Now showing: corporate nonsense
The Circus
Broken games, shameless cash grabs, corporate clownery, spineless censorship, desperate PR, AI slop and every other bit of rubbish worth pointing and laughing at.
Mocking companies, games and industry nonsense since 29 Jan 2026.
How the Circus score works
Every badge has a value. The worse the bullshit, the more points it
gets.
Open
How the Circus score works
Every badge has a value. The worse the bullshit, the more points it gets.
The clown bonus
A separate penalty for behaviour that deserves face paint.
The badge points
One point for ordinary rubbish. Five for the headline acts.
Annoying, lazy or embarrassing.
More than a bad vibe. Something is genuinely wrong.
Deliberate rubbish with consequences.
Hostile, deceptive or badly damaging.
The sort of decision that earns a tent.
See every scored badge 186 scored badges
CO Company conduct
- Layoff Dividend +5
- Public Harm, Private Upside +5
- Bait & Switch +4
- Bought It To Kill It +4
- Community Manager Sacrifice +4
- Copyright Laundromat +4
- Worker Meat Grinder +4
- Art Team Revolt +3
- Cash Grab Certified +3
- Consumer Sacrifice +3
- E-waste Speedrun +3
- Legal Until Caught +3
- Monopoly Move +3
- Regulatory Dodge +3
- Mask Off Moment +2
- Snake Move +2
- Slop Served +1
ยฃยฃ Money and management
- Bagholder Factory +4
- Acquisition Hangover +3
- Boardroom Brain Rot +3
- Capex Bonfire +3
- Consultant Brain +3
- Executive Vanity Project +3
- Investor Call Design +3
- Phantom Audience +3
- Quota Cult +3
- Valuation Fanfiction +3
- Failed Upwards +2
- Focus Group Brains +2
- No One Asked +2
- Numbers Doing PR +2
- Pivot Of The Week +2
- Reading Room's Empty +2
- Touch Grass Needed +1
PR PR and hype
- Astroturfing Operation +4
- FOMO Machine +3
- Media Laundering +3
- Benchmark Theatre +2
- Blame The User +2
- Productivity Fanfiction +2
- Quietly In The Footnotes +2
- Roadmap Fanfiction +2
- We Investigated Ourselves +2
- All Mouth No Trousers +1
- Apology Without An Apology +1
- PR Apology Template +1
SYS Product and platform abuse
- Cloud Hostage +5
- Killed The Servers +5
- Predatory MTX +5
- Subscription Parasite +5
- Always Online Hostage +4
- Kernel-Level Nonsense +4
- Privacy Policy Jumpscare +4
- Right-to-Repair Enemy +4
- Season Pass Scam +4
- Telemetry Vacuum +4
- Support Page Graveyard +3
- Update Broke It +3
- Account Required, Obviously +2
- AI Slop +2
- Mod Hostility +2
- Warranty Gymnastics +2
- Pause Button Hostage +1
CUT Censorship and localisation
- AI Translated +4
- Gore Fine, Skin Crime +4
- Global Standard Bollocks +3
- JP Version? Lmao No +3
- Rewriter's Pet Project +3
- Western Brain Rot +3
- Westernised Script +3
- Coward's Cut +2
- Dub Only Disgrace +2
- Lost In Translation +2
- Spineless Sod +2
- Pre-emptive Cope +1
Q Quality
- Dead On Arrival +4
- Steaming Pile +3
- Time Sink +2
- Two Faces +2
- Proceed With Caution +1
- Put Me To Sleep +1
- Style Over Substance +1
PLAY Gameplay
- Animation Lock Prison +2
- Camera Is The Boss +2
- Cheap Bastard Difficulty +2
- Fighting The Controls +2
- Meta Or Die +2
- Rubber-Band Bollocks +2
- Stat Sponge +2
- Wet Noodle Combat +2
- Boss Runback Tax +1
MECH Systems and depth
- Build Variety Theatre +2
- Complexity Cosplay +2
- Spreadsheet Tax +2
- System Soup +2
- Tooltip Avalanche +1
WRLD World and progression
- Copy-Paste Dungeon +2
- Endgame Employment +2
- Number-Go-Up Sludge +2
- Open World Tax +2
- Corridor In A Wig +1
- Loot Confetti +1
- Respec Tax +1
SPN Creative spine
- Horny Then Sorry +2
- HR-Safe Mush +2
- Sanded Into Beige +2
- Edge With A Safety Rail +1
ART Art and animation
- Animation Crime +2
- Visual Sludge +2
- Face Factory +1
- Particle Soup +1
- Photorealism Ate The Art +1
ยฃ Value
- Daylight Robbery +4
- Overpriced Tat +2
- Wait For A Sale +1
QA Polish
- PC Port Disgrace +4
- Asset Flip Energy +3
- Held Together With Tape +3
- Rushed Out The Door +3
- Shader Stutter Special +3
- Bare Bones +2
- Bug Safari +2
- Frame Generation Crutch +2
- VRAM Glutton +2
- Recycled Assets +1
II Sequels and remakes
- Franchise Killer +5
- Live Service Curse +4
- Zombie IP +4
- Modernised Into Nothing +3
- Copy-Paste Job +2
- Name Only +2
- Nostalgia Bait +2
- Remaster Roulette +2
- Soulless Reskin +2
- Safe Sequel +1
HR Player time
- Grind Required +3
- Time Vampire +3
- Checklist Simulator +2
- Map Full of Nothing +2
- Padding Galore +2
- Skip Button Needed +1
TXT Story and writing
- AI Wrote This +4
- Dialogue Wheel Fanfiction +2
- Phoned It In +2
- Anime Trope Overload +1
- Cliche Bingo +1
- Companion Furniture +1
- Cringe Dialogue +1
- Exposition Dump +1
- Generic Plot #47 +1
- Romance By Spreadsheet +1
- Trope Recycler +1
- Villain Monologue Moment +1
BGT Budget and jank
- AAAA Disaster +5
- Unplayable Jank +5
- Budget Black Hole +4
- AAA Slop +3
- Absolute Jank +3
- All Budget In Marketing +3
- AA Budget Flop +2
- Built In A Shed +1
- Low Budget Warning +1
- Shoestring Budget +1
UI UI and UX
- UI From Hell +4
- UX Crime +4
- Menu Nightmare +3
- Click Simulator +2
- Mobile Port UI +2
- Needs A Wiki +2
SND Sound and performance
- Where's The Audio? +4
- EN Dub Crime +2
- Same 3 Songs +2
- Voice Acting Crime +2
- Forgettable Soundtrack +1
MP Multiplayer
- Pay To Win +5
- Dead Lobbies +4
- Forced Multiplayer +3
- Laggy Servers +3
- Toxic Cesspool +3
- Bot Lobby Simulator +2
A11Y Accessibility
- No Subtitles +4
- Controller Lock-in +3
- Font Crime +2
EA Early access
- Abandoned Early Access +5
- Forever In Early Access +4
- Early Access Garbage +3
Positive badges add 0. Featured badges only decide what appears first. They do not quietly fiddle the score.
Games usually score higher because they have far more ways to be rubbish: UI, polish, writing, audio, multiplayer and so on.
๐ช The Big Top
5 headline actsThe worst-scoring posts in the live ranking. Fresh nonsense can knock an old act off the bill.
I finally played the 'AAAA' Game
Year 3 of Skull and Bones proves this pirate game has zero future. It is a tangled mess of hostile UI, boring gameplay, and pure live-service delusion.
Nioh 3 - a shameless corporate copy-paste job
Nioh 3 is a shameless corporate copy-paste job. I break down the recycled Ronin assets, bloated combat, AI translation, and baffling censorship.
Forza Horizon 6: Japan, but Western Corporate-safe Edition
Forza Horizon 6 is a beautiful but soulless imitation of Japan. A corporate-safe, HR-approved microslop game masquerading as car culture. Do not pay ยฃ60.
XLGAMES: How the mighty have fallen
XLGAMES went from MMO innovators to shutting down a desperate asset flip after just three weeks. Discover why this pathetic cash grab spells absolute disaster for ArcheAge Chronicles.
John Carpenter's Toxic Commando Review - A.K.A WWZ 2
An honest 50-hour review of John Carpenter's Toxic Commando. Saber Interactive's latest co-op zombie FPS is just a lazy World War Z reskin.
๐ Hall of Shame
21 entriesRepeat nonsense, spectacular failures and decisions that survived far too many meetings.
GenAI hyperscalersโ Q2 reports prove one thing: spending must go up
The Q2 2026 hyperscaler reports proved one thing with remarkable consistency: whatever these companies thought GenAI would cost, the answer is always several billion more.
Atomic Heart + full DLC review: highly ambitious RPG FPS, but felt like it was made in the early 2010s
Atomic Heart feels exactly like a game made in the early 2010s. A detailed review of the base game, the awful protagonist, and the final DLC package in 2026.
Tripwire monetised itself into a dead end
Tripwire built Killing Floor 3 around season passes, abandoned KF2, and trapped itself supporting a live-service sequel almost nobody plays.
The Jim Ryan era was the worst thing that happened to PlayStation
Jim Ryan squeezed gamers for every penny while greenlighting endless live-service failures. Lets look at how his spreadsheet mentality set the industry back a decade.
Bluesky's ultimate unforced tech own-goal
Bluesky alienated its entire anti-AI user base by forcing the GenAI app Attie into the ecosystem. A scathing breakdown of Jay Graber's out-of-touch tech disaster.
Bandai Namco with another flopper from a guaranteed IP
Following the Code Vein 2 disaster, Bandai Namco fumbles another easy win. Sword Art Online: Echoes of Aincrad features empty open worlds and exhausting, rigid gameplay.
Code Vein 2: How to kill a successful new IP
Code Vein 2 has launched to a disastrous 52% rating. I breakdown how Bandai Namco killed the franchise with poor UE5 performance, removed co-op, and aggressive censorship to chase a 'modern audience' that does not exist.
Zuckerberg and his GenAI clown show
Zuck blew $14 billion on a tech bro to build Meta's Muse Spark LLM. It is a hilariously pathetic closed-source bot that copies OpenAI and bombs basic logic.
Sony just dropped a 765 million Bungie bomb and pivoted to AI
Jim Ryan bought Bungie for $3.6 billion and bailed. Now Sony is eating a massive impairment loss while pushing generative AI to distract angry investors.
Metaโs $2 billion Manus panic-buy implodes
Mark Zuckerberg tried to paste over his failing AI roadmap by buying a dime-a-dozen API wrapper for $2 billion. Then China completely vapourised the deal.
Anthropic accidentally open-sourced Claude Code and immediately called the lawyers
Anthropic accidentally leaked their Claude Code sourcemap and panicked with thousands of DMCA takedowns. Unpacking the hilarious hypocrisy of the "ethical" AI lab.
The biggest idiot of the AI bubble
Microsoft is burning $100 billion to boil the planet and keep OpenAI running. The great AI grift continues as top-line revenue is just recycled Azure credits.
The public benefit corporation that did โnothing wrongโ is paying $1.5 billion for โnothing wrongโ
Anthropic has finally been ordered to fund its full $1.5 billion copyright settlement. The self-appointed responsible adult of AI still admits no wrongdoing, despite knowingly downloading millions of pirated books and keeping them anyway.
Masayoshi Son is the premium GenAI clown
Masayoshi Son, GenAIโs premium clown, missed Amazon, sold Nvidia, tried to sell Arm and now bets $64.6bn on OpenAI while calling bubble fears blasphemy.
The Americans finally woke up from the SpaceXAI fever dream
SpaceXAIโs $2.68 trillion fever dream crashes back to Earth, exposing Wall Street hype, Musk worship, AI losses and a queue of diamond-handed bagholders.
Tokenmaxxing was the quickest reality check for out-of-touch corporate execs
Tech giants gamified burning millions of dollars on AI compute just to fake productivity. Here is a look at the absolute stupidity of the tokenmaxxing trend.
The $50 trillion bubble leaks: How the Pentagon accidentally broke the AI industry
The Pentagon just accidentally popped the generative AI bubble. While clueless users boycott OpenAI for Anthropic, both are walking into a financial death trap.
AI First, Reality Last: Sovereign Governments
Clueless governments just blew $30 billion on Nvidia GPUs they have absolutely no idea how to use. Sovereign AI hype is a colossal grift that is actively destroying the consumer hardware market and wasting tax payer's money.
AI First, Reality Last: Microsoft Antitrust Case
Microsoft is facing massive global antitrust raids, daily EU fines under the DMA, and a ยฃ2.1 billion UK lawsuit over cloud tying and Copilot bundling.
The tech industry is in frantic GenAI PR control
A new verified study of 6,000 executives proves Generative AI offers near-zero productivity benefits. Read why the tech industry is in frantic PR damage control.
AI First, Reality Last: Case Bank of America
Leaked emails reveal Bank of America bought massive amounts of Nvidia AI hardware with zero plan on how to use it. Lets look at the "Formula 1" fiasco and the funny reality of corporate AI shelfware.
๐ The Rest of the Tent
19 entriesEverything else with a Circus score.
Monster Hunter Stories 2 - Short Review
Monster Hunter Stories 2 is a heavily limited Switch game that actively disrespects your time with endless RNG grinds and massive delusions of grandeur.
What's Copilot? Even Microsoft can't tell you
Microsoft is pushing desperate Copilot ads on Reddit while scrubbing the brand from Windows apps. Why is this enterprise AI legally an entertainment toy?
The Hollowing of Bandai Namco
Bandai Namco looks successful on paper, but the Code Vein 2 flop and Blue Protocol disaster tell a different story. With FromSoftware going independent and Shueisha building its own gaming division, Bandaiโs future is going dinosaur.
Deep Rock Galactic: when shouting "Rock and Stone" into the echo chamber no longer works
Shouting Rock and Stone can no longer hide reality. Rogue Core is a fundamentally barebones ยฃ25 Early Access asset flip that betrays its co-op roots.
Ninja Gaiden 4: Competently stylish, yet unfinished and low budget
Ninja Gaiden 4 review: PlatinumGames delivers phenomenal combat, but a strict AA budget, ugly cyberpunk designs, and a terrible new protagonist ruin this ยฃ60 release.
The Phantom Audience Fallacy: How Ghost of Yลtei Stalled the IP
Why has Ghost of Yลtei stalled at 3.3 million sales? Sonyโs refusal to announce a 5 million milestone in their Feb 2026 Q3 report confirms the drop-off. I take a look at how chasing the 'Phantom Audience', the Erika Ishii controversy and shallow writing alienated the core demographic. A breakdown of the ROI trap and how Sucker Punch damaged the IP's future for a quick profit.
Sega and the Yakuza fatigue: The tipping point of a milked franchise
The disastrous launch of Yakuza Kiwami 3 proves Sega has officially milked the franchise dry. Here is why RGG Studio desperately needs to let the IP rest.
Revisiting Aliens: Fireteam Elite ahead of the sequel
A short retrospective review of Aliens Fireteam Elite. Exploring why the brilliant perk grid, challenge cards, and weapon attachments make it worth playing today.
9 Kings short review: A restrictive early access mess that barely justifies half price
9 Kings is just another typical early access indie game with terrible UI, lazy unit buffs, and awful pacing. It is barely worth the half price.
Sega is running its company like a 2010s corporation and wondering why its games aren't selling
Sega is wondering why their highly reviewed games are not selling. Between ยฃ60 AA Persona reskins, Denuvo delusions, and burning almost $800 million on a dead Angry Birds fad, here is exactly why their out-of-touch boardroom greed is finally failing.
Bungie's upcoming Marathon is walking off a Cliff
With ARC Raiders dominating the extraction shooter genre, Bungie's upcoming Marathon faces an impossible battle. The ยฃ35 price tag, poor timing, and abstract design spell disaster for Sony's investment.
A $3.6 billion USD company
After a decade of unhinged mismanagement, Bungie is firing half its staff. Destiny 2 is over, and Marathon's disastrous Season 2 proves Sony bought a flop.
Microsoft's $1.4 trillion AI hallucination
Satya Nadella has vapourised 1.4 trillion dollars of Microsoft's market cap. He is incinerating Azure profits on AI e-waste. Read the brutal truth behind the stock crash.
OpenAI's Sora app was always a spectacularly clueless waste of energy
OpenAI shutting down the Sora app is absolutely no surprise. Between an insane $200 paywall and a delusional AI TikTok clone, it was always a spectacularly clueless waste of energy.
ElevenLabs might just be the most toxic company in GenAI right now
A critique of the toxic sales culture at ElevenLabs following VP Carles Reina's controversial 20VC interview. I analyse the sustainability of their "20x salary" quota, the "Product Market Fit is BS" claim, and why their aggressive firing policy signals a pump-and-dump scheme ahead of a potential IPO in the commoditised GenAI voice market.
Another AAA live-service crown jewel from Sony, everybody
Marathon just had its Season 2 free week and the SteamDB numbers are pathetic. Sony and Bungie are watching their big-budget live service walk off a cliff.
Far Far West: Just another roguelite shooter with a shiny streamer-bait paint job
Far Far West is the latest Early Access indie hit dominating Steam, but beneath the quirky robot cowboy paint job lies the exact same copypasted roguelite shooter you have played a dozen times before.
The long overdue death of Destiny 2
Sony is officially pulling the plug on Destiny 2. Between a massive $765 million write-off, clueless developers, and a delusional playerbase, Bungie had this coming.
Nvidiaโs $100bn OpenAI "investment" was always a bad joke
Nvidia is finally walking back that ridiculous $100 billion OpenAI investment. It was always a transparent attempt to pump the stock, but now the reality of the AI bubble has hit. Jensen Huang knows better than to throw cash into a money pit, yet the other tech giants are still blindly doubling down on the hype.