Fandom Rivalry / Video Games

• The Pokémon fandom is so bad about this that they have their own page.
• Console Wars in general. Even worse is PC vs. Console.
  • Sega fired the first shot, but the anti-Sega views were mostly taken up by Nintendo's fandom rather than the actual company. Didn't help much that Nintendo fans were all accused of being five-year-olds.
  • According to The Other Wiki, Sega also fired a cold welcome at NEC when they launched their TurboGrafx-16 in the US by mocking their console's design decisions through a series of ads that only aired in markets where NEC was trailing the system. NEC fired back in kind through the Johnny Turbo comics. Sadly, on the Fandom end, no one cared about the TG16^note In the U.S. that is, the TG16 (or as it's known elsewhere, the PC Engine) was the #1 console in Japan for much of it's lifespan.
    • Even mentioning the rivalry between Sega Genesis and SNES today can lead to fierce debate. Nowadays some Nintendo fans like to bring up the failures of Sega's subsequent systems, returning the Take Thats Sega hurled at Nintendo in The '90s.
    • Case in point: Sega decided to release 3DS themes based on their consoles like the Sega Genesis and Sega Game Gear in the US and Europe. Even after Nintendo and Sega have been partnered for years and Sega hasn't released a console for over a decade, there was still backlash with people bringing up how "Microsoft and Sony would never do this!" THQ, with permission from Microsoft, released a Viva Piñata game on the DS and the president of Sony Computer Entertainment International owned two Wii Us.
    • This was not even the most notorious very first console war. That honor would probably go to the Intellivision vs. Colecovision fan war. Even nowadays, plenty of people mention the one while also bringing up the other, even if it's irrelevant. Not helping the fact is also that the consoles themselves are polar opposites, with plenty of arguments reflecting that, such as the fact that the Intellivision has the best sports games while those on the Colecovision were horrible and that the Colecovision has the best arcade ports while the Intellivision had almost always blatant Porting Disasters.
    • In the modern era the vitriol between Nintendo fans and fans of the other consoles, in general, can get pretty heated. This partially originates from how the two groups have developed over time, with Nintendo being defined, as always, by their first party output with a focus on gameplay and iconic characters, while the other consoles (and PC) are more and more defined by the offerings of third party developers and first party games that push graphical fidelity and realism. What really gets the argument heated is the question of how much of that is the result of the user base, and how much is that of the developers of said third party games that spills into its own form of rivalry in the form of "first party Nintendo vs. third party everything" argument. Oddly enough, Sonic normally is exempt from this particular spat, given that the series is usually good at appearing on Nintendo systems, and because Sega was once a competing console maker with a history of high-quality, industry-defining first party games that many of the less partisan fans tend to respect, but one really does not want to get near a Nintendo fan after a game is announced for every platform but theirs, nor a third party enthusiast who starts chiding them for "port begging" and telling them to get stronger hardware.
    • The Nintendo Switch vs. Steam Deck debate is very heated within certain circles of the internet due to being similar systems, even though the latter was not actually designed to compete with the former. ^note The Deck was actually designed as a successor to the failed Steam Machines, as well as to advance the gaming capabilities of Linux Operating Systems. This mainly resulted from the Deck first being revealed around when many were expecting an upgraded Switch to be revealed. Various PR statements from Valve have been interpreted by both sides as Competing Product Potshots at the Switch's expense, even with them doing such things as making a Compilation Re-release of the Portal series exclusively for the system. This is exacerbated by the emulation community considering the Steam Deck as a better way to play Nintendo Switch games. Switch players meanwhile point out that the Switch is far easier to buy in stores than a Steam Deck and view the entire thing as part of the ever-ongoing conflict between Nintendo and PC game views.
    • PC versus Nintendo is a specific flavor of the fandom rivalry of PC versus console, with the conflict focusing on the differing preferences of these specific groups. While PC players emphasize mods, frame rates, graphical settings, and the frequency of game discounts, Nintendo fans put more emphasis on art style, portability, ease of use, affordability, and availability, iconic characters, Nintendo's typical high standards of game release. Two particular areas of conflict between the two are in emulation ^note which is typically a divide between PC players who see no reason not to emulate Nintendo's games for higher frame rates and Nintendo fans who see this as piracy and hypocrisy as gaming PC parts often cost more than the Nintendo systems. A middle ground exists where Nintendo players are fine with PC players who purchased a Switch and the games before emulating them, but any hint of piracy, such as immediate date on date ports of games like Metroid Dread, or before official release like Tears of the Kingdom will make them call for the blood of PC players as pirates and exclusivity ^note  Nintendo games are famously exclusive to Nintendo platforms in the vast majority of cases, a concept that, due to Steam's dominance, is seen as anathema to the spirit of PC gaming and notably fueled the backlash against the Epic Game Store. .
  • Console and PC gamers, at least in the West, can agree on two things:
    • They hate Mobile Phone Games and the people who play them, citing mobile games as Shovelware designed for "casuals" with microtransactions that they consider greedy cash-grabs. Mobile phone gamers on other hand hate both PC gamers and console gamers for wasting money on bulky, useless parts and accessories that can't even go mobile, and for being rich bastards who spend $50-70 on a game without knowing first if they'll like it; particularly in Japan, mobile gaming is highly prized for being commuter-friendly (many people take trains rather than drive), and without requiring the user to invest in or carry a separate device. This in particular gets very heated whenever console or PC gamers feel like mobile elements are popping up in console or PC games.
    • They don't take Arcade Games other than the classics seriously — even less than mobile games — dismissing them as overpriced novelties that one has to go out of their way to find and play and have no depth to them unless they're Fighting Games, and even then, "Why pay for every credit when I can pay for a game once and then enjoy it all I want?" ^note Not helping this is that Raw Thrills, the most prominent Western company in the modern arcade industry, deliberately designs their games to be novelties, whereas other major names in the amusement industry such as Konami, Sega, and Taito have shown that they are capable of producing arcade games with a degree of depth to them, yet many of their games don't leave Asia, which only skews Western opinion of arcade games even more. Games in other genres of arcade games like Driving Games, Light Gun Games, and Rhythm Games have cult followings at best. In some countries, arcade game fans are dismissive of console and PC gaming for the same reasons that mobile gamers are, especially in countries where consoles are considered imports ^note Most infamously, anywhere that isn't the Americas, Europe, Oceania, Japan, Taiwan or Korea doesn't exist to Nintendo, less so to Microsoft (to Microsoft, South-East Asia consists of exactly one country: Singapore, and a large chunk of Eastern Europe and Africa doesn't exist either). whereas Sony at least try to market to areas outside of those to some extent. This is why, for example, you won't get Miis in StreetPass Mii Plaza hailing from, say, Indonesia or Israel, as they don't appear on country selectors for Nintendo websites and products. and therefore it's prohibitively expensive to import consoles let alone games to go with them; the idea being "Why save up for months just to invest in console and PC gaming when I can make much smaller investments at a time for my daily dose of arcade games"? ^note This mentality has something of a niche in southeast Asia and Japan, where there are several countries that are official territories for arcade game publishers but not for many console game publishers or — again — Nintendo.
  • Meanwhile in the sides of China and Southeast Asia, most PC gamers, along with the already niche playerbases of Xbox and Nintendo, tend to side with mobile gamers due to free-to-play and low-cost Digital Distribution games being widely accessible, internet cafes available for renting, and less restrictive online requirements (generally free online play for PC and mobile phone games) compared to consoles, which require mandatory online subscriptions with higher premiums in relative to the average person's income. Console gamers (PlayStation loyalists in particular) are often mocked in these regions as elitists who tie themselves to specific subscription ecosystems, or stuck-up bullies with annoying Holier Than Thou attitudes^note considering many in this group would express statements such as "not supporting mobile means preserving and saving the video game industry from those evil companies that wanted to ruin the fun in video games and replace them profit-based soulless games" like (mostly Western, polarizing) political propaganda or make points against piracy, among other reasons. Microtransactions aside, PC gamers who berate the mobile gamers and vice versa, on the other hand, are more of a Vocal Minority in these regions, with most who despise mobile gamers as PC gamers didn't start the rivalry. (Most Asian PC gamers generally are less harsh towards mobile gaming compared to Western PC gamers.)
• Matchmaking systems vs. server browsers: Those who prefer matchmaking do so believing it's easier to find multiplayer games using it and don't have to deal with the pain of browsing server after server for a community that will accept them, while those who prefer server browsers do so under the belief that they can accompany more playstyles, especially ones involving custom maps or Game Mods.
• Edutainment games of The Learning Company, Jump Start, and Humongous Entertainment form a Mêlée à Trois between their fans. This is less "if you play this other game you're scum" and more "our game is best."
• Mega Man has stretched itself so far that there's bound to be some of this. Among the main rivalries:
  • Classic timeline fans vs. the Mega Man Battle Network timeline. Though the latter is actually fairly faithful to the former in terms of themes, people who like the old school, Nintendo Hard games see the Network timeline as an attempt to woo over fans of games like Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh!
  • 8-bit Mega Man platformers vs. more-than-8-bit Mega Man platformers. Some people feel the series declined after the NES era, with Mega Man 8 in particular receiving criticism for its increased focus on new gameplay elements the core games never had. With Mega Man 9 and 10 not only becoming 8-bit again, but also axing some of the moves Mega Man gained since Mega Man 2, a steady alternate backlash arose from people who thought the series needed to be more progressive. Mega Man 11 being 2½D and not reverting to MM2-based gameplay was praised by most of the fandom, but only served to disappoint those who cherished the Retraux feel of 9 and 10.
  • Speaking of Mega Man 2, there's an in-series rivalry between Mega Man 2 and Mega Man 3 fans. There's been a massive Broken Base over which game is superior, and it's not uncommon for flame wars to break out. Mega Man V, while seen as another strong contender among the Classic series entries, tends to fly under the radar in most debates due to being far less known than its NES counterparts (being part of the Rockman World series for the Game Boy and all).
    • For all of the complaints about Mega Man Unlimited, the resurrection of the slide while not resurrecting the Charge Shot weren't among them. Contrast the Broken Base over 9 and 10 having the slide (and Charge Shot) be delegated to Proto Man and the complaints about Street Fighter X Mega Man being too dependent on the Charge Shot.
  • Speaking of Street Fighter, the rivalry between both series fandoms has become an increasingly bitter Capcom franchise Sibling Rivalry as of The New '10s, mostly due to the fact that Street Fighter is still getting love and new releases, while Mega Man has more or less become viewed as The Unfavorite child of Capcom, with all iterations having been thrown on the shelf for a lengthy amount of time until the release of Mega Man 11 in 2018.
• The video game example is Mario vs. Sonic. It was practically intended by Sega in the 16-bit era, since Sonic was created for the purpose of competing with Mario. It dissipated a bit once Sega quit consoles, but still exists because the rivalry has become so deeply ingrained in video game history and both franchises are still very recognizable and popular headliners for their respective companies. Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games and Sonic's appearance in later Super Smash Bros. games have taken advantage of this while burying the hatchet for the most part; the rivalry chiefly exists between older fans now (who also still argue over the aforementioned SNES vs. Sega Genesis Console Wars). It's probably the closest thing to a video game equivalent of Coke vs. Pepsi. DEATH BATTLE! celebrated its 100th episode with the two characters.
  • The rivalry took a new turn in the 2020s, with the release of the live-action Sonic films. These two films broke the Video Game Movies Suck curse and were very successful, so when The Super Mario Bros. Movie was revealed in October 2022 (months after the release of Sonic 2 in April), it didn't take long for the comparisons and arguments to flare up again. Compared to the Sonic movies, the Mario movie is aiming for a more faithful approach compared to Paramount's pragmatic approach with Sonic, with many fans arguing over which direction is better to take for a video game movie. Tweets like this didn't help matters. The runaway financial success of the Mario movie ^note Within a single week, The Super Mario Bros. Movie surpassed the lifetime earnings of both Sonic movies to become the highest-grossing video game movie of all time guaranteed this rivalry is here to stay and will rise to new heights through the rest of the decade, leaving many to speculate how Sonic 3 (set to release in 2024) turns out with this new success, with many wishing for a crossover.
  • Any Mario Kart game vs. Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing vs. Crash Team Racing vs. Diddy Kong Racing vs. ModNation Racers for domination of the kart racer genre.
• Mario Kart itself has a Fandom Rivalry between Mario Kart DS and other Mario Kart titles.
  • Mario Kart vs. F-Zero as of late, with fans of the latter accusing Nintendo of using various elements of Mario Kart 8 such as anti-gravity and 200cc mode as an excuse to not make any more F-Zero games.
• Within Sonic, you have "classic" (pre-Sega Dreamcast) fans vs. "modern" (post-Dreamcast) fans.
  • With Sonic Generations, Sega Took a Third Option and combined the difference — featuring the aspects of the two eras, from gameplay to aesthetics, colliding in a Crisis Crossover time travel plot.
• Thanks to Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, many Sonic fans seem to have grown quite a hatred towards Vocaloid fans, particularly those of Hatsune Miku. The reason for this is because a survey was put up in the SEGA Forums over who people want as their next downloadable character. While the Sonic fans and other players of the game backed the likes of Billy Hatcher, Bayonetta, ToeJam & Earl, and Ryo Hazuki, Miku received enough nominations to be put on the ballot, which caught the attention of the Vocaloid fandom. They voted en masse, and Miku ultimately placed 2nd, behind Ryo. The SEGA fans felt cheated that a character they largely have no interest in and were previously neutral to could now invade their game. (Regardless of the argument, she is the protagonist of the SEGA-produced Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA series.) The anime haters jumped in, and debates about whether or not she's a SEGA character escalated into a Flame War within a week. It got to the point where some people announced they would become Griefers in an effort to drive Miku usage down. It should be mentioned that the Miku fans, who by and large do not play the game (until she gets in), were largely unaware of the hate going on on the other side.
  • On another note, fans of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed has a pretty intense dislike for fans of the Mario Kart series due to its diametrically opposed approach to how items should function in a kart racer: Whereas Mario Kart has been item-centric since Mario Kart 64 with a stripped-down racing engine compared to other major racing franchises, Transformed is more of an arcade racer lightly peppered with items that are deliberately weak. This has split racing fans between those who like the more action-packed, chaotic progression of Mario Kart races that require on-the-spot thinking versus the calmer, more flowing races in Transformed that require planning ahead. (Most other kart racers have powerful items akin to Mario Kart, hence why such a rivalry never reached this intensity until now.) The Transformed fans accuse Mario Kart fans of being skill-less hacks who need luck to win a race, whereas the Mario Kart fans accuse Transformed fans of being racing snobs who don't know how to deal with unexpected setbacks.
• When around a lot of Sonic fans, talk about Freedom Planet at your own risk. It may have been well-received in every other sector of gamers, and Sonic fans did show support for the game at first, but they eventually came to see the game's similarities to the Sonic games as an encroachment on their territory. The Sonic fanbase has a reputation of Can't Take Criticism on SEGA's behalf, and the fans who genuinely fit this stereotype get very annoyed at how people keep describing Freedom Planet as a Sonic game done right. Want to really prod the hornets nest? Suggest that the success of Freedom Planet paved the way for games like Sonic Mania. That Freedom Planet's players and fans often describe it this way does suggest some intent to provoke, and to take more potshots at the Sonic franchise.
• Within the Mario series itself, there are several examples.
  • Koopalings fans and Bowser Jr. fans often positively hate each other. Many fans of the Koopalings often call Bowser Jr. a dull, boring Replacement Scrappy that stole the Koopalings' role as Bowser's offspring, while Bowser Jr. fans call the Koopalings shallow, overrated one note villains who have no characterization outside their appearance but still have an extremely grating fan following. TheTopTens plays it even worse with nearly everyone hating the Koopalings.
  • After the eighth-gen Paper Mario creative team stated that the existence of the Mario & Luigi games was partly responsible for the removal of RPG Elements from the Paper Mario series, some rivalry developed between fans of the first three Paper Mario games and fans of the Mario & Luigi games. This near-immediately subsided when both sides realized the logical fallacy in the Paper Mario creative team's thought process.
  • Another rivalry in the Mario fandom is Lunar Magic vs. Super Mario Maker.
  • Yet another rivalry in the Mario fandom exists between the fans who like the more sandbox-style games vs. those who like the linear games.
• System Shock vs. BioShock. Even if you like both or prefer System Shock 2 over BioShock, this is not okay.
  • On the other hand, if you dare suggest BioShock is actually a good game, some System Shock fans will eat you alive, call you a Console Kiddy, and kick you out of their forum.
• In the speedrunning community:
  • Whether runs should be single-segment or segmented. This was a significant rivalry in the 2000s, but most runners did both by the early 2010s, so the "rivalry" ended up turning into an Enemy Mine against splicers.
  • Once segmented runs fell out of favor, real-time (RTA) vs. tool-assisted (TAS) came to the forefront; this time mostly from the viewers arguing over which are more entertaining.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess are extreme opposites in terms of style, so debates were bound to arise.
  • There's some division between Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time fans as to which one is the best in the franchise, and if the other is good at all.
  • 2017's Breath of the Wild, with its many changes to the standard formula (done in part to revisit the style of the original game), garnered much praise and quickly became widely regarded as the best in the series to date by longtime fans and critics alike. This sparked debate and comparisons to Ocarina of Time as to which of them is truly deserving of the distinction.
    • Breath of the Wild has also been compared to Sony's Horizon Zero Dawn. Multiple articles and videos have been posted about the debate; even WatchMojo.com weighed in on it.
    • Something that can be extrapolated to the discussion of whether the series works better in 2D or 3D.
  • Then there's the fans of Ocarina of Time vs. Majora's Mask vs. Twilight Princess as to which is the better 3D Zelda game.
  • All of the Zelda games have fans (even those games have some ironic ones). If you claim to like all 18 Zeldas, you're deluding yourself and have blood on your hands.
  • On the outside level, there's The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword vs. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which got pretty intense, very unfortunately named and timed.
• Devil May Cry and modern Ninja Gaiden fans just cant seem to see eye-to-eye on anything. From boss and enemy design, to weapon and special ability functionality, to whether or not it matters to have a protagonist and cast with a hint of personality. There's also some PlayStation vs. Xbox blood in there.
  • This has died out as time went on, with both series going multiplatform and more divisive entries such as Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z and DmC: Devil May Cry putting their respective series on ice for a while bringing fans together. Nowadays, they exist more as Friendly Fandoms alongside other Stylish Action games like No More Heroes, Bayonetta, Metal Gear Rising, and Astral Chain. And fans of all series will come together to dunk on the God of War series, especially after the PS4 game.
• The general "Character Action Game" fandom vs. God of War (PS4). Many of them can't stand how much the game is praised when they feel countless games from years before have done action gameplay better for less acclaim. ^note  One noteworthy example is how God Hand was lambasted for its "bad camera" in 2008 for being clunky, when it's largely identical to GoW4's, which was instead praised for its intimacy (when many would argue God Hand did it better). Even more frustrating for them is how the game is exalted less for its in-depth gameplay machanics and more for its cinematic storytelling akin to The Last of Us rather than a typical character action game. The main argument against that aspect of the game being how intrusive and pace-breaking it is (with there being no option to skip the narrative sequences).
  • The original God of War games are also often derided by said fandom as "junk-food" action games at best; focusing more on cinematic flair, shock value, and scripted set pieces over actual gameplay depth. It doesn't help that those games all sold better than those viewed as the true greats of the genre, such as Devil May Cry and Bayonetta. However, some detractors of GoW admitted to finding new appreciation for them after playing the PS4 game and Ragnarök.
  • Many classic God of War fans also find ire with the aforementioned Soft Reboot, criticizing it for straying too far from its own genre and why they enjoyed the originals. Many will also accuse fans of it, particularly those who came into the fandom because of that game, of never having played the originals
  • GoW fans will argue that darlings of the fandom such as No More Heroes and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance are even more shallow from a gameplay perspective than any GoW game and yet are praised for their storytelling and style. Fans of both series will also defend them as generally being underappreciated in terms of combat depth. Fans of the Norse games in particular will deride the fandom as being closed-minded and unable to comprehend a combat system that isn't a fast paced animesque spectacle and bring up how a game doesn't need an obscenely large movelist to have great combat.
• World of Warcraft is at the center of many of these.
  • World of Warcraft vs. Final Fantasy XI — at least among those for whom the latter is even on the radar. They embody instant gratification vs. hard work, casual play vs. dedicated hobby — or, less charitably, Scrubs vs. "Stop Having Fun" Guys. Additionally, they display solo vs. group emphasis.
  • Since then, the explosion of Final Fantasy XIV after its reworking has caused them to be compared frequently—though, oddly enough, most of the rivalry seems to come from former Warcraft fans who view the game as having entered an Audience-Alienating Era and act somewhat evangelical about the game's modern failings. In general, the difference tends to be that Warcraft tends to prioritize PvP and complex raid challenges and encourages players to Play Every Day, while XIV tends to prioritize storytelling and encourages players to go at their own pace.
  • World of Warcraft vs. Warhammer Online is a second MMO rivalry. See also: World of Warcraft vs. Guild Wars, the latter of which was developed by a group that splintered off from Blizzard.
  • World of Warcraft vs EverQuest is a very old rivalry that if anything has gotten worse over the years.
    • Within WoW, you have warriors-versus-paladins and more famously, warlocks-versus-mages (although most people in those debates see it as a friendly running gag to bash each other, especially since a lot of these guys probably have alts of the opposing classes.).
    • Within WoW, you also have Horde vs Alliance. A major source of contention that causes a broken base. That's right, just like the factions in game, the fandoms are at war with each other. While most players do have characters on both sides (like the class debates) they all have one clear favorite, and there are many flame wars over which is better (from meta-game perspective all the way down to who has the better war machine in lore), which Blizzard favors in terms of buffs or for story focus, etc. Fans of lore also see a similar rivalry between people who prefer "war" between the two factions and a "peace" between the two factions.
    • Compare to the rivalry between Warcraft and Warhammer Fantasy.
  • City of Heroes is another Unknown Rival.
    • More recently, City of Heroes vs. Champions Online.
  • EverQuest fans hold a grudge against WoW that looks like this.
  • EVE Online players tend to stay away from the fracas for some reason, oddly enough for an MMORPG that has been demonstrated to be Serious Business — probably due to a different gameplay emphasis.
    • Star Trek Online might be the first to start some friction, even though it seems like the two games will have absolutely nothing in common besides starship combat in space online, that never stopped anyone.
  • WoW versus Rift: Either Rift is a half-assed WoW knockoff that is on the verge of disappearing into obscurity... or it did WoW one better, and the only reason WoW still has fans is because some people have no taste. There's very little middle ground.
  • Guild Wars 2 versus Star Wars: The Old Republic was this before either game was released. Main points of contention seem to be the healer-tank-DPS trinity vs. a weak and flexible support-damage-control trinity, pay-to-play vs buy-to-play, sci-fi vs fantasy, and Arenanet/NCSoft vs BioWare/EA. Fans of both games tend to agree they want to bring down WoW, but beyond that...
    • If you can find a discussion on SW:TOR's main forums that involves Guild Wars, you will find someone lying about Guild Wars 2 just to make it look bad. There was one thread where a guy claimed he was playing the GW2 beta to reinforce his argument that he knew TOR was superior. The GW2 beta wasn't even out yet. Some GW2 fans love this and go troll the TOR forums, only making the problem worse.
  • In case you haven't noticed the trend by now, over 90% of the Fandom Rivalries in the MMORPG genre can be summed up as "WoW vs. whatever game is currently in second place in popularity."
  • To a degree you also have WoW vs. the first three Warcraft games, due to the seeming abandonment of the original strategy format. Even proposed films have focused more on WoW than the original games.
• Elite Beat Agents versus Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, with OTO fans saying that EBA is a watered down version of Ouendan and EBA fans calling OTO fans "weeaboos" (never mind the fact that EBA had a manga artstyle too).
  • osu! vs. Asian rhythm games in general. The former's fans argue that the free nature of the game makes it quite accesible, while the latter's fans dislike the former for its Unstable Equilibrium of a scoring system, excessive number of anime theme songs, and absolute lack of original content. General rhythm game fans also dislike the osu! community due to many of its players refusing to try other rhythm games.
  • Many rhythm gamers also seem to have a strong animosity towards the maimai playerbase due to refusing to try other rhythm games, as well as players getting particularly violent towards each other.
  • In the U.S., maimai is disliked for a different reason: "I want Sega's other major rhythm game instead."
• Guitar Hero fans think Rock Band tries to do too much and doesn't do anything well. Rock Band fans think Guitar Hero has bad chart design, gets milked to hell and back and, with World Tour, is ripping them off. The minority who play and enjoy both just stay out of the way.
  • Due to both series' Mission Pack Sequels, Metallica vs. The Beatles is an easy way to start an argument between fans of not those two bands, but rather of said video game series. This despite the fact that both bands are completely different.
  • Guitar Hero and Rock Band vs. BEMANI (particularly Guitar Freaks and drummania, the inspirations for GH and RB). The tension seems to have calmed down in recent years, although the introduction of Guitar Freaks XG (a successor to the 3-fret Guitar Freaks that adds two more fret buttons) re-ignited things a little bit.
• There's a bit of rivalry between Love Live! School idol festival players and players of other Rhythm Games. The former defend the game because of its comparatively large amount of lore that many rhythm games don't have, while the latter see LLSIF as a Pay To Win game that, by nature of being a mobile free-to-play game, can't be played in situations where Internet access is not available (such as on a plane that doesn't have in-flight wifi, or on a fully-depleted cellular data plan) and severely limits how many songs the player can play before needing to let the game rest.
  • Within the mobile rhythm games themselves, Love Live! School idol festival has rivalry with THE iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls: Starlight Stage and to a much lesser extent, Show by Rock!! and Tokyo 7th Sisters. It certainly doesn't help that all these games have radically different gameplay mechanics and note judgements which make transitioning between them a difficult task for new players.
• On the whole, people who play more Nintendo Hard scrolling-note Rhythm Games like beatmania IIDX, SOUND VOLTEX, and DanceDanceRevolution tend to be dismissive of other, easier and/or differently presented rhythm games such as maimai and CROSS×BEATS.
• DDR fans in particular have a bone to pick with CROSS×BEATS, due to being the pet project of Naoki Maeda, who served as the sound producer and the face of DDR during its early ears; DDR fans long for him to come back to Konami and work on DDR once more. CxB players don't seem to mind DDR much.
• Street Fighter vs. Mortal Kombat, a rivalry over two completely different games stylistically, but had the arcade-goers' attention fiercely divided in the early 90s.
  • And Street Fighter vs. The King of Fighters, which officially materialized into Capcom vs. SNK.
    • Marvel vs. Capcom 2 against Tatsunoko vs. Capcom. Upon the announcements that both games would receive Updated Rereleases in the West in 2010, the stage was set for hostilities. Best example of this case? Marvel vs. Capcom 3 adopting the Tatsunoko vs. Capcom button layout was the cue for cries of "Ruined Forever!"
• Tekken vs. Dead or Alive is interesting in that it's a fandom rivalry that involves both games and the systems they play on. One of the actual game designers, DOA creator Tomonobu Itagaki, actually promotes the rivalry (Itagaki has been very outspoken in criticizing Tekken). For over a decade, DOA was console-exclusive on Xbox/Xbox 360, while Tekken, although multiplatform, is still considered by fans a PlayStation franchise (this changed when Dead or Alive 5 came out on both 360 and the PS3).
• Genshin Impact vs. Tower of Fantasy. Both are Chinese mobile gacha games with an Animesque artstyle with high production value set in a fantasy setting. However, the fandoms are locked-horns due to several past incidents and accusations of Tower of Fantasy stealing assets from miHoYo and other games, leading to Genshin fans accusing Tower of Fantasy of plagiarism. Not helping matters is how Tower of Fantasy is constantly equated and hyped up as the "Genshin Killer." Tower of Fantasy fans, on the other hand, accuse Genshin Impact for its mediocre storytelling, grindy nature, and toxic fanbase which caused burnout whilst promoting Tower of Fantasy's impressive character customization and more fluid combat mechanics. Genshin fans likewise argue that whatever is said about the game's narrative storytelling quality, its visual storytelling, music, art direction and major cultural impact on Chinese soft power are leagues beyond that of Tower of Fantasy or any other gacha game. Given that the Genshin fanbase is one of the largest in the world, the rivalry is severly stacked against Tower of Fantasy.
• Left 4 Dead vs. Dead Rising used to be one of the most heated rivalries during their golden age of 2009-2012. Both were prominent zombie games with completely different playstyle and genre. Left 4 Dead was a co-op survival horror FPS with impressive gore mechanics and a more serious tone, whereas Dead Rising is a more light-hearted single-player third-person survival game with a unique gimmick of using almost everything as a weapon. Fans of L4D chastised Dead Rising for its frustrating save feature and time mechanic which limits the overall fun and experience, whereas fans of Dead Rising pointed out that L4D barely has any plot, let alone an interesting one, and that its sequel is a literal copy-paste of the original. Both also tried to promote their respective games' replay value over the other, with L4D fans citing the modding community and fun multiplayer experience whilst Dead Rising fans highlighted the game's sheer diversity of weapons and semi-open nature as an avenue for creativity. Nowadays, both fandoms have softened up and came together over lamenting at the state of their franchises, with Dead Rising fans upset over the steady decline of quality in the games, whereas L4D fans are in despair over a lack of a sequel since 2009 while still being forced to play on an increasingly dated engine.
• Super Smash Bros. vs. traditional fighting games. Due to its game mechanics, it's heavily debated whether Smash is more technical or less technical than other fighters; it may be considered less technical because the control scheme is comparably simple, and it may be considered more technical because of some manual advanced technical maneuvers ^note For example, lag-canceling aerial attacks is manual in Smash. Traditional fighters may not have any landing lag at all.. On the other hand, Smash greatly decreases the focus on combos, and in Brawl they are nigh nonexistent, taking away a bit of depth. However, compared to other examples on this page "eh, apples and oranges" is a much more acceptable viewpoint.
  • And then things got From Bad to Worse with the mere existence of PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale.
    • Before that, Marvel vs. Capcom. Both being crossovers with the latter being a more traditional fighter.
  • Given the content of the two games (characters from PlayStation games come together to knock each other into next week), this rivalry could be seen as a proxy of the Console Wars.
  • Later on in the series' lifetime, however, more people became accepting of Smash's status as a fighting game. The real rivalry lies in the divide between the Smash community and the general Fighting Game Community—there's very little overlap between Smash Bros. and traditional fighting game players at a competitive level, leading to conflicts at events that host both Smash and other fighting games. In fact, Smash Bros. tournaments were so infamous for always running past schedule that many fighting game fans rejoiced when it was announced that it would be the last game of Finals Sunday at EVO 2019. This is particularly nasty with fans of Melee, because it has the most entrenched community; Melee fans view general FGC fans as fickle for switching to newer games and see Melee's continued success as proof of its superiority and technical depth, while general FGC fans view Melee fans as sticking with Melee because they don't know how to play anything else and refuse to learn about other games.
• NEVER refer to Assassin's Creed as the Spiritual Successor to Prince of Persia in the presence of an actual PoP fan.
• Silent Hill fans vs. Resident Evil fans. Fans will argue weather the brooding, serious tone of the former is superior to the campy B-movie of the latter; the Zelda-esque open world of Silent Hill versus the Metroidvania dungeon environments of classic Resident Evil, etc. Also, Silent Hill fans will often pride the series on sticking to survival horror, despite declining quality, as opposed to its competition's insistance of diving into balls-to-the-wall action. Then there's the fact that Resident Evil is a massive, saturated franchise that is going strong into the present day, whereas Silent Hill has faded into the "Forgotten by Konami mines", with its latest and hotly anticipated game being infamously and suddenly shitcanned. Then it was announced in late 2022 that Silent Hill 2 would be receiving a remake... an announcement that came months after the (official) unveiling of Resident Evil 4 (Remake). Cue the old rivalry flaring back up.
• Given its relative popularity, the shooter genre is bound to have fandoms fighting each other.
  • Halo fans vs. Metroid Prime fans used to be this, thanks to some of their major installments coming out within weeks of each other. It doesn't help that the resemblance is superficial at best and that both series actually do appeal to different tastes, thanks to the former being a more straightforward First-Person Shooter and the latter placing far more emphasis on exploration and puzzle solving over combat. Despite this, fans later will often accuse the former of being a brainless kill fest and the former calls the latter a snore-fest. The fact that Halo was an instant commercial darling while Metroid continued to be little more than a niche franchise likewise didn't help. However, tensions have subsided for a while now, with both series going through hard times during the The New '10s. Come 2021, the latter was thrown a bone in the form of Metroid Dread whereas the former had Halo Infinite which, while being lauded as a moderate return to form, received criticism of its multiplayer content.
  • There's also a substantial rivalry between the Halo and Half-Life fandoms, possibly mirroring the Console vs. PC conflict.
    • This one is also related to the fact that both were incredibly influential First Person Shooters, and nobody can seem to decide which one was more important (Half-Life, because it's earlier? Halo, because it's more widely known?)
    • As an extension of this, there is also a rivalry between fans of "classic" FPSs (e.g. Doom, Quake, Half-Life, Unreal) and fans of "modern" shooters (e.g. Halo, Call of Duty, Battlefield, Killzone), with the former accusing the latter's games of being overly dumbed down and simplistic, and the latter accusing the former's games of being overly unrealistic and childish. They're also split on where Counter-Strike belongs, either it counts as a "classic" because it lacks Regenerating Health, iron sights, and retains various Quake engine physics quirks as a side effect of how close Goldsrc is to Id Tech 2, or it's a "modern" shooter because it has Limited Loadouts and a modern setting.
  • There's another rivalry which is much more vicious between fans of Halo and fans of Warhammer 40,000, specifically on the topic of SPARTANs vs. Space Marines.
  • Halo fans vs. Call of Duty fans vs. Gears of War fans for domination of 360 shooters, stirred by A. Halo and Gears being Xbox exclusives and B. Call of Duty outright dethroning Halo as the #1 popular console FPS series upon the release of Modern Warfare.
  • Good god, Battlefield versus Call of Duty, a rivalry deliberately started by Electronic Arts themselves. Not completely unrelated to this is...
    • Don't believe us about the Battlefield vs. COD war? Go on ANY YouTube video about either game. Scroll down to the comments. If you are not frustrated, you deserve a medal.
    • The Battlefield vs. Call of Duty fan feud is a relatively recent rivalry. Originally, these franchises didn't start out as as direct rivals, with COD focused more on small-scale combat and Battlefield series focused much larger team-based matches. However, the backlash towards the Modern Warfare sub-series lead to some COD fans to defect to Battlefield, starting this fandom war. The rivalry reached its zenith when Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 were released within a month of each other in 2011 and their developer companies started taking potshots at each other. Although the rivalry died down after 2012, it resurfaced in 2016 when Battlefield 1 received near universal acclaim for its unique WWI setting while Call Of Duty Infinite Warfare was given a more mixed response for its futuristic setting. Not helping matters is that the 2017 Call of Duty: WWII was accused of ripping off Battlefield 1 for its historical throwback.
    • And then came COD vs. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs. Halo vs. Battlefield. You know, since games of different genres should be compared to each other to reach a logical goal.
  • To a certain extent, there's even a Halo vs. Marathon rivalry, as some people think Bungie merely recycled the latter's ideas into the former with more modern production values and more commercial success. The Mac vs. Windows rivalry (as described elsewhere) might also have something to do with it, since the Marathon trilogy was originally released for the Mac before fans created the Aleph One cross-platform port, whereas Halo was originally made for Microsoft's Xbox (though it was later ported to the Mac as well as the PC). However, in this case, it's more acceptable and common to like both than usual.
    • Speaking of which, Marathon vs. Doom for old-school FPS supremacy. The former was considered technologically superior and had an infinitely deeper storyline, but since it was originally released for the Mac, which has never been known for its huge gaming community, the latter was much more widely played. And there were always Doom players who just liked killing stuff without having to follow a story.
• While there's always been arguments over which Grand Theft Auto game is the best, fights between Grand Theft Auto IV fans and Grand Theft Auto V fans are particularly intense. Fans of V say that IV's driving mechanics are too floaty and are hard to get use to, and hate the "friends call you up to do stuff" mechanic. Fans of IV say that the story and cast of IV are way more interesting than Vs, as are the main missions which are more crime-oriented than V's, and that IV has a lot of minor details they miss in V such as the ability to pick up trash and throw it at people. There is also a PC vs. Console element to the fighting, IV's PC port was a disaster, souring a large contingent of fans on the game, and V's PC version was a lot better handled.
• The Fallout franchise has a Broken Base. Fans of the older isometric games made by Black Isle Studios say that Bethesda has dumbed down the franchise, often citing lack of traditional CRPG elements, lore-breaking retcons, and the fact that Fallout: Van Buren (the original Fallout 3) was cancelled when the rights were being transferred over to Bethesda. Bethesda fans, meanwhile, argue that the isometric games haven't aged well, that Fallout 3 brought the franchise back to relevance as a soft reboot and that the old game's fans are simply banking on nostalgia.
  • They tend to agree, however, in that they both enjoy Fallout: New Vegas. Older fans praise its writing and RPG elements, while newer fans praise the combat, setting, and gameplay. They also agree that Fallout 76 was a train wreck on launch, as well as a blatant cash grab on Bethesda's part.
• Grand Theft Auto fans vs. Saints Row fans. GTA fans say Saints Row is too silly and a ripoff of their franchise, whereas fans of the Saints say that Grand Theft Auto takes itself far too seriously, especially after the fourth game.
• Saints Row within itself. You have the fans of 1 and 2 who love the mix of silly and serious; but think Saints Row 3 went too over the top and got too horny and crass even by series standards. Then there are those who either love or hate Saints Row 4 for almost switching genres and becoming a full-on superhero game resembling Crackdown or [PROTOTYPE] more than prior entries. A small subset have also vouched for spin-off Agents of Mayhem for attempting to blend 4 and older entries. Generally there are arguments of which game has a better city, enemies, jokes, and side activities. Though they will usually all come together to dunk on the 2022 reboot. Dunking on it's sanitized humor, overreliance on current-year pop-culture references and zeitgeists; as well as being generally unoriginal, bland and broken at launch.
• Team Fortress Classic players vs. Team Fortress 2 players. The former camp tends to fall into They Changed It, Now It Sucks!, seeing the amount of features as being unnecessary or ruining the gameplay and looking down on the latter game as being too "noobish". It doesn't help that TF2 is much more well-known than the original nowadays. You know how this proceeds.
  • Team Fortress Classic/2 vs. Counter-Strike (Source). Both from Valve, both started as mods (though Team Fortress goes back even further as a mod for Quake), both with diametrically opposed styles of gameplay. Bound to be conflict? You bet.
    • Also nice to know that before Counter-Strike, Team Fortress Classic was the most popular online shooter. Now it's usually back and forth between Counter Strike and Team Fortress 2/Classic.
  • There's also Team Fortress 2 vs. any first-person shooter in general, whether be it Call of Duty, Halo, Battlefield, you name it. Most of the heated debates stem over the differing gameplay aspects between the two sides: solo gameplay vs team-based gameplay, weapons variety vs class system, realistic graphics vs stylized graphics, and so on. This becomes grating to TF2 fans especially when someone who has played either of the latter games plays TF2 for the first time and complains why they can't use grenades or gun down opponents single-handely with ease, leading to some off-handed flame wars that can escalate in a matter of seconds. To this day, some hardcore fans of the latter games consider TF2 the black sheep of the entire first-person shooter genre while TF2 fans consider the latter games to be stale carbon copies of one another. Either way, they're at each others' throats.
  • Team Fortress 2 gained yet another rival in Blizzard Entertainment's Overwatch, with many Team Fortress 2 fans calling it a rip-off due to the game sharing some obvious aspects of TF2 such as the stylized graphics, class system, and objective team-based gameplay. Even some of the classes are direct expies of the latter's classes, fueling the debate even more. Some even fear that Overwatch may overtake Team Fortress 2 as the dominant stylized first-person shooter because of the fact the game was made by the company behind World of Warcraft. However, after Overwatch was released, this also at times overlapped with Friendly Fandoms because of these similarities as well as the unique features that made it different from TF2. As such, there has been a huge amount of crossover fan art and fan fiction popping up staring the two sides on both good and bad terms.
• Overwatch fans started many rivalries with fans of other Hero Shooter games regardless of similarities in graphics and gameplay.
  • When Paladins first came out, Overwatch fans got up in arms and started calling the game nothing more than a cheap ripoff that was made as soon as Overwatch was revealed, Despite being a reimagining of one of the developer's other games. Paladins fans called Overwatch nothing more then a garish money sink with its extremely high particle effects that makes playing a confusing mess, more fans caring more about the characters then the actual game itself, and having a money-gouging freemium economy without being actually free (unlike Paladins). Similar to Team Fortress 2 vs Overwatch, this has mostly calmed down and also has a ton of crossover fanart. The rivalry re-ignited with Overwatch 2 due to the sequel taking cues from Paladins, such as reducing teams to 5v5 and adopting a free-to-play model, leading to worries that it would steal away Paladins' remaining userbase.
  • Gearbox Software's Battleborn was given a similar treatment when it launched from both camps since it too is a cartoony, team-based hero shooter. Although many commentators have tried to differentiate the two by pointing out that Battleborn is more of a MOBA compared to Overwatch, comparisons still lingered especially given the close release dates. Not helping Battleborn is how the marketing took potshots at Overwatch to deliberately invoke a rivalry. However, Battleborn quickly became forgotten as the devs released it at the same time as the first Overwatch Beta, sending it out to die.
  • Given how LawBreakers was influenced by Overwatch, its fandom had to fight accusations of being a clone at every turn despite the game's darker tone and greater focus on fast-paced arena shooter action. Like Battleborn, Lawbreakers was largely overshadowed by Overwatch and quickly died off.
  • Apex Legends vs. Overwatch has become the latest rivalry in recent years. Although Apex Legends is a Battle Royale Game intended to compete with the likes of Fortnite and PUBG, some drew comparisons to Overwatch since it also has a cast of colorful heroes with their own unique abilities. Unlike Battleborn and Lawbreakers, Apex Legends has actual staying power, making it seem like a constant competitor to Overwatch. Not helping matters is how several Overwatch players switched over to playing Apex Legends, creating a perception that the games are competing for the same audience.
  • Valorant also emerged being identified as a competitor to Overwatch from as early as its closed beta. While Valorant more of a Tactical Shooter closer to CS:GO than Overwatch, it too shares a similarly cartoonish aesthetic, heroes with abilities, and a major focus on the esports scene. Valorant's professional league has particularly inflamed the rivalry with several competitive Overwatch players shifting to Valorant. The rivalry onnly got more heated up when Overwatch 2 was released, with OW players witnessing and calling out how distressingly campy Valorant players play the game.
• inFAMOUS fans vs. [PROTOTYPE] fans. Some will praise Infamous for it's polished gameplay and fleshed out open world; others will praise Prototype for far more ambitious mechanics and sandbox. Some prefer the player guided morality of Infamous; others like the nihilistic M-rated ultraviolence of Prototype.
  • How to make the Fans rage? Ask who would win in any forum that knows both franchises
• Final Fantasy vs. Dragon Quest, although this one is probably a little stronger in Japan, since love for the Dragon Quest series elsewhere lies mostly with a cult following.
  • A stronger example for Americans would probably be, within the Final Fantasy series, pre-Final Fantasy VII games vs. FFVII and anything beyond. Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy VII in particular have fandoms with a hate-on for one another. The other strongest rivalries are FFVII vs. FFX, FFIX vs. underappreciation, FFVIII vs. underappreciation (or, more cynically, not being FFVII), and FFVII vs. every other game in the series. The fact that VII tends to be at the forefront whenever there's any kind of crossover does not help.
  • Fans of the 2D versions (SNES, PSX, GBA, PSP) of Final Fantasy IV vs. fans of the 3D remake (DS, Steam).
  • The FFVII fandom seems to have formed one with Final Fantasy XIII due to Square claiming Lightning to be a Distaff Counterpart of Cloud. This intensified with Final Fantasy XIII-2, over a single line of lyric that was removed from the U.S. and Europe releases of the game. ^note ...Wash away the strife... from the Japanese version of "Unseen Intruder", which some fans somehow interpreted as Square saying that they want to erase Cloud from existence.
  • There also seems to be one for FFV versus any of the more story-driven ones.
  • This got really interesting after the companies that made the two series (Squaresoft for Final Fantasy, Enix for Dragon Quest) merged into a new company, Square Enix. You might think that this would make the rivalry less intense as both series are now made by the same company. There are some fans from each side who claim that entries of their series made since the merger have been lesser in quality due to being "tainted" by having employees who were originally from the other company working on them.
  • There's also Final Fantasy vs. The Legend of Zelda. The most heated debate is usually between fans of Final Fantasy VII for the Sony PlayStation and Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64, crossing over into Console Wars, with both heatedly declaring that their specific game was the biggest RPG of all time. Even though Zelda is an Action-Adventure series, not an RPG. It gets worse with the "Cloud vs. Link" debates.
    • Cloud's inclusion in Super Smash Bros. somehow managed to combine the "'Final Fantasy vs. Legend of Zelda" debates with his Wolverine Publicity issue among the larger FF fandom: Though Cloud is the protagonist and face of what is the most well-known and commercially successful Final Fantasy installment, his game marked the mainline series' transition from Nintendo consoles to the PlayStation... in a series largely meant to be a celebration of all things Nintendo. While many did understand the logic behind the decision to pick Cloud, others made their displeasure known and would've liked a rep from the NES/SNES era. Then Sephiroth was announced as DLC for Ultimate and the debate reignited.
  • A smaller scale rivalry is Final Fantasy vs. the Tales series, or, to be more accurate, Final Fantasy VII vs. Tales of Symphonia. Both games are considered by and large to be the greatest games in their respective series, and thus are at the heart and passion of next to all of the flame wars of these two franchises.
    • There's also a minor conflict between Tales of Symphonia and Final Fantasy X, mostly because of their suspiciously similar premises^{To elaborate(spoilers for both games)}The main plot twist in both games is that the Chosen One is participating in a ritual that will ostensibly save the world, which was at a higher level of technology before an ancient war, but will actually further the villains' plans, and the chosen one's Implied Love Interest soon becomes the strongest supporter for changing the status quo. Both games have Hero Antagonist characters who are trying to stop the ritual, one of whom becomes a party member. In both games, the player character's missing father ends up helping the party, but must be defeated in battle first. Both games have summoned allies who tie into the plot in their own ways. Both games also touch upon the effects of racism, but racism is the cause of the villain's turn to evil in Tales of Symphonia, but a result of the social order imposed by the villains in Final Fantasy X.. It's worth noting that while Final Fantasy X did come out first, both games are different enough that those who have played both tend to say they're both worth playing. Oh, and since it's GameCube vs. PS2, chalk up another one to console wars.
• Within the Tales Series, you also get small squabbles between fans of different installments. Those who say the best game is Tales of Symphonia get unwarranted hate for being fans of the most popular series installment. Fans of Tales of Vesperia are often blamed for whining about the PS3 port that never made it to the West — this especially grates on fans of games like Tales of Rebirth or Tales of Innocence that never got translated at all. (And then Vesperia ended up getting a HD remaster on the PS4 and XB1 that included the features from said PS3 port...) If you don't think Symphonia or Vesperia is the best game in the series, you'll also probably have to defend yourself, especially if you prefer the Darker and Edgier title Tales of the Abyss. Some Tales fans think it has the best story and Character Development by far, while those who like the lighter titles find it a slog. Some Symphonia fans also hate Tales of Destiny fans and vice versa. Usually, however, the series averts this, as there are plenty of canon crossovers and the titles are similar enough that most fans enjoy all of them a little — there's certainly a lot less hate between most Tales fans than there is between Final Fantasy fans.
• Kingdom Hearts vs. Epic Mickey. The Kingdom Hearts haters has flocked to Epic Mickey's side for being a massive, epic Disney game without Square Enix or Tetsuya Nomura's involvement.
• You probably wouldn't guess it; but the general Stealth-Based Game fandom versus Metal Gear. Many feel MG is just an action game with a stealth theme that relies more on gimmicks and set pieces rather than consistent stealth mechanics, and features constant, lengthy, frequent story sections that pull interactivity away from the player. However the tables are completely turned in regards to The Phantom Pain; with the Stealth fandom loving how it goes hard on in-depth stealth systems and dialing back the story elements, to the ire of many legacy MG fans.
• Metal Gear fans think Splinter Cell fans are boring, wish fulfillment-craving thirteen-year-old boys who like to look ultra-serious all the time, have no sense of humour, and aren't smart enough to understand a complex, involved and challenging story. Splinter Cell fans think Metal Gear fans are moronic, hyperactive children who wouldn't know true stealth if it crept up behind them and snapped their necks, and aren't mature enough to care about the story of a game that isn't from Japan and doesn't have a vampire in it. Thief fans tend to dislike both camps for being too stupid to understand a story which isn't spoon-fed. It's kind of hilarious watching them all go at it.
  • The Metal Gear Wiki has a neutral article on Splinter Cell. The Trivia section for the game (which no longer exists) once mentioned that the fans of one series often dislike the other, concluding with "It's a good idea to ignore both of them."
  • The best part is that Konami and Ubisoft see it in a more friendly light, both even cooperating to allow each other to create cameos in their games. Cameos that don't involve any shots at each other, even.
• The "classic" Spyro the Dragon fans vs. The Legend of Spyro fans. Classic fans will rub off making the Legend fans look like idiots who'll buy anything while the other side says the Classic fans are immature losers who are afraid of trying something new. It can get rather ridiculous watching the fights go on, especially when people start assuming things about how video games get developed and get sold. As of 2011 though, both sides are willing to make an Enemy Mine against Skylanders just for its Spyro character design alone (Bobby Kotick's reputation among gamers doesn't help). Spyro fans are both on friendly terms with Crash Bandicoot and rivals at the same time. It's less vicious than the Jak vs. Ratchet debate that succeeded it.
• Forza Motorsport vs. Gran Turismo for realistic racing sim domination, mainly due to both series being console exclusives. Forza fans criticized Gran Turismo games for the lack of in-depth visual customization, repetitive car listing, lack of damage models, and lack of open-world focused spinoff, while GT fans shun Forza games for skewed physics and RC-esque engine noise. Made even worse by the fact that both games, today, have official Top Gear branding.
  • As both reached their respective seventh installment that were criticized hard for implementing microtransactions, the rivalry just got even worse, especially with how the Forza side tried (and succeeded) in retracting microtransactions while the Gran Turismo side seemed to only double down.
• You do occasionally run into Umineko: When They Cry versus Higurashi: When They Cry. Yes, despite being two parts of the same metaseries, there's still debate over which is better.
• Heroes of Newerth and League of Legends are both inspired by the original Defense of the Ancients mod — the former is a straight copy, the latter has a few superficial differences. Yet if you listen to their respective fans on the forums, LoL is ridiculously easy to master and only for kids, is too different, the items are boring and the graphics suck; and HoN has a terrible user interface, unintuitive gameplay, is not different enough, the items are boring and the graphics suck. Arguments like 'the automap is on the wrong side of the screen' and 'the item icons are ugly' are not uncommon. Very little effort is spent explaining the reasons why their favourite game is good as opposed to why the other game is trash. With the growth of the MOBA genre, this rivalry started to shift to the new contenders as well, such as Dota 2, Smite, and Heroes of the Storm. Indeed, while LoL and HoN might previously have been the heavy hitters in this rivalry, it might be more accurately summarized now as "fans of any MOBA vs. fans of every other MOBA free-for-all."
  • The arguments against each MOBA are as follows. Dota 2 is a over-complicated, archaic dinosaur with more burden of knowledge than a PHD, League of Legends is focus-grouped, mass-marketed drivel for the sheep, Smite is a braindead action game posing as a real MOBA whose creators couldn't come up with their own characters, Heroes of Newerth is a bad Dota ripoff, Heroes of the Storm relies on Blizzard IP credo and casual carebear mechanics, and everyone else is just a joke that's going to be dead in a year or less. Needless to say, MOBA players already have a reputation for being toxic jackasses, and Fandom Rivalry only makes things worse.
  • Oil gets put on a fire with the rise of Mobile MOBA. Honor of Kings and Arena of Valor are one thing, but the most heated conflict would be between League of Legends: Wild Rift and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang. MLBB had a rocky start of getting hit with multiple lawsuits by Riot Games for being too much of a copycat, but has since tried to deviate more and found success in Southeast Asia. Wild Rift was a little late to the party, but it has the backing of the massive dedicated fandom of League from the PC side, and Moonton sometimes didn't help things when they tried to emulate League further skins-wise, therefore the suing occasionally continued. League fans ironically liked to accuse MLBB fans to be a "dumbed down MOBA" the same way they were accused by Dota fans, in addition to many "anti-Mobile" accusations (but still hoping that Wild Rift would crush MLBB for the sake of their brand), while MLBB thinks that they're already too ahead in the race, and that if Wild Rift is failing, then they only had Riot to blame for not going along with Tencent's idea of a "League for Mobile" format that they had to make their own first and spent years of success to convince Riot.
• Samurai Warriors vs. Sengoku Basara, due to both being Hack and Slash games based on the Sengoku Era. It doesn't help that fans of their respective series view certain portrayals of some characters in one series as a Take That! to their portrayal in the other.
• A very old one that still persists among the retro community: Repton versus Boulder Dash. Made worse by the fact that they have completely different styles yet appear very similar on the surface, to the extent that non-fans often mistake them for clones.
• The Fate/stay night war between the Unlimited Blade Works and Heaven's Feel scenarios still hasn't boiled down. Whether it's a battle between the heroines: Rin is a strong, hardworking, independent woman vs. Rin is a cookie-cutter Tsundere; Sakura is a sympathetic, kind-hearted Woobie vs. Sakura is a boring Nice Girl First Girl Wins. Shirou's ideals: It's impossible to save everyone, but it's beautiful to try anyways vs. ultra-dense Lawful Stupid moralfag; It's better to realistically look at the world vs. moral relativism is for senseless 80s Anti-Heroes. The quality of the narrative: An epic and hopeless supernatural brawl vs. standard Shōnen plotline; A look at the darker aspects of the Grail War vs. two weeks of people dying and badly written sex scenes. What's worse is that any argument among Type Lunatics tends to curve right back to where it began, resulting in an endless loop of "debate."
• Shin Megami Tensei:
  • Though it's more of a Broken Base, Atlus fans can't seem to agree on whether the classic Shin Megami Tensei games or the newer games (such as Persona 3, Persona 4 and Persona 5) are better. Or whether Persona 3 or Persona 4 (etc. etc.) in general were better.
  • There is also the matter of general SMT fans shying away from the Persona fandom (particularly anything starting from P3 for various reasons) due to their ignorance of other sub-series in the franchise or, worse, the erroneous belief that the mainline SMT games spun off from Persona (when it's quite obviously the other way around; the first Persona is set in the same continuity as if..., for starters). On the opposite side, there are people complaining that Shin Megami Tensei IV is not Persona 5. Even some critics unfavorably compared IV to the Persona games and/or were guilty of the misconception that SMT was the spin-off (with one review managing to do both and employ the memetically derided "the Dark Souls of X" description). Needless to say, these were sentiments that SMT fans were quick to◊ poke fun at.
    • A vocal segment of the main SMT series fandom considers the Persona series to not be "real" Shin Megami Tensei, and often dismisses the Persona fans as untalented newbies who wouldn't stand a chance in a mainline SMT game. Other spin-offs (Last Bible, Devil Summoner and its related titles, Majin Tensei, Giten Megami Tensei, Digital Devil Saga, Devil Survivor, etc.) rarely get the same treatment, regardless of how (dis)similar they are to the mainline entries, be it gameplay mechanics, overall difficulty, or what have you. The only subseries that seems to get any comparable amount of heat from this crowd is Devil Children, with similar accusations of "dumbing down" the franchise as well as drawing ire for being a Lighter and Softer series aimed at a younger demographic.
    • Likewise, the aforementioned Shin Megami Tensei IV and its direct follow-up are sometimes dismissed on the grounds of what purists would consider to be "selling out", drawing upon — superficially, some would say — aesthetics and themes more commonly associated with the modern Persona series^*"modern" as in Persona 3 and onward in an attempt to bring in new fans. All this, while still being self-referential and reliant on Call-Backs to previous SMT titles, leading to accusations of Uncertain Audience. That IV is generally viewed as the easiest of the main installments (Early Game Hell notwithstanding) adds more fuel to the fire for this camp.
    • This all seems to have reached a nadir after the Nintendo Direct on July 20th, 2020, where the announcement of an HD remaster of Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne along with the release date for Shin Megami Tensei V came under heavy fire from fans who wanted a Switch port of P5. The rest of the collective SMT fanbase — including other Persona fans confused/embarrassed by the outrage — were to quick to call out these individuals for their entitlement. The kicker? Persona 5 Royal would, along with Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden, get ported to the Switch, Xbox consoles, and PC in October of 2022 (with P3P and P4G also being made available on the PS4 and PS5), making the outroar completely unnecessary.
    • Interestingly, the release of both IV: Apocalypse and V ended up vindicating IV to some extent; while Apocalypse and V are generally agreed to be marked improvements over IV in terms of gameplay, they're also noted to suffer in the story department, with Apocalypse being seen as too tropey and too much of a shakeup from the usual series conventions whereas V is deemed to have a very minimalistic narrative (that some even decried as an inferior rehash of Nocturne) and an even more underdeveloped cast. IV — which at least was based upon the drafts of SMT co-creator and longtime contributor Kazuma Kaneko — underwent many reappraisals as a result, and nowadays is more favorably regarded as a flawed but respectable attempt at modernizing the series and the last installment of its golden age. A lot of the earlier rivalry the fourth game faced was as a result of what had come before it rather than what it was, starting its own intra-franchise rivalry in the process.
  • Within Persona itself, Persona 3 itself has several.
    • One intense example aside from the usual "3 vs. 4 vs. 5" or "pre-3 vs. post-3" debate is Persona 3 FES vs. Persona 3 Portable. Both are Updated Re-releases, and both feature their own bonus extended content compared to vanilla (new Playable Epilogue The Answer^*Episode Aigis in Japan for the former and the female route for the latter). While many fans enjoy both for what they are (and in fact wish that there was a version of the game that combined the best aspects of FES and Portable), more militant supporters of one version have a bad habit of taking potshots at the other. One camp considers FES superior thanks to full 3D environments, animated movie clips, and challenging gameplay mechanics truly in line with other SMT entries, and bashes Portable for the "lazy" Visual Novel presentation, lessened difficulty, and being "otome bait." Another camp defends Portable for being more accessible (at least when playing on actual hardware), having fairer game mechanics for players new to Persona, and its more well-received female route, and bashes FES for its fans' elitist attitude, Fake Difficulty, and (despite the 3D environments) its very slow and clunky navigation. Not helping matters was Portable, and not FES, being the version of 3 that was remastered for eighth- and ninth-generation consoles (despite FES having been previously made available for download on the PS3), further heating up this rivalry... though both sides formed a truce of sorts and dunked upon the remaster upon learning how much of a Porting Disaster it was.
    • Then came the announcement of Persona 3 Reload, starting another rivalry before the game was even released — this time focused on fans excited to see Persona 3 get the full-on Video Game Remake treatment and fans soured by, once again, the exclusion of bonus content found in previous versions. The former side is highly defensive and accuses the latter as whiny, ruining the fun for everyone looking forward to it. The latter snipes back against the former for being willing to pay $70 for something that is not even "definitive" (whereas FES actually cost less than the original^*When Persona 3 FES was released in the West roughly ten months after the original, it was at the discounted price of $29.99. (By comparison, new PS2 titles were typically priced at $49.99.) Furthermore, while both the full retail release of FES in Japan and its international version bundled together the original game and new content on a single disc, Japanese consumers had the option of buying a standalone (and lower-priced) "Append" disc that allowed them to access any FES-exclusive content if they already owned the original game.) and for kicking down fans that genuinely liked the bonus content and were looking forward to them also getting the modern remake treatment, especially the fans of the female MC and all the exclusives found in Portable. The female MC side eventually got it even worse when Dummied Out content for Reload pointed to the likely possibility The Answer would be coming as DLC — which would be officially confirmed barely a month after the game's release — and Word of God confirmed there would not be any Updated Re-release for Reload. More fuel was added to the fire by a leak◊ alleging Atlus would not be including any story content from Portable as DLC (an allegation that would likewise be confirmed soon after in a developer interview given by P-Studio's chief director Kazuhisa Wada), leading to some Portable/FeMC fans becoming extremely bitter and swearing off Reload entirely while more mean-spirited individuals on the other side of the fence were all too happy to laugh at their misfortune of having their preferred story elements relegated to a less favorable version of Persona 3.
    • The above points are only exacerbated by debate surrounding The Answer, as it remained a contentious topic of discussion long after the release of FES and long before the announcement of Reload (and even after years of plot and character analysis helped vindicate its standing among the fandom). Fans of The Answer hold its storytelling in high regard, seeing its narrative as having stronger theming after what happened in The Journey and believing this new Playable Epilogue to be a fitting (if not bittersweet) end to the P3 story. Less charitable views of The Answer, however, denounce it as needless melodrama wherein most of S.E.E.S. is acting widely out of character for the sake of a contrived conflict that ultimately does nothing to undo the protagonist's death at the end of The Journey, only allowing the cast to come to terms with it. This is to say nothing of the gameplay, which has a much greater focus on dungeon crawling compared to the main game and several Scrappy Mechanics to go around (such as the lack of the Persona Compendium), meaning even defenders of the story were likely to bemoan the experiences leading up to the various narrative beats as an exercise in tedium. This opened up a multitude of arguments over whether the absence of The Answer in Portable was a strike against that version, if a future remake could fully do The Answer justice, if The Answer even deserved to be included in any remakes, and so on, with Atlus' apparent waffling on the matter^*pre-release, Reload was claimed to only be a remake of vanilla P3 and therefore would not include The Answer, with many being skeptical that these claims would hold up due to Reload featuring other FES content like the optional Elizabeth hangout events/dates only further fanning the flames.
    • Speaking of the female MC, there's the whole MC fandom rivalry — which arguably deserves a page to itself. Persona 3 prioritizes the male MC in the main continuity, since the game was initially released with just him. In fact, Persona 3 Portable recommends playing his story first to see how the original story plays out, while most crossovers between P3 and subsequent games tend to omit the female MC entirely (with Persona Q2 establishing she is, in fact, an Alternate Self of the male MC from her own world). Despite this, many players praised her exclusive content in Portable, ranging from different music to different character perception on account of her gender to — perhaps most importantly — the ability to Social Link with the male party members, an opportunity the male MC does not have in his route. (In fact, much like how Persona 3 was many players' gateway into the greater SMT franchise, the female route of P3P was certain demographics' first foray into P3.) Like above, while the Silent Majority of players likes both protagonists and, at worst, express dissatisfaction from time to time with how often the FeMC gets shafted in spin-offs, there are various (and quite vocal) factions involved that cause discussions surrounding this matter to turn very hostile in record time. ^{(Further context.)}1) At its "tamest", female MC fans that dislike the male MC consider him boring, dislike his (comparatively) distant dynamics with the team, dislike most of the male protagonist-exclusive Social Links, and even poke fun at his forced harem as a consequence of the old Social Link system (which did not have an option to keep relationships platonic). Conversely, male MC fans that dislike the female MC strike back by calling out how she's non-canon to the mainline games' timeline, how she doesn't fit with the game's theme, how she held back the game's development (and even blame her for The Answer getting nixed), how overrated she is, how annoying her more ardent fans can be (something that only worsened with Reload), and how her fans indirectly "support offenders" because one of her Social Links allows the player to romance Ken, a middle schooler (despite the English version downplaying the romantic aspects of their relationship). 2) For better or worse, FeMC fans in general are known for their passion and dedication. For example, certain fans took great pains to mod her into Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight as well as modify all FES cutscenes to replace the male MC with the FeMC and even adapt alternative scenes, all made to be modded into all versions of Persona 3 Portable (which lacks the animated movies) — an effort that impressed the rest of the fandom. Unfortunately, various members of this group had a tendency of being offended whenever the FeMC was left out from any official P3 (or series-wide) promotion. Due to the smaller source material pool, there are also many in this group who are Fanwork-Only Fans, leading to accusations that FeMC fans in general are just fans of the character and not the game. 3) Then there are FeMC fans who believe that Atlus (and even longtime series director Katsura Hashino) hate her and will never again attempt a female protagonist in future mainline Persona games due to sexism/misogyny, simply because of how the character is treated, in turn leading to accusations of misandry being levied against them. This also overlaps with how Western progressives are lumped in with her fandom, with this group accusing Atlus of all manner of "political incorrectness" by excluding her from Reload. This leaves other female MC fans, those who like her for her actual game content, without being backed by identity politics and who don't go to these extremes whenever the character is "excluded", in the uneviable position of explaining that they are not like this as a whole. This reached a boiling point with the Expansion Pass announcement for Reload; while some fans (particularly those with backgrounds in business and game development) tried to give a more rational justification as to why Atlus would not invest in remaking the female route from Portable^*bringing up Atlus' troubled financial history pre-Sega acquisition, Word of God that the female route was only made as the extra gimmick for the original Portable release, the multiple projects Atlus were working on at the time (most notably Metaphor: ReFantazio and Persona 6) while the studio was also expressing interest in more remakes, etc.; many of these would line up with Wada's official statement on the matter, leading many others to take a more nuanced stance of expressing disappointment over the FeMC once again being Adapted Out but understanding the reasons behind the decision (and appreciating that Atlus was at least transparent about it), the most fervent critics countered that since Reload managed to sell millions in its first month alone with a $70 price tag and was now promoting post-launch DLC (including the remade The Answer/Episode Aigis), this much exposure should have at least incentivized Atlus to "complete" the game with FeMC content instead of just stopping there. The divide could best seen in the Persona subreddit, with the debate causing the subreddit to splinter and more resentful FeMC fans begrudgingly distancing themselves from the rest of the fandom as a result.
    • Another example related to the P3 female MC is her fans duking it out with fans of Maya, the MC of Persona 2: Eternal Punishment. The latter side hates how the former side almost always includes the P3 FeMC in memes, fan art, or discussions about the Persona sub-series as a whole as if she was unique when Maya came first. The former camp defends that the P3 FeMC fans have the right to voice their preference, given that both characters are ignored by Atlus outside marketing, non-mainline releases/updates, or minor references anyway. A third, relatively neutral camp points out that this is hardly a phenomenon exclusive to either lead, as most aspects of the series pre-P3 rarely get referenced in later games (with some memes actually resulting from how this chapter of the series' history is often excluded). Some in this group also make tongue-in-cheek comments about how neither girl was truly first, as they both were preceded by the protagonist of Shin Megami Tensei if... (who is canonically female according to the original Persona).
    • Reload itself also ended up in a rivalry against fans of the original releases of P3 in general, in an Old Guard Versus New Blood way. One can be forgiven for thinking that the former side treats Reload as a Sacred Cow, because they are, to reiterate, highly defensive to the level not seen since the original release of Persona 5, bashing the older fans for ruining the fun with their criticisms, especially regarding the English voice cast changes and the altered content to be "suitable for current times." Fans of the original releases also have the right to criticize Reload fans' behavior for being insufferable and taking pretty much every executive decision without question, including all manner of condescending Pandering to the Base aspects like the use of Content Warnings when the originals did not have such and taking out the "Pretty lady?" gag from the Operation Babe Hunt scene to please the LGBT Fanbase. This is not without precedent, as they have hated how far more westernized Atlus and Sega have become in recent years, causing much of the genuine Japanese feel of the games to be lost. ^{Explanation for full context.}This is not a different language issue either. As of late 2010s, more Japanese corporations have agreed to change their content starting with the original Japanese language release to appease global standards, "global" here being biased towards the United States' ideologies (usually California's), alienating consumers that want to experience content as culturally genuine as possible. This means that, no matter the region, the intent has always been there. As an example, this screenshot◊ from a Capcom presentation shows a bizarre Values Dissonance where even the Japanese standards have become no different from the West, with emphasis on not offending the LGBTQ and on avoiding tropes like Damsel in Distress while using The Last of Us Part II and Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition, both non-Japanese works, as "proper" examples of female character presentation. The Japanese in particular have voiced their contempt at this practice, with Sega coming under fire from those on both sides of the Pacific in early 2024 after promoting an article explaining how localizers for Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth were involved in their handling (and toning down) of the game's content. Persona 3 Reload turned out to be an example of "the change has always been in the Japanese version", adding more fuel to the fire. This only worsened with the confirmation that The Answer would be DLC, meaning FES itself was immediately rendered obsolete in the eyes of many fans. This caused certain old school fans to criticize this business practice (on top of the divisive $70 price tag for the base game to begin with — as noted above, FES was actually released at a budget price compared to the original in most territories) in addition to the aforementioned "modernization" and fandom newcomer behavior. Certain newer fans, in turn, would dismiss their opposition as being blinded by Nostalgia Filter or simply trolling/making arguments in bad faith.
  • For that matter, there's also a bit of heat between fans of Shin Megami Tensei and the Pokémon series, the debates usually ranging to accusing one side of either being too dark, or too soft. The both of them being well-selling, long-lasting Mons series, and having an undying love for spin-offs doesn't help any.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Fire Emblem: Awakening and Fire Emblem Fates fans vs. fans of earlier Fire Emblem games, the pre-GBA titles in particular (with special note going to Shadow Dragon, Mystery of the Emblem, and Genealogy of the Holy War). This is mostly due to changes in writing and gameplay. Newer fans tend to be stereotyped as obsessed with "waifus", while older fans tend to be stereotyped as elitists mad about the series being popular.
  • There's a rivalry between fans of Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Fire Emblem Engage, considering that the two are almost polar opposites. Three Houses is one of the darkest entries in the series, with heavy emphasis on the story and many options for character customization, while Engage is Lighter and Softer, has far less emphasis on the story, and has more standard Fire Emblem gameplay (albeit with the new Engage mechanic). People who liked Three Houses, especially those who got into the series with that game, are often disappointed by Engage's more clichéd story and less interesting characters, while those who found Three Houses to be disappointing in terms of gameplay or found the story to be too dark saw Engage as a return to form.
  • There's also a rivalry between fans of Engage and Fire Emblem Fates, specifically the Conquest route of the latter. Both games have a reputation for strong gameplay and comparatively weak stories, but fans of Fates argue that for all its flaws, it has a better concept than Engage, while Engage fans argue that it owned its cheesiness, unlike Fates.
  • Then there's Fire Emblem versus... any niche Nintendo fandom, from Kid Icarus to F-Zero. Many fans of these types of series hate Fire Emblem for being an attention sink of sorts after the success of Awakening and often engage in the same manner of stereotyping. This also carries over to Smash Bros. due to the number of fighters Fire Emblem has ^note 8 unique fighters as of Ultimate, giving the series the third highest number of reps behind Super Mario Bros. and Pokémon, although non-Fire Emblem fans are far more likely to complain about new fighters from Fire Emblem games less than a year old than ones from games that were out for at least a few years ^note as evidenced by the relatively neutral response Lucina and Robin got when added to Smash 4, compared to the negative response Corrin got when added to the same game or the worse reaction to Byleth's inclusion in Ultimate; the one exception to this is Roy, who literally made his debut in Smash Bros.. It's worse with fans of Chibi-Robo!, Rhythm Heaven, Golden Sun, and Panel de Pon, which have no fighter representation at all and are lucky to appear as Assist Trophies.
  • Many other turn-based strategy fandoms hate Fire Emblem fans for similar reasons. However, special mention goes to Advance Wars, which was also developed by Intelligent Systems. Things only worsened when IS admitted the Wars series was on hiatus because they couldn't figure out how to implement Fire Emblem's relationship mechanics into a new installment and Three Houses "borrowed" the concept of squads of unnamed soldiers (thus igniting fears of the Wars franchise being seen as "redundant" in comparison to FE), though this has actually garnered sympathy from the (relatively low number of) FE fans who are aware of the predicament. Only with the surprise announcement of a remake of the first two Advance Wars at E3 2021 did the divide begin to heal.
• Artix Entertainment fans seem to have a bit of a hatred for RuneScape. RuneScape fans might not even be aware of this rivalry.
  • Perhaps one of the reasons is that it's not uncommon to move from RuneScape to Artix Entertainment (being that both games are free-to-play RPGs with a bit of comedy involved, and the resemblances are even closer with AdventureQuest Worlds now in place), and thus the old animosity that the old RS fans have carry over to AE.
• A surprisingly large number of Jak fans and Ratchet & Clank fans absolutely despise each other, claiming one game ripped off of the other, despite the developers being good friends and business partners. The fact that the characters have starred in games together shows how nonsensical this hatred really is. Thankfully, the opposite sentiment is quite strong thanks to the aforementioned friendly relations between developers, particularly among players in the PS2 era who transferred over from their predecessors (which had much more cordial interactions).
• Dark Souls and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim are both high-fantasy RPGs that came out around the same time. The debate usually boils down to JRPGs vs. WRPGs (despite Dark Souls being styled much like a WRPG) and old school challenge vs. open world fun. It doesn't help that various video game media sites and magazines kept fanning the flames of the "rivalry" between the two games prior to release, and that there are very vocal and very annoying haters of the opposing game on both sides of the spectrum. Dark Souls fans bash Skyrim for being too "boring and cliché" while Skyrim fans bash Dark Souls fans for being "too difficult and confusing". Fans who like both games are labelled "traitors" and are effectively stuck between a rock and a hard place.
  • Likewise JRPGs vs CRPGs (Classic RPGs) are a hot topic; with the latter often accusing the former of being too simplified/linear and overly focused on repetitive grinding; and the former accusing the latter of encouraging exploitable builds over strategy and build-gating content for replay value, amongst many other arguments.
• Touhou fandom gets some hate from the more general Shoot 'Em Up fandom for focusing too much on lore and non-fan game fan works and not enough on the games, and the games themselves being mechanically simplistic. When the Touhou fans actually notice, they generally respond that the other games have boring, ugly patterns and mediocre writing.
  • Touhou fans have a rivalry with other similar games over the matter of which is better (and the fact that most are trying to Follow the Leader).
  • There's also a rivalry between them and KanColle over the matter of general popularity and the fact that various Touhou fan artists have instead switched to doing art of the latter series, irritating the former's fans. Touhou fans are fond of calling the girls in that barely characterized while Kantai fans are fond of saying Touhou is the same.
  • Within the general shmup fandom, fans of "old-school" shooters vs. fans of Bullet Hell shooters and modern shooters in general, particularly those by CAVE. The former hate newer shmups for featuring girly-girl ships and characters ^note The Element Dolls and Element Daughters instead of the more military- and sci-fi-themed visuals of older games and dismiss their high bullet counts as cutting corners. Meanwhile, danmaku fans scoff at more classical shooters for having drab visuals and being too boring to play because they don't have enough bullets on-screen.
  • Another kind of intra-fandom rivalry is between Japanese-style shooters and Western-style shooters (known pejoratively as "euroshmups") such as Tyrian, Raptor: Call of the Shadows and Jets'n'Guns. The former dismisses "euroshmups" as a mess that's either too easy or too hard, rely more on equipment and grinding instead of skills, have no such thing as hitboxes, and awkward controls, while the former feels that the latter are as linear and as deep as Call of Duty that arcade shooters are too unforgiving. The overwhelming popularity of Bullet Hell shmups in recent years has made it worse, as fans of the traditional Western shmups disdain danmaku games for having a greater focus towards playing for score and producing artificial difficulty by simply having enemies spamming the screen with lots of projectiles rather than actual level design challenge in the vein of certain shmups like R-Type. Both camps are very defensive of their opinions.
  • Within the fandom itself lies PC-98 versus Windows. Go on, just try and tell a 98er that all the games before the sixth weren't canon.
  • Also, CAVE vs. 8ing/Raizing. It should be noted this isn't much of a rivalry as CAVE outlasted the latter and some of the latter's staff joined CAVE afterwards, resulting in games like Ibara.
  • CAVE vs. other shooter developers. Some hail CAVE as the gods of 2D shooters, especially as they were the last active commercial 2D shooter for years until the company's restructuring in 2013, while others feel that CAVE games aren't that great and overshadow every other excellent shoot-em-up, except maybe those by Treasure.
• Left 4 Dead fans VS Left 4 Dead 2 fans. In the camp of L4D1, people will claim that the game has a darker feel, better characters, less bugs, and doesn't have the silly amount of guns or melee weapons or new special infected that the sequel has. In the camp of L4D2, people will tout that the sequel is better due to having more variety in guns and zombies, better designed levels, corner camping being less viable, and more game modes to play in. Any mention over which games is better or just mentioning the infamous Left 4 Dead 2 boycott will bring both camps together armed with flaming pitchforks.
• Half-Life fans vs. Portal fans. Valve set the latter in the Half-Life universe, and Aperture Science (the facility in Portal) became rivals of Black Mesa (the facility in Half-Life). In addition, Half-Life 2: Episode Two featured a discovery of an Aperture research vessel, Borealis, with Eli Vance vowing to destroy it "whatever it takes", and in Portal 2 Cave Johnson implies Black Mesa stole Aperture Science's corporate secrets and made profit of them themselves. While some fan circles do seem to get in an argument whether Aperture Science or Black Mesa is "better", most of them became fans of both, destroying the trope.
• Dragon Age: Origins and The Witcher. Both are very competently made western RPGs, both have Darker and Edgier settings, and both explore a variety of mature themes, such as loyalty, racism, sides in conflict, and complex morals. The Witcher fans argue for the game's more interesting setting, well-written story and beautiful graphics, while Dragon Age fans argue for the game's fast-paced tactical combat, more approachable and likeable characters and more polished look and feel.
• Tetris: The Grand Master vs. Tetris in general. The former tends to have a difficult time playing the latter — not necessarily because It's Easy, So It Sucks!, but because they run into issues such as different (and forced) control schemes and changes in gameplay mechanics that make switching from TGM very annoying. The latter tends to dismiss TGM as too hard to play after having watched some infamous videos on YouTube — doesn't help that the TGM series, outside of the mildly known TGM clone NullpoMino, is arcade-only and never saw an overseas release (and most likely never will due to some Executive Meddling on both the developer's part and The Tetris Company's part).
  • Games rewarding T-Spins on versus, most notably Tetris DS, have been very polarizing for straying away from the original Tetris formula and de-emphasizing Tetrises. Nonetheless, there are players who enjoy playing games with T-Spins competitively.
• In soccer Sports Game, it's Electronic Arts' FIFA Soccer series vs. Konami's Winning Eleven/Pro Evolution Soccer. The former is criticized for being too easy to score a goal while the latter is criticized for being too difficult to score a goal.
  • GOD HELP YOU IF YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT THIS WITH BRAZILIANS! ^note Soccer is one of the most famous sports in Brazil and because of that, the rivalry is even bigger there. Once a guy decided to make a joke regarding one team not kicking on goal at The World Cup, heated debates started on the designated button for kicking (on PlayStation, PES uses square, FIFA circle, with opposing one used for crossing).
• Minecraft and Terraria fans are something of a mixed bag between this and Friendly Fandoms. Minecraft fans have accused Terraria of being a ripoff of Minecraft, but in 2D, while Terraria fans shot back at Minecraft for copying from Terraria after its release and being a shallower game. This rivalry has become rarer however as both Mojang and Re-Logic have given a Shout-Out or two to each other in their respective games. It also didn't help keep the rivalry going that, aside from a block based world, the two didn't really have that much in common, with Minecraft being a 3D building sim, and Terraria being a call-back to old platformers and Metroidvanias. Thus fans of both games now tend to direct their animosity towards more similar games instead. However, the rivalry still pops up occasionally.
  • Roblox. People on Roblox forums get banned easily when they say that MC is better, or sometimes even when they just say the word Minecraft. They briefly teamed up to take down SOPA, however.
• Diablo III vs. Torchlight II, the long-awaited sequel to a classic franchise and the sequel to the Spiritual Successor to that same franchise created in the interim, both released in the same year. While many fans on either side will recognize the merits of the other, they're just different enough that it's hard for anyone to enjoy both.
• Initial D Arcade Stage vs. Wangan Midnight Both are arcade racers based on manga franchises that cover the topic of illegal street racing, so it's easy to see where that one's coming from.
• Ridge Racer vs. Project Gotham Racing, for the supremacy of arcade, non-kart, racing games for console.
  • And, in The '90s, Ridge Racer vs. Daytona USA. The series's fans used to not get along at all, but the appearance of Daytona's Hornet in the PS Vita release of Ridge Racer seems to have toned down the feud.
• Speaking of racing games, there is a major fandom feud between arcade racing games (e.g. Ridge Racer, Need for Speed, WipEout, Mario Kart) and more serious, simulation-oriented racing games (e.g. Gran Turismo, Forza, Project CARS, Assetto Corsa). The former decry the latter as a bunch of smug hyper-elitists who don't want the least amount of fun in their games and slam the steep entry curve most racing simulators have (especially when you take into account the price of a full sim racing setup), while the latter considers the former as nothing more than nostalgia-blinded freaks who can't appreciate the depth most modern-day racing sims have to save their lives.
• Within The Sims fandom, there is a notable rivalry between fans of The Sims 2 and The Sims 3. Fans of 2 think it is better due to being able to control all of the neighbourhood, it's less glitchy, and that it wasn't as much as a Cash-Cow Franchise as 3 was, and also think that Sims from the sequel look creepy. Meanwhile, fans of 3 think the previous game is very prone to corruption, prefer to stick with one family, and enjoy some new things 3 brought, such as Create-a-Style, Life Stage length adjusters and more versatile outfits.
  • The Sims 4 only made it worse. Fans of both 2 and 3 loathe 4 for lacking stuff like toddlers and pools at launch. There's also a worry about the emphasis on young adult characters.
• Some people despise linearity in games, and only play Wide Open Sandboxes, while looking down on anyone playing anything even remotely linear as a child who needs their hand held the whole time so that he doesn't get lost. And the other side argues sandbox games give the player too much freedom to the point of being confusing, while also making it more difficult to tell a coherent story. Overlaps with Americans Hate Tingle and Germans Love David Hasselhoff, as Japan tends to prefer linearity while Westerners prefer openness.
  • It's rare but the opposition would accuse sandbox fans of the same thing since sandbox games can be played "without any real consequences" since dying doesn't actually mean much.
• Fans of Take Two's NFL 2K series have had it in for Madden NFL ever since EA purchased the exclusive NFL license and drove the former franchise off the market.
• Freespace fans vs Wing Commander fans, although both fandoms treat it as more of a friendly rivalry anymore (that there is a major Wing Commander mod for Freespace is telling). Freespace fans and Battlecruiser 3000 AD fans had a more bitter enmity, mainly due to an incident where Battlecruiser's creator made a bid for buying Freespace's license, and the resulting Flame War.
  • And you can toss fans of the X-Wing series in for good measure. The fan rivalry between Wing Commander and X-wing especially got quite heated.
    • And then you have X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter vs. X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter vs. X-Wing Alliance...
• Within the Beat 'em Up genre, Final Fight vs. Streets of Rage. Notable for being yet another extension of the Nintendo-Sega Console Wars.
• Within the Star Fox franchise, those who played Star Fox vs. those who started with Star Fox 64 vs those who like Star Fox Adventures vs. those who prefer Star Fox: Assault vs. those who dared to call Star Fox Command a good game, or even consider it canon ^note though this particular example has actually fallen victim to Canon Discontinuity vs. those who dared to say that Star Fox Zero isn't that bad. Depending on which side you are on you may or may not find that members of other base fragments actually team up on you.
• Most users on Steam's Team Fortress 2 forums hate anything Mario or Sonic. Just the mere mentioning of them will cause users to go into a frenzy. YouTube and DeviantArt TF2 fans don't mind Mario or Sonic, though.
  • Rather odd as the users of the Workshop showed heavy support for having the Mario-expy hat in the game, and eventually got it in.
• Crash Bandicoot has rivalries between people who accept all of the games, people who like everything except the Radical Entertainment games, people who like everything except Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, people who hate anything post-Naughty Dog, and people who like the Radical games but don't like the rest.
• Dungeons & Dragons Online deserves a mention for its fanbase's inter-medium rivalry with that of pen-and-paper Dungeons & Dragons. The reasons for the dispute are varied and the disdain is not universal (some people enjoy both), but common criticisms include the game not emulating the experience of a D&D campaign well enough, being too derivative of World of Warcraft/other MMOs in general, having too much pay-to-unlock content^note most of which can be unlocked in-game on a per server basis free of charge, but that rarely factors in., and so on.
• Zynga vs Kabam on Facebook. Especially with players of games like Kabam's Kingdoms of Camelot who look down on FarmVille and its siblings. "If you don't want to get attacked, go play FarmVille."
• The Sega Saturn and Sega Dreamcast fall under both this trope and Friendly Fandoms. While many fans appreciate both systems, there are others who will not just favor one over the other, but also hold one of them responsible for either the death of Sega (usually the Saturn but sometimes the Dreamcast) or 2D as an important focal point (there are still a lot of sour grapes over Bernie Stolar killing the Saturn early). While the Dreamcast is an all-around respected console, highly regarded for its online connectivity, ease of development and jaw-dropping 3D, there are many who prefer the Saturn, which had many Arcade Perfect Ports of 2 games (including shmups and fighters), unique (and increasingly rare) games including some highly competent 3D games, and one of the best gamepads of all time.
• BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger originally had a short-lived rivalry with Street Fighter IV, but interestingly, this has been overshadowed by another rivalry with Guilty Gear. The reason this is strange is that both games are made by the same company, Arc System Works, and are extremely similar; both have labyrinthine plots, both feature fast-paced combat, both have wacky characters, both have Animesque Magitek settings, and both have amazing heavy rock/metal soundtracks. What's worse, ArcSys didn't get the creative rights to Guilty Gear back until The New '10s and only has the productive capacity to work on one franchise at a time, making the two games in direct competition.
  • The main reason the two are in rivalry with each other is the differences in mechanics. Some feel Guilty Gear had a better fighting system due to its technicalities and depth and felt that BlazBlue dumbed it down too much, while others feel that Guilty Gear is too difficult to get into and feel that BlazBlue's accessibility makes it a better game. There are other things such as the Guard Primer system, the way Barriers work, floatiness, and other mechanics that Guilty Gear fans didn't like in BlazBlue, but that would require an essay to get into detail. Fortunately, it appears Arc System Works has realized this, as for the third entry in the BB series, Chronophantasma, they attempted to blend the good aspects of both games together in an attempt to win over the alienated Guilty Gear fans and keep the current BlazBlue fanbase.
  • A secondary reason is the fact that, due to not having the rights to Guilty Gear, ASW leaned heavily into the "spiritual successor" aspect of their new IP — to the point of making several characters blatant expies of the GG cast. Couple that with BlazBlue having a story that is argued to be simultaneously more clichéd and obtuse than its predecessor's (the plot of the first two games involves breaking a time loop and the fallout from that event allowing a master manipulator to somehow outsmart a sentient supercomputer with three minds, for example) along with the mechanical differences, and you have a lot of Guilty Gear fans who view BlazBlue as a Poor Man's Substitute. While the hostility largely died down over the years with a steady rotation of releases between series, it's telling that the announcement of a new Guilty Gear in the form of Xrd -SIGN- almost completely overshadowed any marks Chronophantasma (the most recent BB installment at the time) made on the fighting game scene.
• Dawn of War and StarCraft. Both science-fiction real time strategy games, with similar concepts among races and gameplay. Bringing up comparisons of the two games on the internet will reduce the discussion to a smouldering hunk of slag in record time. Oh, and don't try to take a neutral stance either. The Urban Legend of Zelda that StarCraft was intended to be a 40k game that Blizzard couldn't get the license for doesn't help matters.
  • There's also StarCraft and Command & Conquer. This stems from StarCraft being the single best-selling Real-Time Strategy game of all time while being as different as an RTS can be gameplay-wise from C&C and helping kickstart the concept of Professional Gaming, leading to most attempts to Follow the Leader when it comes to RTS games being attempts to ape StarCraft's success, which C&C fans believe eventually killed the genre.
• The X-Universe fandom has one with EVE Online, mostly out of a general dislike for its player culture (i.e. one which abounds with Chronic Backstabbing Disorder and griefing). Having the series occasionally be called a single-player EVE clone when X: Beyond the Frontier came out four years earlier does not help at all. It's to the point where one of the most popular mods for X3: Terran Conflict, Xtended Terran Conflict, made a point of leveling a Take That! at EVE via its in-universe news agencies.
• The NetHack and Angband fandoms gripe over the cryptic gameplay and inside jokes of the former, and over the slow pace and grindiness of the latter. There's also a myriad of variants of both roguelikes, and some of these variants have quite the vocal following...
• The rivalry between Dwarf Fortress' Fortress Mode and Adventurer Mode is milder than it used to be; most players with a preference still find something to like about the other mode. It will become apparent when discussing one mode and including information that could only be gained from the other mode.
  • Another lukewarm staredown is the Dwarf Fortress fandom vs. the Minecraft one. Those on Dorf side say They Copied It, So It Sucks! Those on the Mob side say It's Hard, So It Sucks!
• All of the games within the Xeno "metaseries" have many haters from the other Xeno series.^note The three series aren't within the same franchise, but are nonetheless Creator-Driven Successors to each other that use the Xeno prefix as a Production Throwback. Many consider the games to collectively form a Thematic Series, however. Xenogears and Xenosaga fans constantly debate which one had the better story, characters, and presentation, with the Xenogears fans also showing disappointment in the latter series effectively being a Continuity Reboot rather than a true prequel. Both Gears and Saga fans join forces in dismissing the Xenoblade Chronicles games due to said games downplaying the eclectic mix of heavy Gnostic, Judaic, and Jungian psychology influences that made the Xeno games unique in the first place, while Blade fans argue that their games strike a far better story and gameplay balance than their predecessors and that the reduced story complexity is preferable to the confusing Jigsaw Puzzle Plots of Gears and Saga. Meanwhile, both Saga and Blade fans give Gears flak for for its infamous second disc consisting purely of narration interspersed with the occasional boss fight. However, even fans of all three iterations of the Xeno name tend to unanimously hate Xenosaga Episode II for its battle system and the myriad of other changes.
• Metroid vs. Donkey Kong Country. The rivalry originally was between Super Metroid and Donkey Kong Country. While both games are now considered classics, Metroid fans used to heavily criticize DKC for stealing the attention Super "rightfully" deserved; they released the same year, but DKC got the bigger marketing push thanks to its impressive graphics making it a great piece of ammo in the Console Wars. It then reignited two decades later when the two fandoms found themselves fighting over Retro Studios: Retro not only helped revive the Metroid franchise after an eight-year hiatus with the critically acclaimed Metroid Prime, but they also revived the DKC franchise after a fourteen-year hiatus with the critically acclaimed Donkey Kong Country Returns. As such, both fandoms saw the studio as the only one that could do their respective franchises justice, especially Metroid fans after the disappointment that was Metroid: Other M. So when the company decided to create Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze instead of a Prime 4 as their Wii U project, Metroid fans were livid that Retro was making "another damn Donkey Kong Country" instead of once again saving the Metroid series, while DKC fans stereotyped Metroid fans as entitled crybabies and loved to point out that DKC is typically a much higher-selling series than Metroid. For their part, Retro would be tasked with making Prime 4 eventually, while the mainline titles would see a major critical and commercial resurgence with both Metroid: Samus Returns and Metroid Dread, which were developed under the guidance of series co-creator and longtime contributor Yoshio Sakamoto. (Which, in turn, led to a new point of a debate among Metroid fans, the question of "Who did it better?" between Sakamoto — who also helmed the aforementioned Other M — and Retro Studios.)
  • Interestingly enough, they seem to get along just fine when it comes to Super Smash Bros. The two most popular requests for newcomers from each franchise, Ridley and King K. Rool, are both considered to be highly valuable characters by each fanbase, with many of them poking fun at each other instead of being fierce competitors. It helps that they both share plenty of things in common. Both characters would even join the Smash roster in the same installment, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
• Metroid:
  • Mainline 2D Metroid versus the 3D Metroid Prime Trilogy. The former fanbase thinks the latter is too slow and linear compared to the faster and more open-ended design of games like Super Metroid and Metroid Dread, whereas the latter thinks the worlds of Prime are far richer and more detailed thanks to the different perspective, allowing for more rewarding exploration and an atmospheric experience.
  • Within discussions surrounding the mainline series, some claim Super still is and should remain the eternal standard for the series, where others claim that any of the following entries have managed to surpass it in some way and offer the next evolution of the franchise. The more scripted, story-focused and action/horror-based Metroid Fusion tends to get singled out in such discussions. To a lesser extent, there are others who think the third-person style of Other M deserves another chance, arguing that a better take on the approach could have been the perfect melding of both halves of the franchise.
  • Within discussions surrounding the Prime games, you have arguments between those who hold that the truly isolated mystery of Prime 1 is better than the more linear and populated sequels; those who enjoy the more guided yet brutally atmospheric and challenging Prime 2 above all else; those who prefer the much more populated, planet-hopping, action-packed, story-focused romp of Prime 3 to its predecessors; those who want a Hunters-style multiplayer, and so on.
  • Metroid II: Return of Samus has something of a civil war regarding its remakes: the fan-made AM2R and the official Metroid: Samus Returns. Subjects include sprite art vs. 3D art, approach to backtracking, combat, bosses, atmosphere and more. It did not help that Nintendo slapped a DMCA on the 10-year passion project before releasing their own remake one year later, causing a certain animosity amongst some of AM2R's fans severe enough to boycott the game. For what it's worth, the creator of AM2R (Milton Guasti a.k.a. DoctorM64) expressed no ill feelings toward the DMCA notice and does enjoy Nintendo's own take on revisiting that entry.
  • Metroid and Hollow Knight, the latter being an indie game that is in part a love letter to the former series. Many argued upon the latter's release that Hollow Knight is indeed better than any Metroid game and is the new standard for the genre, with said fans also citing the fact that Hollow Knight had sold more than any Metroid game at the time. This was exacerbated with the announcement of Metroid Dread being a full-priced game, as the genre had mostly become populated by indie titles such as HK, Ori and Bloodstained, which combined with a stigma towards 2D games to have many question why Dread wasn't sold at a budget price.
  • While we're at it, Metroid vs Castlevania. Both fandoms will tell you despite sharing the name of a genre, the games are nowhere near as similar as people are lead to believe. Many of the former fans find the addition of RPG elements to be an obstruction more than anything to the basic gameplay loop, think there is disproportionate focus on action over exploration, and don't care for the more overt anime-style storytelling; the inverse applies for fans of the latter. In fact, this extends to Metroid vs. the Metroidvania genre as a whole, with Metroid fans feeling most games in the genre take far more from Koji Igarashi and Hidetaka Miyazaki's work than they do the Nintendo franchise and that Metroid shouldn't be considered a Metroidvania itself as a result, viewing it as a "bastard" or "gentrified" genre.
• Star Trek Online has a lot of rivalries inside and outside the fandom:
  • First is between it and Star Wars: The Old Republic due to the old Trek/Wars rivalry.
  • Then, you have Federation players vs. Klingon Defense Force players vs Romulan Republic players. KDF and Rom players hate the Federation as they're usually seen as a Creator's Pet, Fed and KDF hate the Romulan Republic due to their overpowered ships and Fed players hate the KDF and Romulan Republic as they get ships that cloak and they don't.
  • Then, you have rivalries between message boards, particularly the official, Perfect World-hosted one and the official Reddit-hosted one. The PW one is looked down upon by the Reddit posters because it's devolved into a pit of wank, complaints and just outright negativity. The PW posters look down on the Reddit one because they believe that they're nothing more than Cryptic dev buttkissers who allow the game to continue to "deviate" from the "true Star Trek game it could be."
• Rune Factory vs Harvest Moon, despite the fact the former is a spinoff of the latter. The main debate mostly comes people who think Harvest Moon has dropped in quality sometime between More Friends of Mineral Town and Animal Parade, and think Rune Factory has become the better series.
• World of Tanks and War Thunder have a strong rivalry due to their overlapping premises: MMO style Second World War era vehicle combat. The major fault line dividing fans is the former's looser, more arcade style mechanics, as opposed to the latter's stricter adherence to realism. Both claim that their chosen game's approach is the superior one, and any video online featuring one is certain to be bombarded with comments from fans of the other calling it crap. To this day, the rivalry still persists even as the games diverged from each other with War Thunder moving towards late Cold War/Modern era while World of Tanks sticking to its WW2 roots.
• Speaking of World of Tanks, its stablemate World of Warships is swinging between this trope and Friendly Fandoms, surprisingly, with KanColle. Even while it is still under Closed Beta testing, the influx of KanColle fans spamming Yuudachi's "Poi~" in the in-game chat riles up players who are unaware of KanColle, to the point that they'd refer to such fans as "shipfuckers."
• Input devices:
  • When it comes to first- and third-person shooters, there's quite a bit of stir between those who prefer a keyboard and mouse and those who prefer playing on a game pad. Keyboard players prefer the precision of a mouse, while pad players often find pads to be more comfortable to use.
  • Amongst Fighting Game players, arcade stick vs. pad...and occasionally, vs. Hitbox as well.
  • Amongst Shoot 'Em Up players, sticks vs. pads vs. keyboards. Those who grew up with console shmups prefer pads, those who grew up with arcade shmups prefer sticks, and those who grew up with doujinshmups such as Touhou prefer keyboards.
• When it comes to arcade stick controller parts, a popular rivalry is Sanwa vs. Seimitsu. Fans of Sanwa parts defend their lighter resistances that make them less tiring to use, while fans of Seimitsu parts cite their reduced chance of accidental mispresses and their shorter throws.
• Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and Undertale, at least for those for whom the latter is even on the radar. Both games came out the same month, and the rivalry between them started over Metacritic scores, after Undertale quickly shot up and surpassed MGSV on the score charts, leading to a number of fans from both games creating sockpuppet accounts to try and change the user scores of each game. Undertale's creator, Toby Fox, has directly contributed to the rivalry by posting the Metacritic charts on his Twitter and insinuating that most of the 0 score user reviews of Undertale were from bitter Metal Gear Solid fans.
• Bethesda vs BioWare. Both are very prominent developers of Western RPGs, and both have one Science Fiction (Fallout and Mass Effect respectively) and one High Fantasy (The Elder Scrolls and Dragon Age respectively) flagship series, but have two very different styles. Bethesda tends to focus on open-world exploration and world-building while BioWare tends to focus on creating memorable characters and immersive, linear story-telling experiences. When one developer borrows elements from the opposing camp, such as when Fallout 4 included a voiced protagonist with a four-option Dialogue Tree or when Dragon Age: Inquisition opted for a Wide-Open Sandbox with crafting and exploration mechanics, expect fans to get a little... upset over the changes.
  • Oddly, and rather humorously, this divisiveness does not extend to the devs themselves. If the official Twitter accounts are to be believed, the employees at both companies are fans of each other's work.
• For adventure game fans, Sierra vs LucasArts, largely due to the companies' radically different philosophies of game design. While Sierra games were all too happy to randomly kill players and mock them for it, LucasArts games avoided this out of a belief that it punished players.
• Mighty No. 9, due to the game's mismanaged Kickstarter project, an alienating marketing campaign by Deep Silver, and the game's final product being written off as average at best and a failure at worst by most critics and players, it quickly garnered a laundry list of fandoms that are condescending and/or antagonistic towards the game (as well as Keiji Inafune) and said list hasn't stop growing.
  • Many fans of Azure Striker Gunvolt, whom initially perceived the game as average at best, quickly changed their tune about the series when Mighty No. 9 was being ridiculed by critics and backers alike and began clamoring Azure Striker Gunvolt as "the true successor to Mega Man." This line of thinking only worsen over time as Gunvolt's sequels refined some of the games' sticking points. Likewise, Mighty Gunvolt and especially Mighty Gunvolt Burst have since received much more praise than they did initially, with the latter being called "what Mighty No. 9 should have been" by many players despite Inti Creates' attempts to try and bring Mighty No. 9 into a positive light while disregarding Keiji Inafune's involvement in some of these games.
  • Initially there was a fandom alliance between fans of other crowd-funded projects, such as Shantae: Half-Genie Hero, Shovel Knight, and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, but this eventually gave way when Mighty No. 9's problematic development cycle came to light and final product was deemed as mediocre by most critics and many using the game as an example of how Japanese developers should not make a crowdfunded game, while using Bloodstained as an example of a Kickstarter-funded game that so far has been done right due to the developers' transparency and communication with its fans and the quality of the builds they've released so far including one demo build shown at E3 and offered to backers of the project. In the case of Shantae: Half-Genie Hero, despite Comcept trying to help WayForward out by bringing awareness to their Kickstarter campaign, many fans of Shantae are quick to ridicule Mighty No. 9 and blame it for holding back that game's potential.
  • 20XX, another Mega Man-inspired crowdfunded project, was a relatively niche title but later quickly received a sudden boost in popularity to the suprise of the developers due to said fans using the game to kick down Mighty No. 9 after many players and critics berated it.
  • A number of fans of Dust: An Elysian Tail are quick to ridicule Mighty No. 9, being a game made of industry veterans with a large crowd-funded budget, compared to the former being made by the efforts mostly of a single person as a passion project.
  • A feud between A.R.E.S.: Extinction Agenda fans was quickly spurred, and by the developers of said game no less, when they decided to kick down Mighty No. 9 during its disastrous release day and promoted their own game with a discount to pocket money off disgruntled backers while claiming their game was a better alternative.
  • Followers of the official Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter has made some soft of hobby of talking smack towards Mighty No. 9 when the user running the Twitter account took jabs at the latter for claiming the game's mismanagement and diasterous release was "better than nothing"^note despite that Inafune himself never said that, but rather it was something his translator inserted, however some Mighty No. 9 fans were quick to remind the user behind the official Sonic Twitter that Sonic the Hedgehog's reputation was far from sunshine and rainbows, and Sega also continued creating mistakes that has harmed the franchise's image since Mighty No. 9's release.
  • RosenkreuzStilette, a niche doujin game that used to be criticized for staying too close to the classic Mega Man formula, had this criticism toward the game later suddenly become considered a good thing by most of its fan when comparing it to Mighty No. 9's perceived failings. The localizer behind the official English release of RosenkreuzStilette also went on to fuel the flames even further by promoting Steam forum threads from those putting Mighty No. 9 down with the former on the game's blog.
  • A majority of Mega Man fans who first looked at Mighty No. 9 as a victory against Capcom for their then-negligence with the Mega Man franchise, and despite Comcept trying to be impartial towards Capcom and believing that Mega Man and Mighty No. 9 can co-exist, this line of thinking however quickly died as the latter's mismanagement and delays came to light, followed by the being game condemned by critics and backers. Adding insult to injury, years later was the announcement of Mega Man 11, which was then later praised as a return to classic Mega Man platforming and a clapback against Comcept by the vast majority of the Mega Man fandom.
• There is some vitriol between fans of Just Dance and Dance Central, mostly in terms of difficulty. Until a few years in, Just Dance is often berated of being excessively simplistic, and Dance Central in turn is often bashed for being too hard. Eventually Just Dance raised their game, but by then, Kinect was all but dead, so the rivalry between the two games was a bit moot.
• As for the futuristic Anti-Gravity racing games, we have both WipEout and F-Zero. It doesn't help that the former series continues to see new entries, while the latter had a nineteen year Sequel Gap between 2004's F-Zero Climax and 2023's F-Zero 99.
• In a rare case of bitter rivalry between two crossover series, the Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games series against Ubisoft's Mario + Rabbids series. Fans of both Super Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog had spent years being bitter that the series' regular crossovers only consist of a bunch of sports minigames, with the majority of those games not even having an Excuse Plot^note Tokyo 2020 and the handheld versions of Vancouver 2010 and London 2012 do have actual story modes, which made these games well-received among the fans. Cue Mario + Rabbids, which despite its ridiculous premise and the Rabbids being a series of minigame games themselves, is a series of XCOM-style tactics games featuring actual narratives, while also being full of personality and charming interactions between the two universes. Rather than being hated, the Mario + Rabbid games are envied for being cruel examples of what a good Mario/Sonic crossover game could and should be.
• A rivalry with a rather unfortunate backstory has managed to form between the fanbases of Yooka-Laylee and A Hat in Time. Both games have so many similarities (they're both Kickstarter funded "Collectathon" 3D Platformers inspired by N64 titles like Banjo-Kazooie and Super Mario 64, they both, at one point in their development, contained a cameo from famous YouTube celebrity and avid Banjo-Kazooie fan JonTron, etc) that you'd think their fanbases would be Friendly Fandoms, right? Well, thanks to an unhealthy dose of Broken Base over some of Yooka's design choices and some extremely toxic backlash specifically involving JonTron^note long story short, Yooka's planned cameo of him ended up getting removed shortly before release for reasons best discussed elsewhere, while Hat's was retained in order to avoid the severe fan backlash Yooka's developers received because of said removal, people have become more than a little bit torn over which of the two is "better".
• Within the Fighting Game Community, a rather one-sided one between Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite and Dragon Ball FighterZ. MvCI was a game with a troubled birth, launching with a flawed marketing campaign and some bizarrely out of touch developmental decisions (such as producer Peter Rosas dismissing licensed characters in a crossover fighting game as "just functions" in an interview, and the developers not including the X-Men on the mistaken assumption players simply "forgot" about the characters — someone should've pointed out to them that the X-Men have been pop culture icons for decades). Other points of contention include assets recycled from Marvel vs. Capcom 3, inexplicably going from 3's celebrated 3v3 team system to the old 2v2, and questionable post-launch DLC practices. FighterZ, on the other hand, ran a very good marketing campaign on the back of MvCI's disappointments, like using 3v3 teams and a clear dedication on the part of the developers to appeal to the existing FGC. With Arc System Works having also announced BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, their own crossover tag team fighting game featuring characters from BlazBlue, Persona 4: Arena, and Under Night In-Birth along with—very surprisingly—the fighting game debut of none other than Team RWBY, and you have fans joking that Arc Sys is just inflicting a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on poor MvCI at this point. As if things couldn't get any worse, EVO 2018 announced that both FighterZ and BBTAG would be featured in the main lineup of games while MvCI didn't make the cut, marking the first time in many years a MvC entry was absent from the prestigious fighting game tournament.
  • There's also a large rift between Dragon Ball Xenoverse players and Dragon Ball FighterZ players. Xenoverse players are likely to diss FighterZ for its poor single-player content, dodgy servers, smaller roster, and being a competitive-focused game that chucks the series' power scaling out of the window. FighterZ, on the other hand, are likely to accuse the series of being an awkward button masher with terrible balancing, and prefer FighterZ for being, well, a competitive-focused game that chucks the series' power scaling out of the window.
• Do not mention Fate/Grand Order to Granblue Fantasy players (both games being mobile RPG games with pay-to-win "gacha" systems for summoning units and equipment), ever. Granblue players look heavily down on F/GO for being particularly stingy when it comes to its gacha elements. When attacked, F/GO fans usually respond by criticising Granblue's difficult grind game, story, balancing, PvP nature, and in general the fact that it only really has the gacha over F/GO. Fire Emblem Heroes players also aren't terribly keen on F/GO either for similar reasons.
• After the announcement of Artifact by Valve in 2017, there been one between one between Dota 2 (of which Artifact is a spin-off from) and nearly every other game made by Valve (mainly Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, and Half-Life), albeit mainly coming from the latter side. Their fans were furious at the announcement of what they perceived to be Valve trying to cash in on the popularity of Hearthstone and further pampering Dota 2 while their games, they feel, have remained neglected (some have received zero new content for years). That's not to say Dota 2 fans were happy about the announcement of Artifact either, but much of the vitriol has been fired at Dota 2 from the fans mentioned above towards what they perceive as an overrated Creator's Pet.
• Devil May Cry has one within the franchise itself, between those who prefer the original games and those who enjoyed the controversial reboot. Fans of the reboot said that it was more accessible, had better art direction, a far easier story plot to follow, and a protagonist that experience character development. Fans that loved the original titles criticized the many changes that were implemented, the arguments ranging from criticizing how DmC Dante was so drastically different compared to original Dante, DmC's story being too on the nose and missing the point of the original games' primary themes of how devils can learn to love like humans as well as a subtle emphasis on the theme of family, and the gameplay mechanics that had been overly simplified and lacking compared to the mechanical depth and complexity found in DMC3 and 4, just to name a few game-related points. In short, some consider DmC worth playing, while others feel it simply doesn't match up to the legacy of the older games. The rivalry had died down somewhat after the 2015 releases of both the Special Edition for 4 and the Definitive Edition for DmC, but had flared up again after the announcement and release of 5.
  • Smaller yet present would be Devil May Cry versus the God of War franchise, although it was primarily limited to Twitter and mostly instigated by the more provocative GoW fans. When pointed out how GoW (first game released in 2005) wouldn't have existed without DMC (first game released in 2001) starting its niche within the Hack and Slash genre, they would deflect to another topic or just outright ignore that particular fact. The most strutted examples was using the 2018 God of War installment, like how it had a much higher Metracritic score compared to DMC5, how GoW4 was Game of the Year 2018 versus DMC5 being only Action Game of the Year 2019 at the Game Awards, GoW4 having a better combat system than DMC5, and how GoW4 had a better story than DMC5 (the latter two entries being quite YMMV). There's also the difference of both series being set on different ends of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, with DMC running on Rule of Cool and GoW best described as Rule of Brutal. Sometimes exacerbated by gaming journalism, such as a review on the Nintendo Switch version of DMC3 and comparing it to GoW.
• Player Unknowns Battlegrounds vs Fortnite. While PUBG came out first and pioneered the battle royale genre, Fortnite is significantly more profitable and popular in the pop-culture zeitgeist. Subsequently, PUBG fans deride Fortnite as a childish rip-off of their game whereas Fortnite fans criticize PUBG for being visually ugly and unpolished.
  • Fortnite has also established a rivalry with a very different fanbase: Marvel vs. Capcom. With Fortnite successfully getting the complete Marvel roster in its game, something with Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite failed to do, there has been bitterness from Mahvel fans... which only increased even more after Ryu and Chun-Li from Street Fighter were added in 2021.
  • Fans of Fortnite are also infamous for frequently clashing with fans of Minecraft (the phrase "Fortnite Bad Minecraft Good" is memetic, as is its inverse). The problem stems from Hype Backlash, since Minecraft suffered a noticeable decline in popularity in the mid-2010s, around the time Fortnite became popular, causing Minecraft fans to hold a grudge against Fortnite. Then the situation was inverted in 2019 when Minecraft won back many fans and Fortnite became a popular source of mockery.
• Batman: Arkham Series and Spider-Man (Insomniac) fans have an intense rivalry that is, by proxy, also a greater extension of the overall DC vs Marvel rivalry. Several Arkham fans dismiss the Spider-Man games for borrowing too much from their series and being too light-hearted. Conversely, several Spider-Man fans argue that their game has better combat and traversal while criticizing the Arkham games for being too bleak and dour. This escalated when Spider-Man (PS4) outsold Arkham City and took the record for best-selling superhero game despite being a platform exclusive as opposed to a multi-platform release.
• Marvel's Avengers caused plenty of rivalries with other games:
  • While both franchises are based on Marvel superheroes, fans of Marvel's Avengers have a strong rivalry with fans of Insomniac Games' Spider-Man and Miles Morales its spin-off. Ever since its announcement, Avengers was criticized for being a naked money grab with its MCU-lite art style, buggy launch, tedious gameplay and live-service monetization. In contrast, while Insomniac's Spider-Man had its share of promotional tie-ins like free costumes to advertise Spider-Man movies, the game was more fondly regarded for its own unique art style, general polish, fun gameplay and being a solid standalone game. Comparisons were unavoidable given how Avengers was released just two months before the release of Miles Morales and the PS5 remaster of Spider-Man on top of Avengers having its own then-upcoming version of Spider-Man exclusive to the PlayStation platforms. The rivalry only intensified when Avengers received mediocre reviews compared to the critical acclaim of Spider-Man while also selling less despite being multi-platform.
  • It has one with Gotham Knights (2022) and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. While still an extension of the long-lasting Marvel vs. DC rivalry, there's also a number of Marvel fans who are very disgruntled with Marvel's Avengers due to its "live service" approach compared unfavorably to Destiny and Anthem, uninspired aesthetics that make it look MCU-lite rather than its own thing, boring gameplay, and controversial business practices such as keeping Spider-Man exclusive to PlayStation as well as including an excessive amount of tie-ins with businesses like Verizon and Intel. And while neither Gotham Knights or Suicide Squad have shown much gameplay, the developers behind them do have a good track record when it comes to comic book video games, so it's not unreasonable for people to trust them to put out a good game. Future delays and Suicide Squad also taking on live-service and always-online elements put this into question, however.
  • It surprisingly has one with Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order, with the main point of contention being this game's overt MCU influence while Ultimate Alliance pulls primarily from comics and other adaptations. There's also other disagreements about Alliance being exclusive to Switch while Avengers is on every platform except the Switch as well as the "games as a service" model implementation on Avengers.
  • Additionally, fans of the Deus Ex Universe have enmity towards this game as the developers of the modern games, Eidos Montreal, have been tasked with working on Avengers instead of continuing the series, leaving its future uncertain after the lackluster sales of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (though several key figures including Adam Jensen's voice actor, Elias Toufexis, have said they're eager to make it). Pre-release reactions to the story lead to a general reaction from Deus Ex fans of "We lost Deus Ex 3 for this?" Many Deus Ex fans took great catharsis out of the news that Avengers is pulling in fewer players on Steam than Mankind Divided.
  • There is also another rivalry between Avengers and the franchises of Crystal Dynamics, mainly Tomb Raider and Legacy of Kain, as Crystal Dynamics is the lead developer for Avengers, with many Tomb Raider and Legacy of Kain fans begrudging the game's quality and viewing it as a waste of Crystal Dynamics' resources, when instead they could make new games in the aforementioned franchises.
• Deus Ex vs Cyberpunk 2077 post-launch contrasting with Friendly Fandoms pre-launch. Many DX fans were excited with C77's 2018 E3 showcase depicting a focus on Immersive Sim style systems and open-ended gameplay; especially in light of Square Enix neglecting the former franchise. However the final product being significantly stripped down, resembling a traditional open world shooter more like Far Cry really let them down; alongside the more universal issues C77 faced. Afterwards, fixes to core systems and crossover mods have caused the fanbases to become more friendly to each other.
• In an inverse of the way things usually go, some fans of Pokémon tend to be accepting of Temtem, while fans of other Mons Series tend to disparage it. In a genre that has long been accused of being "Pokémon clones" regardless of how dissimilar they actually are, Mons Series fans accuse temtem of actually copying Pokémon's mechanics too closely, not bringing anything new to a genre they like for being incredibly diverse. Some also criticize its monster design. Pokémon fans, meanwhile, enjoy temtem precisely because it's so similar to the franchise they like, and are happy with it for adding a much-wanted feature — fully online play — to a set of mechanics they like.
• Hidden City has an internal rivalry between fans of the original, "Main" City and those who prefer the more-recently-introduced Upper City, especially since the two areas have completely different casts, stories, and genres. And since the monthly events only add new content to one of the two locations at a time, and the developers tend to stick to one place for several consecutive months, this creates some sort of divide between those who are happy to remain in their favoured location, and those who wish that the developers would stop neglecting theirs.
• Persona vs. the Xenoblade Chronicles games. Aside from both of them being on mutually exclusive consoles (Persona games are almost always exclusive to PlayStation, while Xenoblade is owned by Nintendo), Xenoblade fans will most likely make fun of the Relationship Values system present in Persona and the mainstream exposure the series got after Persona 5, and Persona fans generally tend to make fun of some of the more revealing female characters from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and the game's divisive voice acting, with both sides getting angry at the other for judging each others' games without playing them. There's also the fact that Persona has generally been more accepted by the gaming public at large, while the entire Xeno metaseries has had a long history of being stuck with Acclaimed Flop status until Xenoblade Chronicles 1 on the Wii and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 on the Nintendo Switch. Best exemplified with The Game Awards 2020; Persona 5 Royal was nominated for Best RPG over Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition, despite both games being Updated Rereleases (and in Xenoblade's case, an outright remake).
• You and Me and Her and Doki Doki Literature Club!, given that their basic plots are very similar despite creator Dan Salvato having never even heard of Totono while making the game: One of the girls in a Cliché Storm romance game getting sentience and preforming a Hostile Show Takeover to be with the player, before being stopped when the player preforms actions outside the game itself. Somewhat uniquely, few people who played both games really try to contest Totono is the better of the two, but instead the debate comes down to arguing if the latter's release in English makes the former's value null and void or not.
• The Players' Choice Award for the 2022 Game Awards caused a rivalry to form between the Sonic the Hedgehog and Genshin Impact fanbases, which only grew worse as both Genshin Impact and Sonic Frontiers made it to the final round of voting, leading to days of toxicity, mud-slinging, and accusations of bot votes from both sides. Ironically, after all of the bot votes were disqualified, it turned out that both games had a significant amount of bot votes, specifically during the final round. In the end, Genshin took home the award, and it was left to the calmer side of both fanbases to try and mend the divide.
• Occasionally, inter-company fandom rivalry happens. For a company that has multiple franchises that have gone big or at least reached cult-fandom status, it will be inevitable that they would prioritize their resources towards those that give them the most profit. Cue the fandoms of any "abandoned" (or at least smaller) franchises feeling bitter and developing a rivalry with the fandoms of the more popular franchises, arguing that their beloved series should be the one basking in mainstream popularity while calling the other franchise overrated, stale, and/or existing purely for profit and having no creativity. Meanwhile, the fandoms of the popular franchises can sometimes get a bit too high on their overwhelming popularity and taunt back, arguing how those "lesser" franchises are generally irrelevant and not worth fawning over. For example:
  • Capcom. The rivalry between Mega Man and Street Fighter fandom has been pretty strong. But both are two of Capcom's juggernaut franchises, alongside the likes of Monster Hunter, Devil May Cry, Ace Attorney and Resident Evil. For the fans of lesser-known franchises they used to pay attention to like Breath of Fire, Ōkami, Sengoku Basara, Darkstalkers... It's a free all-out brawl between the fandoms.
  • Sega. Pick any fandom of one of Sega's franchise (except somehow Yakuza), then pit them against the Sonic the Hedgehog fandom. There's a reason why some Sega fans are annoyed that their company is generalized to be just making Sonic games. Sega's acquistion of Atlus in The New '10s zig-zagged this in the sense that the argument then shifted from "Sega only cares about Sonic (and maybe Yakuza)" to "Sega only cares about Sonic, Yakuza/Like a Dragon, and Shin Megami Tensei" — which, as evidenced by the SMT entry elsewhere on this page, just opens another can of worms in the process.
  • Konami is a peculiar example. The fandoms weren't bickering about which franchise got the most attention, but which franchise deserved the comeback the most though they still accuse Konami for caring more for either pachinko, mobile... or Japanese-exclusive franchises. But for the most part, the loudest would be the fandoms of Metal Gear and Silent Hill since they believed themselves to be the most screwed by Konami after the controversy, to the point that other fandoms, be they large (Castlevania, Contra) or smaller-scale (Suikoden), felt the need to say "Hey, our franchise also equally deserves good treatments instead of just Metal Gear and Silent Hill, you know? We can agree to yell obscenities at Konami, but what makes you think you're the most suffering, and thus most deserving of attention? We suffered too!"
  • Nintendo:
    • The Super Smash Bros. series is a good way to showcase how much in-fighting there is between Nintendo fans in a microcosm. As a Massive Multiplayer Crossover between Nintendo franchises, whenever a new game comes out, there are always debates over what characters and franchises are "deserving" of representation. Fans of more niche Nintendo series will argue that their favourite franchise should get a fighter or two, stating that more popular franchises already have enough representation as is. Meanwhile, fans of those more popular franchises will scoff at the "obscurity" of lesser-known Nintendo series, saying that they'd only be taking away space for a more anticipated fighter, as their series is too irrelevant for anything more than a Trophy or Spirit. At which point the fans of these popular franchises will move on to fight with each other over why their successful series deserves more attention than a different successful series, with accusations of Spotlight-Stealing Squad being tossed around like confetti, and how a fighter from one series is taking a spot clearly meant for a fighter from another. Now swap out "fighter" with "new game" and "Trophy or Spirit" with "cameos or references", and you have a good approximation of most discussions that occur whenever a new Nintendo game releases.
    • The rivalry between the fans of "old guard" series from The '90s and The Noughties vs. franchises that either more recently debuted or exploded in popularity during The New '10s. Usually this manifests in something along the likes of Donkey Kong Country, F-Zero, Star Fox, Banjo-Kazooie, and Mother fans vs. fans of Fire Emblem, Animal Crossing, Bayonetta, Xenoblade Chronicles, and Splatoon, with fans of "mainstay" franchises like Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Kirby, Pokémon, and Super Smash Bros. either taking a backseat or taking side depending on their preferences (Kirby and Pokémon fans may gravitate towards the former, while Zelda and Metroid fans may be more partial to the latter).
• There are several instances where fans of old and modern games hate each other.
• Girls' Frontline and Arknights, especially in the Chinese fandom. The rivalry is primarily a case of enmity between the developers bleeding into the fanbase — Yostar was founded by ex-MICA employees who had Creative Differences on how Girls Frontline should be done, which got extremely heated (there are claims of sabotage by both parties), which caused the groups to split off. Their have been claim that unlike most rivalries, the developers are actively trying to kill the competitor's game, and this is notable even in gameplay surveys — when Yostar surveys ask what other app games the user plays, GFL is pointedly left off the list. Girls Frontline fans also have disdain for Arknights because the latter has a broader concept that attracts fans who would be disinterred in GFL for various reasons, such as how events are handled. ^note GFL events directly supplement the main story, meaning that anyone who misses them will be missing certain details going forward until the event is added to the event mission tab. Arknights' events are usually side stories that are self contained, with the few story relevant ones being added to the Itermezzio tab immediately after the vent ends so that at least the story is accessible. Fuel was only added to the fire when Arknights announced collaboration events with Rainbow Six Siege and Destiny 2 — franchises that Girls Frontline fans have highly desired collaborations with.
• Bullet Witch has been viewed as a mediocre third-person shooter by many critics and players since its release on the Xbox 360, and the fire has been fueled even further when Bayonetta was released a few years later and praised as one of the best action games on the system. Fans of the latter has been making a hobby out of talking smack about the former claiming it to be a "Bayonetta rip-off" (oblivious to the fact that Bullet Witch predated the latter) or "BETA-netta" (as a jab towards the game's dated presentation and clunky gameplay).
• Ever since the release of Phantom Breaker: Omnia, there has been fans of big name anime tournament fighting games such as Guilty Gear, Persona 4: Arena, and BlazBlue among others who have been antagonistic towards Phantom Breaker for the game's lack of character trials, not having the movelist in the pause menu (even though the special moves are very simple to pull off), and especially not having rollback netcode, while using the game's rough launch day issues as means to quickly write the game off as a bad game. Phantom Breaker fans have tried to argue against these claims by backing it up with the game's nuanced approach can help beginners get into more combo-centric games such as Melty Blood with relative ease and the developers has since fixed a lot of the glaring issues, but the other camp often go out of their way to continue deride fans of the former and disregard the game's niche appeal, which led to some heated arguments on online forums.
• A rather facetious example, given that the "fans" see both games as terrible, but Skull Island: Rise of Kong has one with The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, another 2023 video game adaptation of an iconic multimedia franchise (King Kong and Tolkien's Legendarium respectively) that was poorly made. Rise of Kong was frequently described as "the next Gollum" from the moment the first previews were shown off, and the "fans" debate which of the two games is worse. Coincidentally, Peter Jackson directed movies featuring both characters (although both games are based on novels, not the films^note Skull Island: Rise of Kong is specifically based off a novelization alternate continuity, independent from the films.), and Andy Serkis played both characters.
• A lukewarm one exists between Jurassic World: Evolution and Prehistoric Kingdom, with both being dinosaur theme park simulators. One a the main sources of friction is how the former focuses more on Rule of Cool versus the latter focusing on scientific accuracy. Said rivalry is lukewarm, however, because Prehistoric Kingdom took so long to get off the ground that by the time it did come out, its vision and focus had changed so much that it didn't directly compete with Evolution due to styling itself more like a documentary or normal zoo game. Additionally, Kingdom expands its roster with multiple prehistoric mammals while Evolution 2 would add pterosaurs and marine reptiles to its parks, which helped attract different audiences. These days, you're just as likely to see people who are fans of both games as they are dunking on eachother.