project to work on. Despite L.A. Noire's success, the com🎉pany was forced to close down and be liquidat🎀ed.

15 ♑ Pro-Starcraft Match Fixing

E-Sports is a b🦋ig deal in Korea, complete with professional teams, celebrities, sponsorships, and a whole lot of gambling. And when anything gets that big, and when that much money is exchanging hands, it's almost inevitable that some amount of corruption will take hold.

Such was the case in 2015 when several prominent Starcraft II players and their coach were arrested for match fixing. A former world champion, Life, was reportedly paid around $30,000 per match to intentionally lose from the information ava༒ilable. Those ღcaught in the scandal were sentenced to jail time, fines, and a lifetime ban from the e-sports league.

The big blow here was to people's faith in the sport. If even celebrity players coul🔯d be game fixing, what about other players? How many tournaments are being sponsored by gamblers?

14 ♉ Stargate Worlds Was A Legal Nightmare 🎃

In 2008, publisher FireSky announced Stargate Worlds, an MMO based on the popular Stargate SG-1 television series being developed in a colla🍒boration by Che꧋yenne Mountain Entertainment and MGM.

Development of the game barely got off the ground before allegations of theft and betrayal started flying around, and a power struggle broke out between investors and than Chairman of CME Gary Whiting. Whiting was eventually removed (being accused of securities fraud, among other things), but that didn't stop the barrage of lawsuits against the company, by the company, and against Whiting. Eventually a game was released, but instead of the MMO it was a third-person shooter, Stargate: Resistance, which led to yet another lawsuit.

T🐟he game was🧸 canceled and CME declared Chapter 11, but even that didn't stop one last lawsuit from getting piled on top.

13 Infinium Labs Versus HardOCP 🌱

In 2003, startup Infinium Labs announced it would soon release a 'revolutionary new gaming platform' with an 💫on-demand video-game service through digital delivery. It was to be called 'The Phantom." No specific information was given on the device and many sites were critical of the ꦡannouncement.

One such site, computer-hardware news site HardOCP, did an in-depth investigation of the company and its founder. Infinium Labs responded with a cease and desist letter demanding the site take down 🧜the article and threatening a defamation suit. HardOCP countered by filing a lawsuit for declaratory judgment that his company had done nothing wrong.

In the end, the new site won and Infinium Labs was forced to pay $50,000. They would rename to Phantom Entertainment🃏 under new leadership and begin producing wireless keyboards.🍎 No sign of the Phantom still exists.

12 Halo Composer Fired 'Without C♚ause'

Marty O'Donnell had been working for Bungie for more than 14 years and was responsible for the iconic scores of the Halo franchise, as well as the more recent Destiny. O'Donnell had been at odds with Destiny's publisher… hey look, it's Activision again.

Apparently, their dispute involved Activision's marketing team wanting to score the Destiny trailers without O🌊'Donnell's involvement. When an E3 presentation of Destiny did not involve any music from O'Donnell's “Music of the Spheres” which he had composed for the franchise, he took angrily to Twitter. His te𝓡rmination came soon after and he was stripped of his shares.

He fought back𝓰 in a lawsuit and eventually won back his lost shares and the money he was entitled to from Bungie's profit sharing plan.

11 Disgruntled Designer A♏dds Spe𝄹edo Clad 'Himbos'

Maxis designer Jacques Servin was fed up with the intolerable working conditions he experienced when working on Simcopter, which, as you can likely guess from the name, was a helicopter flight simulator. He decided to take out his frustrations in the form of a prank: he inserted shirtless, speedo wearing 'himbos' (ma🌊le bimbos) who walked around hugging and kissing each other. Oh, and they had fluorescent nipples.

Servin was fired for adding unauthorized content, which ended up delaying the release of the game and forced Maxis to miss the Christmas season. This easte𝔍r egg was caught soon after release and removed from future copies.