At this time of year, when we all look back and celebrate the good stuff that has come our way this year, it is also important to remember some of the absolute Grade A cock ups that have happened in the games industry. Incredibly shoddy ports, unethical business practices and the general behaviour of certain companies have lead to some large mobs taking to Twitter and other social media over the course of 2015, so let’s look back on the top 5 gaming misfires of 2015.

5. The Steam Winter Fail

Let’s start with a very recent one. As everyone was tucking into their Christmas dinner and checking what presents Father Newell had left in their Steam Libraries, something very wrong had effected the Steam Store. Rather than showing the Steam Store Page in your language, not only would the page randomly switch languages but trying to check your account details would reveal the Steam Wallet contents, email and purchase history of another random Steam user. Cue mass panic among Steam users, assuming there had been a colossal safety breach and that hackers had somehow made everyone’s Steam account play a sudden game of Musical Chairs. Cards were cancelled, angry emails were sent to other account holders and at a time for peace on earth and goodwill to all men, Twitter and various gaming forums looked like it was time for Armageddon. Once the people at Valve had finished watching the Great Escape and actually taken down the Steam store, it was revealed that there had been no security breach but that a change to the Steam Store’s caching had resulted in users randomly receiving the wrong cached data when accessing the Steam Store. While no sensitive information had been leaked, this large gaffe at one of Valve’s busiest times was not a great end to the year and probably ruined the Christmas of a couple of dedicated PC gamers.

4. Payday 2's Weapon Skin Debacle

Microtransactions continue to be a great source of tension between many people who enjoy playing games. Some see them as harmless to the overall experience, merely adding extra flourishes of content to games while many see them as a blight on the AAA gaming market, causing companies to gouge prices and strip out sections of the main game in order to be carved up for possible microtransactions. We’ve had the problem of Easy Fatalities in Mortal Kombat X, the growth of fee to play games in the mobile gaming sphere but probably the biggest microtransaction misfire in 2015, was the now infamous Black Market update for Payday 2. In this update, not only were microtransactions added to Payday 2 which is something that Overkill said they would never do, but that these microtransactions came in the form of unlockable safes, containing weapon skins that would increase player stats. A pay to win element was essentially added into Payday 2, with players who could afford the drills to unlock safes receiving buffed weaponry which gave them an advantage online. Moreover, a later update added XP and cash boosts as part of this unlock system, which was like rubbing salt into an already festering wound, causing yet more uproar even after a pretty disastrous AMA with one of Overkill’s producers where the devs offered a meek apology and refused to revert this disliked system. For a company that heavily marketed their game on the promise of no microtransactions and where console players have had to pay full price and still deal with this system on top of a poorly optimised and buggy game, it’s an almighty misfire.

3. Arkham Knight's Dreaded PC Port

Porting games can always be a thorny issue, as one system usually ends up with a sub par port, full of bugs and glitches that other versions do not have. Arkham Knight’s PC port however, was so bad that Warner Brothers are still offering refunds for those who have been unfortunate enough to have bought this complete failure of a port. Arkham Knight chugged on almost every machine, including top of the range super rigs, with debilitating frame rate issues and slow down that made it look more like a malfunctioning NES cartridge than a AAA from 2015. So bad was the PC port, that Warner Brothers had to pull the game from Steam and issue a direct apology to those who bought the game. It’s what you can expect from a port that was farmed out to a studio with hardly any time to do the job to a decent standard and a publisher which has gone on record in saying that they have been more focused on making DLC for Arkham Origins, rather than fixing the various bugs in that Batman game. Arkham Knight is now back on Steam, it’s still pretty damn buggy and the developers themselves have even admitted that the port is past saving at this point in time. The fact that Arkham Knight is still for sale after the continued PR disaster of its launch is atrocious.

2. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided's Preorder Scheme

From an AAA farting out a substandard port, to a developer being so hungry for preorders that it created a mini replication of Kickstarter to entice fans into preordering the new Deus Ex. Mankind Divided’s ‘Augment Your Preorder’ program saw Square Enix offering extra launch incentives for fans that preordered the game. Similar to stretch goals on Kickstarter, the program would unlock increasing tier rewards based on how many fans preordered the game, leading to Mankind Divided being launched 4 days earlier if the final tier was met. In a year where we’ve had our fair share of bloated preorder deals (I’m looking right at you Evolve), Mankind Divided acted as the last straw, with almost every media outlet and Deus Ex fan attacking Square Enix for such a cynical program. The dislike to like ratio on the initial announcement of the program was the greatest I’ve ever seen and the video was quickly pulled after the backlash. The whole program was eventually pulled, with Square offering a limp apology after the resounding amount of negative feedback. While Square was forced to back down, other companies like Bandai Namco still got away with this nonsense, with a similar preorder scheme being used for the Steam release of Tales of Zestiria but due to it not being as popular as Deus Ex, that program actually went ahead. Hopefully, the enormous push back on this marketing misfire will dissuade any company from trying to pull the same rubbish in the future.

1. Konami's General Behaviour during 2015

Was it going to be anything else than Konami for number 1? 2015 is the year that Konami did a super smelly dump in its knickers and then proceeded to rub the mess all over its properties and fans until its drawers were stained brown. We’ve had reports of negligible treatment of Konami staff from Nikkei, the fallout of Konami’s now infamous break up with Kojima, the cancellation of Silent Hills which was set to be an absolute dream for horror fans, the use of once respected franchises like Castlevania to make ‘erotic violence’ pachinko machines amongst other things. Combined with the release of Metal Gear Solid V and the realisation that not only was the game clearly unfinished, but rammed full of microtransactions which included buying insurance for virtual items and you’ve got the recipe for the year long dumpster fire that was Konami in 2015. We can take solace that Kojima is out of the iron grip of Konami and that they are now starting their downspiral into complete obscurity as they have no real worthwhile games left to release.

So, there are our top 5 gaming misfires in 2015. What have been the biggest gaffes for you this year? Will 2016 be any better or will more companies stick their feet in it? Tell us in the comments below.