Ruined Forever / Video Games (Specific)

• Sonic the Hedgehog has changed its identity back and forth so much over the years with many distinct eras that all have their fans that it is pretty much impossible for there to be something in the series that doesn't ruin it for a portion of the fanbase. Sonic has green eyes and a more serious, complex story? It's not like the classics, so get rid of it. Classic Sonic design and a lighthearted Excuse Plot? Soulless nostalgia pandering and lazy on the developer's part, boo. Characters besides Sonic getting focus? Can we get back to the first game's glory of having only Sonic and Eggman? The supporting cast doesn't appear and only Sonic is playable? Go back to the days of loads of characters! Sonic in 3D? Sonic only works in 2D! 3D games consisting mostly of 2D segments or just a new 2D-only game? 2D Sonic is Trial-and-Error Gameplay, we need more 3D!
  • Parodied by YouTube user 1stkirbyever while demonstrating a glitch in the Sonic Generations demo. Unfortunately, some fans missed the joke, so he added a big fat "I AM NOT SERIOUS" disclaimer to the sequel... and some fans still missed the joke.
  • One of the highlights is the proclamation of some fans to stop playing Sonic games if Hatsune Miku ever made it into the playable roster in Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. Reasons range from her being too girly and Animesque (despite SEGA being a Japanese company) to fears of a Newbie Boom due to the Vocaloid fandom's support in getting her in to just a general dislike of anything not directly under SEGA ownership being playable.
• Fire Emblem. The classes and characters in every subsequent game are an insult to the ones in the past. Not to mention that when Nintendo finally decided to start releasing them outside of Japan, they immediately started to suck because now people besides importers were playing them. The completely optional Casual Mode that has no effect on the games at all if you don't select it? Ruined FE forever.
  • So did the dreaded *shudder* map-grinding in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones. And the DLC for powerlevelling, cashgrabbing and weapon-collecting in the 3DS games.
  • Hell, the 3DS Fire Emblem games in general - or, at least the ones that aren't remakes - have ruined the entire series forever.
• Final Fantasy:
  • The announcement that Final Fantasy XIII was going to be a multiplatform release for the Xbox 360 as well as the PlayStation 3. To put this in perspective, many gamers thought that Final Fantasy was dead when it was finally released on a non-Nintendo console back in 1997, as the series had been Nintendo-exclusive since Final Fantasy II.
  • Every single new Final Fantasy game is the one that ruined the franchise forever, and this is obvious the second they announce the title.
  • Every game after Final Fantasy VII has been accused of not "looking like a Final Fantasy game" despite that fact that each of the worlds that appear throughout the series have no continuity with each other and thus never look alike. The more "old-school" games like Final Fantasy IX, Final Fantasy XII, and the online games, while looking like the majority of the series, don't look like VII and get hated by the VII fanbase.
  • Basically, anything that has to do with Final Fantasy post VI will have some fans cry this while calling fans who don't whine emo-gays.
  • Speaking of Final Fantasy VII, many fans felt the compilation games and movies ruined the game's storyline forever. Despite the fact the compilations were a response to the original, "RUINED FOREVER!" by fans which happened after Final Fantasy VII's original ending. This was especially true for those invested in the love triangle between Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith after Advent Children settled the debate once and for all much to the disappointment of the losing half of the fandom.
  • Final Fantasy XIV was ruined in 2010 thanks to bad management and shoddy game design. After the game got rebooted and became successful, there are always a group of people that will proclaim that the game is dead unless the devs do something right now to revitalize the game and then they complain when a change is put in place. One example of this is the Bard class that gained a skill which changed how they played in the first expansion pack Heavensward. Bard players declared the class to be ruined forever. When the Stormblood expansion revealed that Bards would go back to their old style while gaining new ones to complement it, people complained about that in the vein of "They changed it back and it's ruined forever AGAIN!"
• Michael Ironside isn't returning as Sam Fisher in Splinter Cell: Blacklist? UNACCEPTABLE!
• Metroid
  • Samus Aran's non-Suit appearance in the Metroid Prime Trilogy. The first Metroid Prime game had Samus's first appearance in 3D, and they chose to use a more realistic and older appearance that had actually never been used in the series before. In Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, her look drastically changed to her Zero Suit look based on Metroid: Zero Mission that was more standard with her other appearances in the series. Fans cried that Samus looked like a plastic Barbie doll, clashed with the overall realism of the rest of the game, and was bastardized by "animu", therefore ruining Metroid FOREVER. Metroid Prime 3 still used the Zero Suit look, just better-rendered, so the complaints didn't end either. You can compare the different suitless Samus endings in this video.
  • Some people were pissed off at her new look in Metroid: Other M. But after release, there are several other aspects causing these cries.
  • One is that Samus wasn't the one that triggered the ship's Self-Destruct Mechanism at the end.
  • Before that, Metroid Prime being first-person.
  • Everyone went batshit over Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and Metroid Prime: Hunters having multiplayer. It turned out to be pretty damn harmless. Then there are the people who complained about Prime 3 not having multiplayer.
  • There's also the group that believes Samus is not a real female role model anymore because of Nintendo's depiction of her in her Zero Suit for Brawl. Never minding that even the original Metroid showed her in a skimpy bikini (Nintendo has actually "added" clothes to her since then).
  • When they're not complaining about that, they're saying that makes it a Halo ripoff, which is wrong because 1) it's not even the same genre, 2) Space Marines have been canon since Metroid II, 3) Metroid came out in 1986, 4) tons of great games are ripoffs of a ripoff of a ripoff, and 5) Metroid is itself a ripoff.
    • This is made even more ridiculous by the fact that Metroid Prime entered development before Halo even was in the FPS genre, instead of the strategy genre, at least according to The Other Wiki.
  • Don't forget that Metroid Fusion ruined Metroid forever by changing everything.
  • Samus' BSOD in Other M caused many fans to declare it the lowest point of the franchise.
  • It only took one trailer from Metroid Prime: Federation Force during Nintendo's E3 2015 Digital Event for fans to spit fire towards the game. It being a four-player co-op game with a Super-Deformed artstyle that lacked Samus as a player character meant it was instantly labeled as not being a "real" Metroid game. Things got so out of hand that by the end of the day, the YouTube video had over 90% dislikes to likes (every other video for the game would share the same fate up until its release), and a petition was created to have it cancelled.
• "Pokémon was always better before (insert current generation here)". Usually either centered around complaints that new Pokémon are not as "cool" looking as older ones, or complaints that adding extra evolutions have ruined that Pokémon forever. (Never mind that giving a Pokémon an evolved form makes it stronger and more worthwhile to use.) Diamond/Pearl also had the usual complaints, plus claims that a dramatic re-balancing of all the moves (creating special and physical categories) ruined competitive battling forever.
  • The main reaction to HeartGold and SoulSilver seems to be "They replaced Kris with Lyra! I hate her!"
  • The grass looks slightly different! WHAAA!?
  • The game has more detail?! Ruination!
  • Whitney's Miltank is one level lower in HG/SS?!?! EPIC FAIL GAMEFREAK!
  • Perhaps a little conspiracy theory to go with it? "JUNICHI MASUDA IS BLACKMAILING THE TAJIRI-SAN TO TAKE OVER POKEMON!"
  • Lopunny, Gardevoir, etc. all led to cries of "FURRYMON" across the Internet, even before the games they starred in was released. A Japanese video game with Cute Monster Girls? That's just crazy talk.
    • Perhaps the sad part is that falling in love with a Pokémon was already somewhat known and laughed with back in generation 1. The ECTS demo of Conker's Bad Fur Day features a scene (that is only viewable through hacking) where a member of the weasel mafia had a simulated sex scene where it was done with a Pikachu (Only the tail is present in the game's code though. It was probably never the intention to really show it, but just use it to crack up some jokes).
    • Made all the more hilarious now that there's an actual song called "Furrýmon" by The Chalkeaters.
  • As soon as its silhouette was revealed, Zoroark was accused of being a Replacement Scrappy of Lucario. Nintendo themselves backed off when it became obvious that Zoroark wasn't as popular.
  • When people saw Pokémon from 3rd and 4th Gen: A few Pokémon look like robots instead of animals?! Say WHAT?!
    • It's even more hilarious when you consider that there were some robotic and unnatural-looking Pokémon in the first two generations too. Just look at Magnemite, Porygon, Voltorb, and Skarmory, among others.
  • The Tin Tower is now called Bell Tower. They Changed It, Now It Sucks!.
  • The titles of the new games are BLACK and WHITE?! Oh no the, series is now absolutely going emo/racist by the NAME ALONE!
    • Hilariously enough, people said Ruby and Sapphire onward ruined Pokémon FOREVER because their names were gems instead of colors and Game Freak was "running out of ideas." (Nevermind that Gold and Silver are also precious metals and Crystal is... well, a gem). With Black and White, they went back to colors, and people are saying they're ruined FOREVER because they went back to colors, clearly indicating that they ran out of places to look for ideas.
    • The starters for Black and White have been revealed. People are, you guessed it, screaming 'RUINED FOREVER!'
    • The in-battle sprites are now animated. But the back-view sprites look low-res and blown-up! Nintendo doesn't care about Pokémon anymore!
    • The legendaries for Black and White were just revealed. What?! Black on white and white on black?! The black legendary ''slightly resembles Palkia?!! More cries ensued.
    • The English names are somewhat cornier than the last four gens! NINTENDO IS RUNNING OUT OF IDEAS! (Of course, the Nostalgia Filter prevents anyone from realizing that even Gen 2 had names like Feraligatr...)
  • Amusingly enough, as you may note from the above screams, most people don't really care (or bother to research, ironically) that Game Freak is the one that actually makes the games. People just want to blame Nintendo for everything, it seems.
  • One particular troper got so annoyed with the whining that he wrote this.
    • The sad part? If one reads through the thread linked to above, some fans either agreed with it being RUINED FOREVER, or pointed out that the fan who ranted was wrong and it was only ruined around one of the more recent generations, both parties missing the blatant sarcasm.
  • Triple Battles have been confirmed from Black and White on serebii.net. Hilarity is bound to ensue.
  • The evil team for Pokémon Black and White was revealed on Oha Suta. The fan reaction? Cries of "The villains are named Team Plasma!?" or "They dress like KNIGHTS!? They don't look evil!" have rung out across the internet.
  • The most amusing part of this is that, while people were screaming "RUINED FOREVER!!!" at all moments, the amount of Pokémon fans doesn't lower at all. It seems that many of the people screaming about the Pokemon Apocalypse still play the new games anyway.
    • The fans not lowering is explained nicely in this comic: [1].
    • Apocalypse? You must mean Apokélypse. A fan made a trailer for a fake film parodying the trend of taking fundamentally silly material and making it Darker and Edgier, a la the recent Mortal Kombat film pitch? Of course, half of the Broken Base protested.
  • The English names are normally whined about, but Pokémon Black and White has been hit especially hard thanks to a different company handling the translating and getting ripped into for every last name. "They changed Touya to Hilbert?", for example.
    • And now there are people complaining that Black and White tried too hard with its plot and that the series would be better off going back to a bare bones plot where all you do is collect badges and beat the Pokémon League. Keep in mind, these are the same people who complained that the series was getting stale and that the villain teams should be more fleshed out.
  • The "third versions" are called Pokémon Black 2 and Pokémon White 2? By this time, fans were expecting a "Gray Version" instead, so this was unexpected.
    • The Black/White 2 legendaries are black and white versions of Kyurem? The region appears to be iced-over? The new main characters? Yep..
  • There has also been major backlash because of the profanity filter, which stops you from naming your Pokémon anything sexual or rude. This also stopped you from trading certain Pokémon without a nickname because they have a rude word hidden in their name. (for example Probopass and Cofagrigus).
  • Mewtwo's rumored strange new form caused a ruckus among many fans.
  • OMG JUST LOOK AS THOSE UGGGGLLLLYYY GEN 6 STARTERS!11!!
  • The announcement of a new Fairy-type was met with boatloads of complaining, a lot of it from Dragon trainers up in arms about Dragons looking pathetic now that they're weak to Fairy attacks — despite the fact that Fairy was added to balance the Dragons that practically became Expies of Generation 1 Psychics. However, the fact that Gamefreak pulled new features out of the ass instead of modifying the original rules to balance the game, may also make it a case of Obvious Rule Patch. The rest were mostly purists and people thinking of fairies as cutesy and harmless. (Obviously people have not heard about fairies from the old days.)
  • Mega Evolutions. More or less just a fancy term for an alternate forme, but damned if it isn't a controversial one. The general sentiment among the antis is "We can do a whole lot better than to steal from Digimon!"
  • "Stat Levels?!"^note What was thought to be Gen 6's term for a species' initial stat basis; apparently that term has no "official" name Those Game Freak guys don't know their Role-Playing Game Terms! Also, they've harshed our Woolseyisms.^note "Base Stats", which apparently is a term for Specific Encounter-based Stats instead of the species modifier as was previously thought, is a lesser offense insofar as a "Base Stat" could be zeros across the board, but no gamer would refer to their pre-roll stats as "base".^note And, of course, on Bulbapedia, term names are Serious Business.
  • "The Exp. Share gives EXP to everyone on the team now? This makes it too easy! I want to grind for hours and hours!" Especially ridiculous when one considers the Exp. All, from way back in the fan base's precious Gen I, does the same thing.
  • "Game Freak made a keychain Pokémon?" (The use of Nostalgia Filter means that they forgot that Gen 1 had two Pokémon based on Poké Balls and another two that were basically sludge.)
  • Gen 6 is being deemed ruined since the release of Powersaves and Cybersaves Gadget, which allow the creation of hacks that were previously almost impossible on the 3DS game but that plagued older gens incessantly.
  • Game Freak is acknowledging the existence of competitive battling in-game now? How dare they!
  • They're going on to Gen 7 without either a Third Version or a Sequel? Gah!!!
  • Too Much Water.^note Referring to the fact that Alola, the Gen 7 region, is based on Hawai'i. Again.
  • Hawai'i is on the far side of the world from France!^note Some of the initial prepublicity about Sun/Moon was that the Gen 7 region was connected to Kalos , though most of those rumors centered on Zygarde in one way or another. While the Zygarde connections could be a repeat of Regigigas, (with the minor Golems being in Hoenn and the big guy locked in Sinnoh), the distance precludes any further connections between the two regions. On the other hand, it does explain why you can't get to Kalos from Kanto. Kanto to Hoenn, on the other hand...
  • Good news for China! The games are going to be the first with a Chinese translation! Bad news for China! Instead of 3 translations for the mainland, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, Pokémon will recieve one unified translation. In fact, since Hong Kongers speak Cantonese but the translation is Mandarin, accusations of encroaching Hong Kong culture have flown, saying the localization is part of a bigger problem.
  • Hyper Training now allows you to increase the IVs of your Pokémon without the need to breed/soft-reset? The competitive scene is ruined! Game Freak doesn't care about us competitive fans anymore!
  • Some people might have already felt tense about the series due to mostly playing it when young, then finding themselves less interested. So at some point the franchise might not appear sufficiently similar to previous renditions which they liked. The games do try to add new features, characters and regions, so players might have a very different reaction to a new game or new direction for the series. Further, it is eventually a developed franchise, so games are a part of this. While this can help promotion, some might like the games where that was less pronounced and played less of a factor in promoting or planning the game.
  • Gengar's Levitate ability replaced with Cursed Body? RUINED FOREVER!
  • Generation 8 is on the Switch and not on the 3DS? Pokémon is RUINED FOREVER for moving to a better engine!!!^note They literally do this every few years, or we'd still be playing in the original Game Boy.
  • Only Pokémon in the Galar dex can be transferred to Sword and Shield, and the remaining 490 will not be available at all (at least until the expansions)? You better believe it's RUINED FOREVER!
    • Also, a Pokémon game has Downloadable Content?! Or worse yet, PAID DLC?! DOUBLE RUINED FOREVER!!!
  • What? The Gen 4 remakes use chibi models instead of the current proportional ones? Awful! RUINED FOREVER!
    • In addition: why are they remaking Diamond and Pearl and not Platinum? Don't they know that's the best one?! Ugh! AND you have to buy a whole second game just to catch Arceus? UGH!”
  • Pokémon Legends: Arceus got hit with yells of “ruined!” as soon as all the Hisuian forms leaked
  • Gen 9 was announced in March of 2022 and the yells of things like “those Gen 9 starters look like fakemon!” and “if the grass starter turns bipedal it’s ruined!!” started very quickly
• Whenever Blizzard Entertainment releases a new game, patches a game, announces a game, announces a patch, does nothing for a while, has one of their customer reps post on a thread, a large and vocal portion of Blizzard's fanbase denounces the game and the whole of Blizzard as ruined forever, says that Blizzard has sold out to Activision, and threatens to Rage Quit on the forums to anyone who thought the game was good or even okay. Strangely enough, those same fans pop up on the forums and repeat the cycle every time something happens or doesn't happen with Blizzard.
  • Wait, Diablo III is going to have PVP ARENAS!?! IT'LL RUIN DIABLO LIKE IT RUINED WORLD OF WARCRAFT!!!
    • Diablo III won't have skill points?! Diablo III will have an auction house?? Etc. Ironically, when later it was announced that the PVP arenas are replaced with a PVP closer to original, a good chunk of the fanbase was complaining the same.
    • Diablo Immortal is going to be a fucking cash-grab mobile game? Thanks for ruining Diablo even more than it already has been, Blizzard. Don't they know that people who want to play on their phones aren't true fans of the series?
    • Diablo IV then proceeded to ruin Diablo again by not being announced alongside Immoral, which would've helped prevented backlash against last year's Blizzcon.
  • Warcraft III Reforged somehow managed to ruin Warcraft III retroactively, by being launched in a poor state, and replacing the old executable with the Reforged executable.
  • World of Warcraft. Any and every change to any gameplay mechanic, class, dungeon, mob, weapon, talent, or artstyle will be greeted by copious amounts of this trope, and at least 20 people declaring that they are cancelling their subscriptions, with 50 more breathing a sigh of relief. For example...
    • End game raids no longer require 40 dedicated players spending 4-6 hours a night on dungeons? They no longer require an additional 6-8 hours a day of grinding to obtain the perfect weapons, multiple armor sets, insanely convoluted attunement and key quests to even enter the raids? Raiding no longer requires endless hours "proving" yourself to the very few dedicated end game raiding guilds? RUINED FOREVER!
    • The very fact of World of Warcraft's existence was decried as "ruined forever" - some people preferred it when Blizzard made RTS games.
    • The Burning Crusade: I thought we blew up the Dark Portal already! Illidan is evil? WHAAAAAA??? Wait, Illidan isn't the real final final boss of the expansion? Kael'thas is evil? WHAAAAA???? Shamans can't tank anymore? Alliance getting Shamans and Horde getting Paladins? Blood Elves are only there to reel in the anime crowd! That's not how Draenei are supposed to look like! Ruined. Forever.
    • Wrath of the Lich King featured tons of shifts in gameplay plus reusing a raid instance that very few people got to experience, a decision both praised and sneered at. (It also sunk the Jaina x Arthas ship. Forever.)
    • Cataclysm changed all of the Classic zones and cities, had a lame endgame villain, and totally redid the skills/talents system,thus ruining it forever. Oh, and being able to play as a Worgen was obviously an attempt to reel in the Twilight crowd.
    • Mists of Pandaria, the recently announced new expansion pack. Pandaren are becoming playable race. BLIZZARD RUINED THE GAME!!11!!!ONE!
    • As a corollary, every. single. time. a new MMO is announced, the WoW forums become lousy with people who will loudly announce how much they're looking forward to it and talking about how this new game will be the one that'll finally kill of World of Warcraft once and for all. Every. Single. Time.
    • This got so bad on the forums, that at one point a Forum MVP made a list of everything that has "ruined" the game.
  • No LAN support in StarCraft II!? OH TEH NOES!!!1!1
    • And it's split up into three separate games, each with its own gameplay mechanics! You can still make maps where all three sides are playable, but still, DOUBLE DOOMED!
    • And every other video game sequel ever. This trope might be why sequelphobes exist.
• The remake of Metal Gear Solid for the Nintendo GameCube is seen as this by some fans. This is due to Naomi and Mei Ling losing their accents and many of the cutscenes were modified.
  • Raiden. and him being the main character of MGS2 instead of Snake, caused a huge amount of this.
  • Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots again, has been criticized for being too much like an action game, for numerous amounts of retcons, and for explaining every plot hole, twist and unanswered question with nanomachines.
  • When the first trailer for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was shown, it got lots of criticism for being such a departure from the main series, despite it being a spin-off and therefore supposed to be different. It was also criticized for "drastically changing the tone of the series" and being "too cheesy". However, when the "Wrong" trailer was released, most of the hate died off, and then when people found out that it was indeed a stealth game, just with hack-and-slash elements, most people agree that it's a pretty good game.
  • The whole controversy regarding Kiefer Sutherland voicing Big Boss in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. This was so big that, prior to the announcement of who would be replacing David Hayter as the voice of Big Boss, some of the series' voice actors were requesting fans to sign a petition in order to have Hayter reprise his role.
  • When Metal Gear Survive was announced as a zombie survival game instead of the traditional stealth game, many fans declared the franchise to be Ruined Forever after Kojima's departure from Konami.
• The City of Heroes community has a hobby of mocking this even while obeying it, as "DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!" This became especially popular just before the Inventions system was introduced. There is even a threat level system (DOOMCON) to judge the level of "DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM".
  • Other types of mockery include claiming Accuracy was nerfed.
  • Alternatively, "I don't know what you're arguing about, but the devs should make Stamina an inherent."
  • Incidents that caused DOOMCON 1, by the way: the introduction of diminishing returns on enhancements, the universal nerfing of defensive powers, beneficial class changes, normalization of any kind, relatively small adjustments to singular powers...
  • The really amusing thing is there's a new one of these at least once a year when the new round of veteran's rewards are announce. Generally one of them will be some new bonus power/ability/in-game discount, and whether it's underpowered, overpowered, or carefully balanced, it will still ruin the entire game forever.
  • City of Heroes pulls its servers? RUINED FOREVER.
    • For reals.
• Mass Effect: When the first sequel was announced, several things were seen as possible causes for the franchise jumping the shark: A darker and edgier story, FPS style combat (this would stop the game from being a "true RPG"), different squadmates, etc.
  • Mass Effect 3 also suffered from this pre-release: The inclusion of multiplayer and the game appealing to a wider audience were supposed to be a sign of EA's greed affecting the franchise.
  • The DLC "From Ashes" being released at day one was another controversial issue, especially because it is suspected that the new party member was just cut from the main game.
  • And yet again when the PC version was revealed to need Origin, EA's digital distribution and DRM system / supposed malware.
  • Amazingly, there are even people complaining about the free DLC multiplayer expansions; apparently, Bioware is obsessing over their new feature and neglecting the rest of the game in their mad rush to win over Call of Duty fans.
  • A leak of story elements from Mass Effect 3 also raised some alarms about the possibility of the plot not meeting the quality that everyone expected...
  • It got worse; after the game was released, every criticism that came before became utterly insignificant compared to the outcry over the ending. Bioware polls showed that very, very few of the people who played the game liked the ending, and a Child's Play charity drive intended to get Bioware's attention ended up earning over $80,000. Many articles were written (including some from Forbes). Bioware claimed that they won't alter their "artistic vision", which added oil to the flames, but they promised a 'Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut' intended to provide some closure and "clarification" to the ending. It satisfied some people, though of course, not all. The general consensus was that if the game had been released with the scenes added by the Extended Cut to begin with then the outcry wouldn't have been anywhere near as bad as it was.
• Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation is on Xbox 360 instead of PS3? Big "NO!"!
  • Ace Combat: Assault Horizon is coming to the PS3 as well as the Xbox 360... then the trailer revealed that the game will be set in the real world and will have some light rail shooting segments. The fandom promptly declared Assault Horizon to be a Franchise Killer... all off of a single trailer.
• When it was announced that Ace Combat: Assault Horizon would be the rebirth of the game title, a lot of the hardcore fans felt that it was Ruined FOREVER.
• BioShock:
  • BioShock 2 won't have Big Daddies in it? New enemies? A different conflict? Giant squid? What, this is far too original for a sequel, 2K has ruined BioShock FOREVER! Of course, none of those rumors are actually true. BioShock is actually ruined forever because of the sequel's mere existence.
  • A number of fans have also claimed that having a multiplayer option in BioShock 2 has, despite the fact that it is being developed by an outside developer and the fact that it is completely separate from the main story, destroyed the "single player"-ness of the game, and thus BioShock is Ruined FOREVER.
  • BioShock supposedly ruined System Shock forever by containing a similar plot twist to System Shock 2, having less character customization options, and making permanent death impossible. Given that this is the sort of Ruined Forever that creates a best-selling, critically acclaimed game that increases awareness of the previously obscure original series, there are probably many developers hoping they can similarly "ruin" their own franchises.
  • And, on the other hand: BioShock Infinite won't be taking place in Rapture? It takes place in an American Sky-City?! It has really nothing to do with BioShock 1 & 2? The main character speaks? You have to devise different strategies, as opposed to just making one combination of plasmids?! BioShock is Ruined FOREVER!!!
• The players can actually survive by trying to use their weapons instead of saving every bullet? Stuff happening in DAYTIME!? Resident Evil has been ruined FOREVER!
  • On an even bigger note, many fans believed that Capcom ultimately ruined the franchise forever with the supposedly "confirmed" death of Albert Wesker as many believed him to be the best developed character in the series and not to mention its main villain as well. Then again, some would say he was a Jerkass that deserved to be Killed Off for Real.
• A lot of PKers in RuneScape considered the game Ruined FOREVER after Jagex removed PvP, due to real-world trading. However, Jagex did introduce PvP worlds...
  • Every update introduced to stop real-world trading was met with this reaction, the 12/10/07 ones were just met with the most of it. Actually, scratch that, Every update EVER will have at least a few people complaining the game has been ruined forever, like the WoW example above. Sometimes, the complaint is just that it wasn't a specific update a person wanted, and that person or people will complain endlessly about every update that is NOT the update they want.
    • Dungeoneering: 'Jagex is trying to turn RuneScape into World of Warcraft! RUINED FOREVER!!!'
    • Non-members updates: 'Why should you make updates for peasants, Jagex? We PAY you! Updates should be for members only! RUINED FOREVER!!!'
    • Improved weapon designs and animations: 'Why do we need shinier weapons? These look retarded! Jagex, you're wasting time you could spend on new quests and skills! RUINED FOREVER!!!'
  • The original PvP Wilderness is back (restored on February 1, 2011) along with the original unlimited Free Trade restrictions? RUINED FOREVER!!!
  • The "biggest update to Runescape ever", Evolution of Combat, turns the robotic combat system into one that requires more action. Runescape is going to end! Everyone is quitting! The game is now WoWScape! The new animations suck! RUINED FOREVER!!!
• CyberConnect2 has announced Tail Concerto Spiritual Successor Solatorobo: Red the Hunter! WOO-HOO!...What was that? The main character can turn into a human now? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
• In EVE Online, Every time something is changed/balanced, be it the mechanics of a weapons system, putting breaks on 3/4 of kilometer-long battleships going 10+ kilometers per second, or making the game a bit easier to get into, Eve has inevitably been Ruined FOREVER. As EVE has roughly two expansions and numerous major and minor patches per year, it has been Ruined FOREVER scores of times since release.
• After several years in Development Hell, when Team Fortress 2 was unveiled with cartoonish graphics and over-the-top characters, a huge change from the "100% realism" touted in its early development stages, many fans cried foul. Of course, even after the players actually got their hands on the game, many swore off the game because of the graphics.
  • Again when one of the Heavy's unlocks was revealed to be a sandwich for regaining health. The Sandvich went on to be the most-used secondary item for the Heavy.
  • The announcement of the random item drop and backpack system had many complaining that the game was starting to become like World of Warcraft.
  • In the same vein as above, one of the Sniper unlocks was a jar of pee to be thrown at enemies, which got to the point where fans petitioned to have it removed. Much of the hate seems to stem from the fact that Jarate was first advertised as an April Fool's Day joke, and, as with the Sandvich, is the most frequently equipped secondary weapon for the Sniper.
  • And... you know what, let's just say that EVERY major update (and a few minor ones) has invoked cries of Ruined FOREVER.
  • And when TF2 was announced for the Mac and a miscellaneous accessory that doesn't impact gameplay whatsoever announced for Mac players, guess what fans thought of it? Some servers even started automatically banning anybody even wearing the Earbuds...
  • The same happened with the halos meant to reward people for not idling to effortlessly gain items. People began refusing to help teammates depending on whether or not said teammate had the halo.
  • And again with the release of the Mann Co. Store, which allows you to buy items - and some of the new (still very rare) hats which give a set bonus with certain other weapons.
  • The newest round of Ruined Forever is the Australian Christmas Update. May as well be called the Mann Co. Update part 2, for new item sets with bonuses and all new items to buy. Approximately 3.45 seconds after the update was released, the steam forums were flooded with cries of "Valve Sold their souls!" and "The Mann Co. store was just the beginning!"
  • Whenever a promotional tie-in item for another game gets thrown in, expect such cries to be seen on many threads at Steam Forums.
  • It's now free to play. While others rejoice, oldbies are definitely moaning, most along the lines of "Oh no, the n00bz are coming! It's not fun anymore!"
    • Worse than that, some people are demanding refunds and calling this a huge slap in the face to anyone who paid for the game. To put this in perspective, this is like getting mad at Michael Bay because you bought Transformers (2007) on DVD or Blu-ray and then saw it airing on TV three years later.
  • While Meet the Pyro was positively received by most fans, other fans thought that it ruined Pyro's character, and that his view of the world was "too colorful and childish". They fail to realize that that's what made the short so funny.
  • And now we have the "Magical Mercenary", a hat that resembles a unicorn from My Little Pony, complete with new pony-related lines. Many cried afoul and released game mods to remove it and the lines, and even a freakin' petition to have it removed. It seems the anti-Bronies will never let anybody enjoy their pony in any way.
    • Never mind that Valve head Gabe Newell is a brony.
  • The November 21, 2013 update patch lead to Item Set users screaming and crying about their nerfed sets, while players rejoiced. There were also massive outcries about certain weapons being nerfed or buffed.
    • And in the aftermath of the update, lots of players are complaining about the L'Etranger or Winger being "Overused" because they were buffed.
• "LEGO Rock Band? OH NOES, not only has the series lowered down to Guitar Hero-level whoring, but it has become KIDDY and EASIER!"
  • Never mind that. Rock Band was already ruined when they announced Country and hip-hop DLC. What is this, Country Band? For the uninitiated, every week some songs are added to the RB "music store". You can buy the songs you want and not buy the songs you don't. Thus, these country songs don't appear in your game unless you buy them. Where was I? Oh yes. Ruined FOREVER!
  • Or the new revelation that in the third installation, there won't be an option to specifically assign band members to instruments, and the ability to use a ridiculously fast scrolling speed in Practice Mode is gone. Fans already reported pulling out of purchases and many facing severe disappointment and extreme RAGE.
  • Frequent fan responses to announced DLC give this impression. Not to mention just about every setlist since Guitar Hero 3.
  • And never mind the fact the Lego Adaptation Games are divisive on their own, with many of its detractors not even having played the games.
• Purple is legendary?? Say WHAT?
  • WE'RE TOO LATE!!
• BanjoKazooie: Nuts & Bolts. Some seemed so convinced that Rare killed the franchise with its Unexpected Gameplay Change that they wanted the developer to crash and burn for it. Also addressed in their letter page:
  (After being asked about the possibility of B-K TV show) Never say never to a TV show — VP [Viva Piñata] transferred pretty well — but you must realise that if people thought chucking some cars and planes into the mix was akin to us taking a lead pipe to the Banjo franchise then stamping and urinating on the broken pieces, there would probably be some kind of localised internet apocalypse if Banjo and his fellow freaks started enunciating proper words in human voices.
  • Made even funnier by the fact that, originally, Banjo and the others were going to speak English in Nuts and Bolts, before Rareware decided against it.
• "Left 4 Dead 2? Released a year after the first game and still no signs of a SDK? Oh no, Valve have sold their souls to the money-printing machines!"
  • Of course the SDK was in open beta at the time of the announcement and came out of open beta two weeks later, with cross-compatibility into Left 4 Dead 2 no less. The fact that this was an actual complaint only further underscores the general ignorance of the boycott movement.
  • The boycott with more than 40,000 users. Enough said.
    • Of course, when Left 4 Dead had sold, as of May 2009 (six months both after L4D1 and before L4D2), 2.5 million copies... 40,000 complainers doesn't really add up to much.
  • Complainers, by the way, who were complaining about not being able to download stuff with points they got by playing games and would instead have to spend actual money on a full game. Yeah, Valve is the greedy one, here.
  • Left 4 Dead was then ruined forever by the announcement that one of the original survivors would be killed off for "The Passing".
    • And The Passing was ruined because it didn't have an 8 vs 8 mode or let you play as the original survivors.
  • The Left 4 Dead 1 forums were screaming ruined forever following the announcement of 'The Sacrifice' DLC, which includes content for both games; one of those being a full port of No Mercy (characters and all) from 1 to 2. One has to go to the forums to see the attitudes of these people. It makes the Left 4 Dead 2 forum pale in comparison.
  • Adding to this, Valve disabling custom vocal binds (Left 4 Dead 2 only for some reason) to prevent people from spamming them in-game has also generated many ruined forever complaints.
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution will have Regenerating Health? That will ruin the game! It DESTROYS any strategical thinking the original had! Deus Ex is RUINED FOREVER!!!
  • Not anymore. With the release of the latest trailer, hardcore opinion has changed from Ruined Forever to "Could be a good, great even, game, but it doesn't seem to fit in with the universe."
  • Except in the original game, there was an upgrade that let you... oh, whatever.
    • The developers are quite aware of the health regen issue, and the majority of the hands-on previews and interviews go out of their way to mention that the health regen is nothing like a certain game series.
  • That, and much of the so-called strategical thinking took a back seat in the original game when you got a hold of the Dragon Tooth Sword in the middle of the game, or even the GEP at the very beginning of the game. Both allowed you to breach almost all locked doors and safes with ease, making lockpicks and multitools almost worthless.
  • When some clips of gameplay leaked out, the reaction by some fans were: The takedowns are nothing but an I win button! They're pandering to the casual audience!!! Third-Person cover system? This is what happens when you make games for the peasants!!! Cutscenes??? It is disrupting the flow of the game!!! Deus Ex is officially for the COMMON MASSES NOW!!
    • Story, atmosphere, sound and graphics design, exploration, puzzles, and general gameplay are all nothing next to the horror of being able to see your character climb a ladder in third-person.
  • None of these comes even close to the level of RUINED FOREVER that came with the release of the multipath trailer. Specifically, the bright yellow highlighting on EVERYTHING. Which can be switched on or off now.
  • Ads were added to the game. Specifically, for the loading screens. Fans complained that they ruined the aesthetic of the game—yes, in the loading screens—and even accused Eidos of deliberately lengthening loading screens so players will be "forced" to look at the ads. While the loading had been a common complaint on release, it had long since been reduced by a patch before the ads were introduced. Many of these players said that they had no problem with in-game billboards (as long as the ads were context-appropriate), but the loading screen ones destroyed the game for them.
• As soon as it was revealed that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash Up will have Raving Rabbids as Guest Fighters, fans were far from optimistic to this trope, believing that Ubisoft is wrecking the 25th anniversary of the Turtles with their favorite Spotlight-Stealing Squad who already drove Rayman off his own series. For them, it has hit The Problem with Licensed Games because of three cartoony hares that you don't even have to play as, never mind about the actual gameplay.
  • For others, it's the Unexpected Character fighters appearing in the game, such as the Fugitoid, Nightwatcher, and Utrominator; special mention for the fans complaining there are no 80's characters in the game.
• Valkyria Chronicles II is going on a handheld where it might actually turn a profit?! RUINED FOREVER! It must be on the PS3!
  • It becomes Harsher in Hindsight, as Sega announces No Export for You for all future PSP games, including the third.
• Never mind how Dragon Quest IX offers Character Customization and averts Informed Equipment. Never mind such tiny matters as gameplay, plot, presentation or actually being fun. No, Dragon Quest is surely RUINED FOREVER because the ninth game is being released on DS and happens to have a single save slot.
  • After several years in development, it was announced that Dragon Quest X would be an MMO. The ensuing RAGE was also driven by factors such as a planned release in 2012 (very late in the Wii's lifecycle), the number of Wii games with low quality online play, the number of other Square Enix games with delays and setbacks, and the uncertainty of whether the Wii or the Wii U version will be translated.
  • Another big factor is how another contemporary MMO from Square Enix was poorly-received. Fans now announce Square Enix Ruined FOREVER up to eleven.
• Crash Bandicoot after they turned Tiny from a giant beast into a scrawny pacifist. Oh hell, everything after the PS1 series (when Naughty Dog left the series to publisher Vivendi Universe), it just went downhill and started numerous cry's of Ruined FOREVER by purists.
• Fox has a GIRLFRIEND?!? NOOOOOO NOW HERE COME TUH FURRIEZ!!!^note Needless to say, they've been there since 1993.
  • Ironically if pressed, those who remember the Nintendo Power comics will state Fara Phoenix is their choice of half-canon girlfriend for Fox and was much more worthy than Krystal...despite being just as terrible a pilot^*Dogfighter - her piloting skills weren't that bad. Perhaps it's all down to Krystal's strange fur colouring, which kind of brands her as a sci-fi cliché (what with blue apparently being THE go-to default colour of sci-fi hacks everywhere.) Based upon their personalities, Krystal is indeed worse, but when the most vocal portion of your tribe tells Nintendo that's what they LOVE about her (next to the Fanservice^*and naturally Rule 34 kicked in - better not look it up), don't expect any changes down the line. Yep, you got it, Star Fox will continue to be Ruined FOREVER for some time to come.
• Square Enix is publishing Modern Warfare 2 in Japan!? Now the series is tainted by the gay emo girly men that are gay and have gay spiky hair! The series is DOOOOOOOMED!
  • This Deviant gives the best solution... [2]◊
  • Forget that, they don't know how publishing games outside of their home country works. The real example here is the lack of dedicated servers in the PC version. However, there's at least a more sensible explanation to the feelings of ruin as, compared to most other examples here being petty changes affecting only a single series, the PC gamers fear that this act, if it catches on with other developers, could effectively change all of online PC gaming. Hell, even the developers of the Battlefield series are shocked with that decision.
  • Speaking of Square Enix: Square Enix is publishing Supreme Commander 2? Oh well, we'll have to wait and— YOU MANIACS YOU BLEW THE RESOURCE SYSTEM UP FORGET YOU PEOPLE! SCREW YOU ALL! EVERY ONE!
• Bethesda can't release a game without this refrain. Fallout was Ruined FOREVER, and so was every Elder Scrolls game since Arena. "Fallout 3 was just Oblivion with guns!" That made some kind of sense, but now we have "Skyrim is just Fallout with swords!" So, Skyrim is Oblivion with more swords?
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • In a peculiar instance of First Installment Wins, every fan of the series tends to hold every other game (before or after) to the standard of the game they were introduced with. Essentially, their own personal first installment. All the ones before their favorite are outdated crap, and all the ones after it are "not real Elder Scrolls anymore".
  • Bethesda ported Morrowind to consoles. Therefore every TES game after Daggerfall is a dumbed down action hack-and-slash that's beneath the tan-skinned, blond haired PC gaming master race's time, so therefore said master race must spend days and days bashing Skyrim on the Bethesda forums for being an action shooter with swords and insulting Bethesda itself for selling out on its "real fans" in exchange for those console monkeys, going so far as to call the whole company incompetent for taking a long time to give the fanbase a screenshot half the forum were enraged at getting (a Dunmer thief while the forum wanted an Argonian).
  • Oblivion has long been hit by "dumbing down for casual gamers" complaints, particularly regarding quest markers and fast traveling. Because we all loved those days in Morrowind when we had to wander Vvardenfell's countryside for hours to find some dumb farmer since a quest giver gave horrid directions.
  • Skyrim is getting hit hard by this. There hasn't been a single scrap of information that hasn't made the official forums explode. That's not a joke. Every scant plot point has been met with "they're making a generic fantasy plot!" and every gameplay element has scores of "they're taking the Elder Scrolls out of The Elder Scrolls!"
  • The Elder Scrolls Online:
    • With the announcement of the game, the fanbase has exploded into screams of "Online play in my Elder Scrolls? RUINED FOREVER!" Many people now swear that they will never play any future games in the series, multiplayer or not.
    • The full extent goes that with the announcement of an MMO, no matter who is saying what the series is dead. When the fans say "Bethesda shouldn't spend time and money on this, the single player series is never going to come back!" they are usually met with "it's a different studio and Pete Hines says it won't effect the Single Player games." The normal response to that is that Pete's lying and that they are setting out to kill TES and replace it with a WoW clone. The fact that seven years have now passed since the last single player game in the series was released only adds fuel to the fire.
• If you register in the forums of No Mutants Allowed, never EVER say that Fallout 3 was a good Fallout game or even a good game at all. The game is in First Person View instead of periferic that doesn't cause camera screws that much? RUINED FOREVER! The game has bugs? Even though the first two games were buggy as all hell and they were 2d emm RUINED FOREVER! People outside of our niche now know about Fallout? RU... you know the rest, the worst part is that this ruined forever thing started as early as Fallout 2, The games has humor? RUIIIIIIIIINED! New Reno? What the fuck? I want things to be the same!
• Hideo Kojima likes Twilight? He's not a game designer hero anymore, and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow will be doomed because it's a vampire game!
  • Speaking of Castlevania, there's the Castlevania: Symphony of the Night redub, this has even gotten to the point of fans making parodies of the original dialog. A good example would be, "There words are as empty as their souls. Castlevania ill needs voice actors such as these.
• Bloodstained looks like shit despite this trailer just being a preview? THIS GAME IS MIGHTY NO.9 2, THIS GAME IS RUINED JUST LIKE EVERY KICKSTARTER GAME EVER!!!!!!1111
• Total War has several examples:
  • Rome: Oh no! The engine has been changed! RUINED FOREVER!
  • Medieval II: It's the Same, So It Sucks
  • Empire: Naval Battles are broken! BAWWW! And there's less focus on close combat! Big "NO!"!
  • Rome II: Family trees are gone?! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
  • However, all of these outrages pale in the face of Total War: Warhammer: "A TOTAL WAR GAME IN A NON-HISTORIC SETTING?!?! DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!!!
  • And even then, the outcry when Total War: Three Kingdoms eclipsed the the outrage over Warhammer ahundredfold. "YET ANOTHER GAME SET IN ASIA?!?" (despite only being the third ever Total War game set in Asia, and the first in China), "NOBODY CARES ABOUT CHINESE CULTURE", "NOBODY WILL BUY THIS GAME", "I WANT WARHAMMER3/A GAME SET IN EUROPE!!!!"
• Hi there, are you a fan of Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals? Well, allow me to introduce you to the DS remake Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals. Take as much time as you need getting all the complaints out of your system.
  • The very day that Natsume (not Square Enix) made an official statement that it would localize the DS version of Lufia II, there were RUINED FOREVER style comments on sites such as Siliconera.
• Mega Man 10 has an easy mode, some people are rather pissed about this, because it's "ruining" the game, um, did anybody tell them it's completely optional?
  • What makes this even funnier is...Mega Man 2 had an easy mode, and everyone loves 2! (Okay, technically it had a "Normal" and "Difficult" mode, but Difficult mode was equivalent to the only difficulty of the Japanese game, so Normal mode was really easy mode.)
• New Super Mario Bros. Wii: Super Guide? Tons of negativity ensued.
  • But when the game actually came out, they soon found the feature to be genuinely necessary. Since then, it's shown up in Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Donkey Kong Country Returns, with much less backlash.
  • Tanooki Suit confirmed for Super Mario 3D Land. Tanooki Mario can't fly or turn into a statue (the latter only when collecting a certain Super Leaf in the Special Worlds later on). And The Fandom Backlashed.
• The Wing Commander movie is often accused of killing the franchise. Never mind, of course, that the entire genre of space sims was in a decline, in terms of sales, at the time for various reasons.
  • Likewise, Electronic Arts buying Origin Systems Inc was cited as the doom of WC (and other Origin titles), even though it was EA's money that made the switch to FMV possible, spawning three of the best selling individual titles in the entire series and boosting Origin out of the "niche provider" position they were holding (and not that strongly, fiscally speaking) prior to that point.
    • BUT FMV RUINED WING COMMANDER FOREVER!!!
• Poor Mega Man Star Force fell victim to this trope; being Darker and Edgier apparently wasn't enough to keep the fans of the prequel series from crying foul, mostly due to the difference in gameplay and the perceived simplification of the old chip system. While the first game did well enough, 2 was absolutely hated, and despite a much-improved 3, the series seems to be finished, making it one of the shortest spin-off series of all time.
• Not just Starforce, but Mega Man Battle Network also got lots of hate too due to it being completely different from other Mega Man games.
  • The inclusion of an obese version of Bad Boxart Mega Man in the PlayStation 3 version of Street Fighter X Tekken caused many Mega Man fans to say that Capcom officially hates the franchise and is trolling them - despite the fact that many were excited that BBA Mega Man was to be included in the now-cancelled Mega Man Universe, and that BBA Mega Man was included at Keiji Inafune's request.
    • Funny thing is, there were a lot of things that were objectively wrong with Street Fighter X Tekken. Input issues for Xbox 360 owners, deceptive advertisement of multiplayer for Xbox 360 owners, numerous bugs that, as late as July of 2012, render the game unplayable. What do people complain about: the DLC. This has led some gamers to suggest that Capcom themselves could be fueling the DLC complaints on purpose, as it takes attention away from truly broken features of the game, and downright illegal actions, and places it on something that legally, every company has the right to do.
• Some Street Fighter fans complained that Street Fighter IV was ruined because it was 3D. Other, better-informed fans pointed out that the hitboxes were still 2D, meaning the gameplay was effectively the same.
  • To twist the knife further, this is the exact same gripe "fans" had about Street Fighter EX about a decade earlier.
  • No SFIII style parries in SFIV? Ruined FOREVER!
  • No SF Alpha air block in SFIV? Ruined FOREVER!
  • SFIII doesn't play like SFII? Ruined FOREVER!
  • SF Alpha doesn't play like SFII? Ruined FOREVER!
  • The current gripe now is: Hakan, Turkish Oil Wrestler in SSFIV? Ruined FOREVER!!
  • The changes from Super Turbo to HD Remix seem to take the cake in this department.
    • HDR has compressed tiers? It's less interesting since it's more balanced therefore it's Ruined FOREVER!!
    • Move execution in HDR is easier than in Super Turbo (but still harder than in other Street Fighters)? Ruined FOREVER!!
• Samurai Warriors 3 announced as a Wii-exclusive? No! It should be on 360/PS3, it's supposed to be Next-Gen like Dynasty Warriors 6! The outcry got worse as the release date grew near with further announcements... Three characters (Musashi, Kojiro, Gracia) are cut, despite having six new characters and one returning character? Seven Characters (Ranmaru, Okuni, Yoshimoto, Katsuie, Toshiie, Kotarou, Nouhime)are without Musou (story) modes? NOOOO! This has gotten worse since reports came in that SW3 didn't sell well in Japan, with the fans blaming it on the Wii, either not realizing or just not caring that it was likely because it was released within the same period as other games with a larger fanbase.
  • With the news that the expansions would not have an international release (Save for Samurai Warriors Chronicles for the 3DS), this is bound to become worse.
• Activision announced that Infinity Ward has been fired from making any more Call of Duty games? BLEEEUUUUAARGH!
  • Wait, what's that? They also announced a new developer and that there's going to be more entries in the series that aren't first person shooters? RRRRAAAAARRRGH!!!
    • Bungie signed a decade-long publishing deal with them? Well, there goes all the Creator Worship from Halo fans.
    • You could save a lot of time here by just saying "Activision has done something? UUUAAAAARRARARRR!" Their attitude of pure evil has led to them ruining a lot of things in gamers' eyes.
• Command & Conquer has seen this in spades recently.
  • Command & Conquer: Generals: Wasn't made by Westwood and doesn't take place in the Kane continuity. Arguably an example of Jumping the Shark.
  • Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars: the composition and properties of Tiberium itself were totally retconned and the entire Tiberium-based ecosystem that had emerged in Tiberian Sun was nowhere to be seen. Arguably an example of Jumping the Shark.
  • Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3: "Tanya is blonde? RUINED FOREVER!" Ignore the flying saucers and mind-controlled squid from Red Alert 2.
  • Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight... really was inexcusably horrible.
  • The worst part about all this is that every time a new game comes out, people look at whatever new innovations are included and bitch about them, occasionally even bringing back old examples (like Generals' builders, holy hell that's seen mileage thanks to CnC4) to talk about how it's done right.
  • And now there's the argument about the new C&C being a Free to Play game, with many fans going as far as calling it "Pay 2 Win" with very little information about the game to go on. Then again, it's EA, so they have some precedent for expecting this.
  • And again after EA announced that Generals 2 would have no single-player component.
• The X-Com series was a Strategy game series with RPG Elements set in modern times and the future. The reboot, as announced by 2K, will be an FPS with set in the 60s—with appropriate cultural attitudes—and is an Action RPG more akin to Mass Effect. Both games feature government agencies which fight alien invasions by reverse-engineering their technology. Fans of the original series were quick to declare it an In Name Only cash-in...on a series that hasn't had a new entry since 1998, despite both games sharing the same fundamental premise. Not to mention the fact that this game will increase interest in the older games.
  There may be some bad memories of X-COM: Enforcer, but the knee-jerk complaints are drowning out legitimate criticism with incessant whining.
• Gears of War 3 is being written by Karen Traviss?! RAAAAAAAAAGEEEEE!!!
• No mention of Chrono Cross? Before and after it was released, most Trigger fans have been screaming that the Chrono series is ruined, because Chrono Cross has things like different main characters, different art style, the amount of party members that you can have... basically, everything. The only thing most Trigger fans will admit to is that it does have fantastic music, but some even refuse to admit that much.
• "Marvel vs. Capcom 3 will adopt Tatsunoko vs. Capcom's controls scheme? The game is screwed! TvC is dumb! [and/or] They're gonna dumb things down for scrubs, and we cannot allow this!"
  • What? No Phoenix Wright? Don't they realize how popular he is? ...Fine, maybe he'll be available via DLC^note He was added as a character in UMvC3 though—What? X isn't in the game either, despite how much he's been requested? Fuck this game...
  • No Gene? No Daredevil? No Tyrant or Nemesis? No Fantastic Four ^note whose role is being filled by the inclusion of Super Skrull? No characters from Breath of Fire, Power Stone, Rival Schools, Sengoku Basara, or Monster Hunter? No Venom? There's a separate button for launchers?! Fucking hell, Capcom!
  • Where. Is. The Punisher?
  • And now the confirmation that Strider Hiryu would not be on the roster has upset plenty of people. The justification for his absence doesn't help:
  "Strider Hiryu is popular overseas as well, we took him out of Marvel vs. Capcom 3, because he didn't fit in with its concept."
  • And then, it turns out that "there's no character that really doesn't fit" the concept of the game. Apparently, they just don't want Hiryu back. Cue fan rage and lots of people calling out Capcom on their hypocritical bullshit.
  • Upon the reveal of X-23 being added to the roster, many cried over a spot wasted on Wolverine's Opposite-Sex Clone, despite her moveset being different from Wolverine's.
  • Hoo boy, these guys have been preparing for this one for a while. They have a friggin' bingo chart of grievances for a game that Capcom has been slaving away for TEN YEARS with licensing disputes to get into their hands. Those ungrateful bastards...
  • You thought X-23's welcome was less than pleasant? Enter M.O.D.O.K. Since his reveal, gamers have been raging about his "goofy" appearance and unconventional playstyle. It seems that most of the complaints come from people totally unfamiliar with his character at all.
  • And now, like X-23 above, She-Hulk's addition to the roster is getting this reaction for the exact same reason (declaring her a Hulk clone). Unlike X-23, She-Hulk was never a clone in the first place.
  • And it turns out that Ghost Rider, Iron Fist, and Black Panther were excluded because they were "punchy dudes". Hence, forums the net over explode with fury, claiming that Seth Killian has no clue as to what the hell he's talking about in regards to the abilities of certain individuals, asking how other characters got the pass with this reasoning, and giving the community a new meme: "Too punchy."
  • The reveal of Akuma is yet another splinter in the Broken Base. One side believes him to be nothing more than a Shotoclone wasting space on the roster and preventing a legitimate SF villain (most are quick to say Bison or Juri), while others claim that Akuma is the reason the Vs. series even got off the ground and is a cool guy who makes Ryu look obsolete.
    • Read this tidbit from the aforementioned interview and then apply it to Akuma above.
  "We didn't want you to be able to say, 'this guy is just another one of this guy but a little faster or with a different fireball'."
  • Here's some more fuel for the fire: three of the Four Gods (Magneto, Storm, and Sentinel) are back. Unlike Magneto and Storm, who are popular and have managed to avoid most of the scorn, Sentinel is being bashed into the ground because 1) his inclusion reeks of being added in by Niitsuma for no other reason than because of his OP status in the previous game, and 2) it's freaking Sentinel and he's so generic that if it wasn't for MvC2, none of his fans would have even given a crap about him in the first place.
  • Some of this has been remedied by the announcement of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Ghost Rider and Strider Hiryu are among the first reveals and leaks indicate that Phoenix Wright and Nemesis will be joining the fray as well. However, the fact that this title was announced little over five months after the release of vanilla MvC3, coupled with some boneheaded decisions by Capcom (namely regarding Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D and the cancellation of Mega Man Legends 3), is causing yet another point of contention among the fans.
    • Unfortunately however, some simply do not comprehend the distinction between announcement and public release date.
    • However, there are many who feel that if Capcom was going to come out with an Updated Re-release a mere eight months after vanilla MvC3, they should have just waited and released a more complete game from the beginning (no matter how much time it would've taken) instead of trying to make a quick buck off of Ultimate. It doesn't help that, according to Niitsuma, 8 additional characters were cut from the game in order to get it out on time to capitalize on the holiday rush... a tactic which ended up backfiring (due to the aforementioned window between releases, as well as the negative rep Capcom had slowly been building up in the meanwhile), as Ultimate only ended up moving 600K copies in three months as opposed to vanilla selling over 2 million in that same amount of time.
  • The DLC costumes get "leaked"/revealed according to screencaps from the game's official strategy guide. While many people are happy with retro outfits or whole character swaps like Yellow Iris or Jean Grey, the one being singled out causing the most controversy is Zero's, who is none other than... X. After months of incessant, near tumor-inducing whining, he's finally in here. You'd think the whining would have quelled by now. It didn't.
    • It's also amusing that these same people won't feel like they're actually playing as X, ignoring the instances of X actually ended up playing just like Zero near the end of half of his games, right down to the very weapons themselves.
    • It's important to remember though that although X and Zero had very similar abilities up to X4, in X4 and beyond Zero's gameplay style was completely revamped in order to make him more distinct from X (which is even accurately reflected on how Zero plays in both TvC and MvC3). Despite this, some people still incorrectly believe that they're interchangeable ability wise.
• Sengoku Basara 3 has been receiving this within each new information revealed, mostly due to the large number of NPC characters (especially those who are new characters) compared to playable characters (due to the "one character per clan" rule), including regulating fan favorite characters (like Sasuke and Kojuurou) to NPC status.
• The Dragon Age series has been in a constant state of ruination for its creator Bioware since the beginning.
  • Dragon Age: Origins was going to ruin the great legacy of the Baldur's Gate franchise because it was not a continuation of its predecessor and was not based on mechanics from Dungeons & Dragons.
    • After Origins proved successful, its contentious expansion, Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening, ruined the franchise due to its bugs and lack of returning party members. A somewhat inconclusive Witch Hunt DLC ended up ruining the series even more.
    • All future games in the series also pre-emptively ruined the franchise due to the fact that they didn't star the potentially dead Warden.
  • Dragon Age II very nearly was a Franchise Killer due to its Cut and Paste Environments, a human-only protagonist, all bisexual love interests and overly dark plot. This is when the cries of Ruined FOREVER were strongest, despite the fact that many fans still enjoyed the game and its two pieces of Downloadable Content.
    • Prior to its release, the franchise was going to be further ruined by the release of an anime movie Dawn of the Seeker. It proved to be So Okay, It's Average, but not a Franchise Killer.
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition had the unenviable task of un-ruining the series after Dragon Age II, but it was inevitably going to fail due to the inclusion of multiplayer and the devs taking inspiration from Skyrim. Despite these ruinous elements, Bioware enjoyed its biggest sales ever and Inquisition won numerous Game of the Year awards. However, the combat, overly large sandbox areas, and the over-abundance of side quests still managed to ruin the series forever.
    • And with Bioware indicating that the fourth game will not star the same protagonist as the third game, the series is now even more ruined for fans who wanted the Inquisitor to return.
• When screenshots of Deathsmiles localized dialogue were released, the Narminess actually caused some fans to cancel their preorders. Never mind that it's a shmup and the between-stage dialogue has no bearing on gameplay.
• Both the Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360/Playstation 3 fans are like this to the most recent NBA Jam game. For the Wii fanboys, they not only did it lose exclusivity, but it would have a Campaign mode, but no online play, while the Xbox 360/Playstation 3 would not only have to buy NBA Elite 11, but they also would have online play, but no Campaign mode. MAKE UP YOUR FREAKING MINDS ALREADY, EA!! Do you want the Wii to have everything around, or do you want the Xbox 360/Playstation 3 to have the stuff?
  • Now Elite 11's been delayed and NBA Jam for Playstation 3/Xbox 360 is now a standalone downloadable title. The fandom appears to have rejoiced about not being able to buy Elite 11 just to get NBA Jam. Also Playstation 3/Xbox 360 version has now became a full title (Wii version plus Online). Cue "Ruined FOREVER!" for Wii owners.
• The trailer for the new DmC: Devil May Cry game, which is set to reboot the series, and particularly the character design for the new Dante, already has much of the fanbase declaring that the series has been Ruined FOREVER.
  • Considering that, for a time, the game was touted as a prequel despite blatantly contradicting previous canon at every single turn, as well as a lack of faith in Ninja Theory's ability to properly carry the burden of such a prestigious series given their previous efforts (comments from both Capcom and Ninja Theory writing off skeptics as loony fanatics didn't help in either case), probably not. While there are (very, very few) fans hung up only on Dante's hair, there are also fans who have more legitimate concerns about the direction the series is heading in.
• Any rejoicing for Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor's unveiling turned to this shortly after seeing squat VTs that looked less like giant robots and more like tanks on legs, a world with no more new microprocessors, and most of all, the touting of Kinect support. That's right-this game went from requiring an expensive peripheral loaded with buttons and switches to an expensive peripheral with NO buttons. This YouTube response to the trailer sums it up.
• Call of Duty: Black Ops seems to be getting this after the latest reveal that Quick-Scoping with Sleight of Hand is going to be gimped for sniper rifles, meaning that people can't tap Aim followed by Shoot and get a relatively easy kill while jumping in the air and spinning around. Although people who hated this tactic are rejoicing. Obviously.
• Tim Schafer accuses would be "fans" and reviewers of spewing "Ruined FOREVER!" over Brütal Legend being a multiplayer focused Action/RTS and not a single player platformer, while those who actually tried the multiplayer saw it for what it was and enjoyed it the most, and that reviews not only reflect it, but remain high regardless.
  Tim Schafer:: When we showed the game to EA, they were interested but wanted to test the concept. In focus tests, the stage battles rated high. What's interesting is the people in those groups aren't told anything about the game and have no expectations for it. One of the things you notice looking at Metacritic ratings is that the highest scores come from those who really enjoyed the stage battles, and when you get down to the critics who didn't like the stage battles those reviews often center around their expectations about what we were going to make, instead of looking at the stage battles for what they are in a fresh way.
• The characters in the new GoldenEye (Wii) speak? Some fans ain't happy about that.
  • Daniel Craig is James Bond in the game's remake? Ruined FOREVER!
  • It's ported to XBOX. Nintendo is the only system it should belong to!
• Dos-gamers who used to play Gobliiins trilogy seems to be enraged by the fact that the recent new sequel was created in 3D.
• While two main BioWare series have been mentioned, the company itself gets this for pretty well every move they make. The fact that people like BioWare despite all the changes have had some of the more extreme fans claim that they are ROONIN MAH GAMES for pandering to the console kiddies and dumbing down their RPGs into "mindless shooters" or "mindless hack-and-slash." Then they buy the games anyway.
  • Next time you see a video critical of said either game make up your own bingo cards on the issues that will be attacked. Your options include women, race, gender, orientation, game is not dark enough, game is too dark, you cannot be evil enough, lackluster characters, ugly characters, game is not difficult enough to play, changes to make it more accessible, not enough of a Dungeon Crawler, too much of a Wide-Open Sandbox, too little story, too much story, too little to do, too much to do, there is a transgender in the game, there is a story about a gay character trying to be forced straight by his father through blood magic, or maybe just the fact that romances are either too easy to fall into or it's something that you really have to work at the entire game for something they hate anyway. They hate every second of the hours playing the game. Every second of the all night Youtube wars they engage in on how bad the game is. Logic???
• The Idolmaster
  • The iDOLM@STER 2: Bishounen? In my girl idol sim game? FFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU—
  • THE iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls: Bandai Namco skipped a lot of unvoiced idol in favor of new ones?

They must be Creator’s Pets! What do you mean they maybe were trying for something different and failed? Idolmaster Cinderella Girls Starlight Stage is RUINED FOREVER!!

• When the first teaser trailer for Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe was released, fans went ballistic about how DC was forcing Midway to remove fatalities and pretty much strip away everything that makes Mortal Kombat what it is. A few months later, Ed Boon did an interview to provide more details; and he thought it was hilarious how much hard fact was being attached to something that basically just said "We're making DC vs Mortal Kombat." They hadn't even talked about what kind of restrictions DC wanted on their characters at that time.
  • When Freddy announced as a guestfighter as DLC for Mortal Kombat 9 fans complained that he didn't fit in. Never mind the fact that as mentioned above in TMNT Smash Up you don't have to play as him and in Guitar Hero section you don't have to buy him
• When Telltale Games first showed the art direction and later the gameplay style (which is fairly similar to their Tales of Monkey Island game) for Back to the Future: The Game, a sizable portion of the movie's fanbase loudly cried out that the game was Ruined FOREVER because the art direction wasn't realistic, that the gameplay wasn't exactly like Grand Theft Auto and/or because none of the original movie cast aside from Christopher Lloyd (and now also Claudia Wells) would be returning to do voice work (never mind that some of the people clearly forgot that Michael J Fox has retired from acting due to his health). Some even went so far as to say the game was also ruined because the interior of the De Lorean didn't match up to the letter with the ones shown in the movies. Great Scott!
• It happens in the Touhou Project fandom as well:
  • Mountain of Faith: No grazing? FORGET YOU ZUN
  • Undefined Fantastic Object: No Sakuya, but Sanae? TOUHOU IS RUINED FOREVARR
  • What? New characters? ZUN MUST BE RUNNING OUT OF IDEAS.
• For The Legend of Zelda, let's see...Spaceworld demo shows the Gamecube graphics rendering a dark fight between Link and Ganondorf from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, later there's an announcement trailer for the next game... backlash ensued because of the abrupt art style change. And then people played the game...and all was forgiven. Well, at least the art-style; the sailing is a whole different story.
  • Zelda tends to get this a lot. The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks got flack for having trains, which apparently is sending the series into too futuristic territories, and that by developing a new game for the DS, they weren't paying attention at all to the Wii one, which is what we deserve.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, despite having an initial piece of art-work that looked darker and grittier than The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is also cel-shaded? Here We Go Again!... Oh, and the problems with the game during Miyamoto's E3 presentation were CLEARLY not, despite his insistance, due to the interference of hundreds of wireless devices being in one room, but because they were preparing a horribly messed up project that wouldn't work because Nintendo is lazy! Oh...later playthroughs in the booths show that the tech does work...well, we'll find some new flaw soon!
  • Don't forget that Skyward Sword also breaks from the series tradition of Link being left-handed, making him a righty by default, with no option to select left-handedness, despite the fact that it should have been extremely simple to add such a feature (as well as considerate to left-handed users of the wiimote). NERD RAGE!
  • The Zelda Timeline, hoo-boy. When it was revealed in the Hyrule Historia, let's just say that fans went nuts over that thing.
• Hats in Portal 2? Well, let's just quote one comment:
  FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU TF2 TEAM, YOU RUINED TF2 WITH THE HATS AND NOW YOUR NUINING PORTAL 2 WITH THEM! I HOPE YOU FEEL HAPPY ABOUT YOURSELVES!
  • Lampshaded on the official Valve site; when it was announced, the post was written as the TF2 guys wanting to add extra multiplayer content, the Portal guys saying "you'll just put a bunch of hats in it," and the TF2 guys breaking in at night and doing just that out of spite. Your move, fanbase.
  • Killing Floor was hit with a similar argument once - at least one fan was under the impression that the game was on the verge of being ruined simply because one of the new weapons for the 2011 Christmas update, a claymore sword, vaguely resembled Team Fortress 2's Eyelander.
• SmackDown vs. Raw gets hit with this EVERY YEAR. Just about anything that gets changed is met with backlash. Yet, of course, the games still do well in sales every year.
  • 2K15 however may well change that. Current and next gen versions are basically missing half the game, with many features removed, and not only have a lot of fans become rather upset over this choosing to stay with better regarded older versions but retailers and stores were quick to realize just how bad the game is and those after refunds for not getting what was promised have struggled to get their money back.
• SOCOM 4 got hit pretty hard with this trope by fans of the earlier games (notably SOCOM 2 fanboys). This covers their collected feelings perfectly. Zipper laying off 33 employees about a month after SOCOM 4's release only exacerbated their feelings, and they're far from sympathetic about it.
• Minecraft has been achieving this trope to a degree that would shock even Blizzard, and has been doing so pretty much ever since it existed, from "A survival mode is being added? RUINED FOREVER!" to (insert most recent patch here).
  • It was also this simply because it was ported to the Xbox 360 while the game had been a PC exclusive before. That's right, it's ruined because more people get to play the game.
  • Someone on the MC forums made a thread titled "Mojang's long history of killing Minecraft", detailing a list of things that have ruined Minecraft forever (all but one reason being finished with "Mojang goes bankrupt"). The third item on the list reads "Minecraft is released to the public (AKA n00bs and posers) for the first time ever. Everybody quits playing Minecraft so they won't be mistaken for a n00b or poser; Mojang goes bankrupt."
  • MICROSOFT BOUGHT MINECRAFT? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Mojang are sellouts and Microsoft will possibly change things!
  • This also applies to Minecraft mods - any change a popular modder does with their mod will be met with claims of it being ruined forever. Extra Utilities getting a tech tree? Better than Wolves implementing hardcore changes? Ruined Forever®. It's common even in aesthetic mods as Chisel (don't mention chisel durability...)
• The fact that there will be no decapitations in Ninja Gaiden 3, only one ninpo and one type of weapon, no shops or upgrades, no healing items, stealth kill mechanics, QTEs, humanized enemies and apparently a toned down difficulty (for Normal mode at least) is enough for some hardcore fans to have this reaction. Note that it will still be a brutal game, that the stealth kills are optional, the QTEs rare and minor, and that from the point of view of newcomers it's still pretty difficult; but some seem to think that these changes retroactively ruin the previous episodes.
  • This was also previously the case with the PS3 port Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 that had NG2's dismemberments but with much less blood and dramatically reduced the number of enemies compared to the Xbox 360 title, making it generally easier on lower difficulties (though one might argue what kind of difficulty was mostly reduced). Needless to say, even those who hadn't really played Sigma 2 quickly started to declare it was for wusses and that Itagaki's games were the only true worthy ones for hardcore gamers. Hell when you look at some comments, the mere fact that Tomonobu Itagaki is no more in charge of the series seems enough to make it Ruined FOREVER.
• The cancellation of Mega Man Legends 3 has not been doing Capcom any favors of late, especially considering the amount of hype raised for the project, a sequel to a Cult Classic Mega Man sub-series over a DECADE in the making. Capcom's unceremonious canning of the title makes many suspicious of the act being a cheap-shot done in response to Keiji Inafune's resignation from from Capcom. The rage-fueled flames don't look like they'll be subsiding any time soon.
• Rayman: Raving Rabbids ended up becoming a mini-game collection instead of a platformer, and fans were not happy. Then pretty soon, the Raving Rabbids games started focusing way too much on the Rabbids and barely any Rayman, and then went to the point where they kicked him from the series all together so it was ONLY the Rabbids. Fans were even angrier at Ubisoft. So finally, after all the requests to bring Rayman back, Ubisoft announced Rayman Origins, a game showing Rayman's origins, how he came to be, and how he evolves from an uncivilized, immature idiot to the gaming hero he is today, so you'd think the fandom would rejoice, but..."WHAT!?!!!! RAYMAN USED HIS HELICOPTER HAIR TO LOOK UP BETILLA'S DRESS!!! WHY DID YOU MAKE RAYMAN INTO A PERVERT, UBISOFT??? YOU GOOFED UP REAL AND PROPER!!!!" And then "NOOOOOOOO! YOU MADE RAYMAN AND GLOBOX INTO COMPLETE IDIOTS WHO SLAP EACH OTHER WHEN THEY FIRST MEET!!!! SCREW YOU UBISOFT!!!! SCREW YOU ALL!!!!"
• Syndicate is finally getting a game after talks of a new game being in the works. This trailer makes it out to be a first person shooter in the vein of Call of Duty, unlike the other games which were RTS-based. Cue the rage and ire of older fans calling the sequel In Name Only.
  • Then again, given it takes place in 2069, there may be some justification. Oh, and the music in the trailer is pretty badass, even using a sample of a theme from the first Syndicate game.
• Whenever a patch is released for League of Legends, any amount of change, regardless of how insignificant in nature it is, will be met with immediate crys of "RUINED FOREVER!!!!!! OMG ROIT, HO DARES YOU!!!!!!" on the forum, from what is potentially the most childish community in all of video gaming.
• Halo's been no stranger to Ruined FOREVER cries, so much that one fan annoyed with the fanbase wrote up a Halo version of the Transformers wiki's Ruined FOREVER page.
  • Halo: Reach changed the events of the Fall of Reach to take place over one month rather than one day. Because this altered the previous canon, there were many fans who were not pleased, some even making their own website about how Reach didn't deserve to be canon. Luckily the site's webmaster later had a change of heart, and admitted that Bungie had the right to alter their own canon and how sometimes that could turn out better.
• The Warhammer40000 MMORPG Dark Millennium: Online got hit with this with every single piece of information - confirmed or rumor - to come out about it since its ANNOUNCEMENT being decried as HERESY! The factions will be aligned "Order vs. Destruction" instead of a 4/6/8 way brawl? HERESY! The Imperium will be one faction rather than splitting into Space Marines, Guardsmen and Mechanicus? HERESEY!! Any given race will or won't be involved and/or will or won't be playable? The game will feature real-time point and shoot firing and reloads instead of (or alongside) clickable actions? You won't be able to have dedicated vehicle classes? You can have vehicles at ALL besides Titans!? YOU CAN'T DIRECTLY CONTROL TITANS?!? BURN THE HERETICS!!! Then THQ announced that, due to financial concerns and the current state of the marketplace, Dark Millennium won't be an MMO, but instead a "rich, detailed single player game with in-depth multiplayer experience", because they've devoted too much time and effort to make the game as epic and astounding as the setting deserves to just let it die completely. The only reason there hasn't been an Exterminatus called is because the fans can't decide whether THQ is more guilty of "dumbing down what could have been" or "planning this from the start and just teasing us with an MMO".
• The sour grapes directed towards the announcement that Bayonetta 2 would be a Wii U exclusive are a spectacle to behold. Many individuals claimed that Nintendo/Platinum had literally ruined Bayonetta forever by preventing it from being on their Microsoft or Sony based system of choice.
  • At Nintendo's E3, the first Bayonetta was announced to be ported to Wii U and packaged with retail copies of Bayonetta 2. When it was shown that this port would include Nintendo costumes...well, let's just say that the Sony fanboys were NOT happy, and leave it at that.
• Rockman Xover was only recently announced. Capcom hoped people would see "New Mega Man Game." Instead, the fans only see "Social RPG on iOS", despite Mega Man having several different genres in the past, like card RPG, board game, and FMV game.
  • The biggest problem here is that, after what has been a very trying time for Mega Man fans (the worst of it all being the one-two cancellation punch of Mega Man Universe and Mega Man Legends 3; the very likely No Export for You Rockman Online seems to be sharing their fate), the idea of the 25th anniversary celebration for Capcom's mascot being a social RPG doesn't seem like a good idea, if not an outright slap to the face to the franchise given that Mega Man 2 was more or less the game that put Capcom on the map. The situation will undoubtedly worsen if this game turns out to bethe "surprise" Capcom was telling Mega Man fans to wait for. Allegedly, even the Japanese fanbase has not taken lightly to the game. It doesn't help that the game is modeled after the terrible iOS port of Mega Man X. And although the series has been known to branch out into other genres frequently in the past, there has been a severe drought of "regular" Mega Man games to supplement this, unlike back then. When the only rays of hope for a disillusioned fanbase aside of widely-anticipated fan games (such as Mega Man X: Corrupted) are X's appearance in Project × Zone and a stellar line of comics from Archie, you know something is inherently wrong with how a series is being treated by the higher-ups. That being said, with such limited information available at the moment, only time will tell how the finished product will pan out, quality-wise.
  • And speak of the devil...
• While MechWarrior: Online was still in beta, every week or so with a new patch coming out, fixing bugs, correcting previous adjustments, nerfing this, buffing that... every last one to a massive cry of "it's ruined FOREVER!!" Add in the tabletop purists for whom every deviation from the original rules is anathema...
• So the Humble Indie Bundle is having their Oddball in the Series, a Humble THQ Bundle. Very◊ quickly◊, indie game developers with their "us vs. them" mentalities are arleady screaming "THEY HAVE SOLD DEIR SOULS TO DA BIG EVULZ CORPORATION GUYS™! BETRAYAL!!!!!"
• Hey, a new Super Robot Wars game was leaked! Let's see.... WHAT?! SD Gundam Sangokuden is on Super Robot Wars? Hatsune Miku is here too? RUINED FOREVER!!!
  • Three more reasons why modern Nintendo handheld Super Robot Wars games make the series RUINED FOREVER (UX included): Gundam SEED Destiny being the main representative of the Real Robot instead of the original UC quadrilogy and spinoffs, lacking of Getter Robo, and the series becoming too easy.
• Dead Space series after Dead Space 2 came out. "It's not horror anymore!", "Isaac shouldn't talk!", "It's not Dead Space anymore!" and other complaints.
  • The backlash was nothing compared to the outcry against Dead Space 3. "Co-op doesn't belong in Dead Space!" "It's being dumbed down into a typical action game!" Admittedly, starting the game off by having you fight terrorists with guns & grenades did not make a good first impression on these people.
• Oh hey, a Fantasia game. You were probably expecting classical music, the kind of music that defined Fantasia. TOO BAD! Bruno Mars time! (Now with Dubstep.)
• Quite a few Dead Rising fans had this reaction to the E3 reveal of Dead Rising 3, upset at the absence of the wacky tone that characterized the first two games, as well as the subdued, brown color palette. The pessimism wasn't helped by the devs admitting that they're moving in a more serious direction, and going after the Call of Duty player base.
• Ace Attorney
  • After the fandom came about with the DS re-releases of the first three games featuring Phoenix Wright, there was a lot of backlash when the fourth title was announced to feature a new rookie lawyer that hadn't appeared in the previous games. And when people found out that in it Phoenix had been disbarred from court...
  • In fact, some Ace Attorney fans despise Apollo so much that they won't play Dual Destinies for any reason other than "that little shit Apollo is in it. I hate him and I won't play it."
  • Then there was the Spin-Off series featuring Phoenix's Friendly Enemy Miles Edgeworth. The problem came with a change in game mechanics, where the first-person visual novel style during investigations were removed in favor of third-person sprites in an overworld. Many fans were uncomfortable as they felt it wouldn't have the same feel as the original Ace Attorney games. Others simply bitched about it.
  • The cancellations of Investigations 2 outside of Japan certainly has something to do with it. Capcom's initial claim was that it would be too expensive, followed by a backtrack saying they just didn't think it would sell. Granted, Ace Attorney, despite what the Internet might have you think, is actually fairly obscure outside of Japan. This didn't stop anyone for saying that without it, the rest of the series would make no sense.
• When the still-unreleased Layton 7 smartphone game was announced in 2013, Professor Layton fans gave it a considerable amount of backlash. Common complaints were that it didn't even include the professor despite having his name in the title, and that it barely resembled a Layton game in both the visual and gameplay departments. Some fans even claimed that the series was dead or going to be killed because of it. All in all, RUINED FOREVER.^note Layton 7 did receive a redesign in 2015, completely changing the art style and actually adding in Professor Layton. This still didn't please everyone, though.
• Star Trek Online, just like the City of Heroes example above, suffers from the DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM bug (mostly because they're both made by Cryptic Studios). In this case, due to the fact that this is also a beloved franchise, the DOOM factor is really kicked up here. This includes the lack of love towards Galaxy-class ships, the long grinding Reputation Systems and, most recently, adding in dinosaurs. Dinosaurs with frickin' lasers on their heads.
  • Things really kicked into high gear with the reveal of the Arc browser and the fact that PWE wants to make it mandatory to play all of their games. Many players have donned their tin-foil hats and are attempting to scare players with the tales of how it's spyware, malware, a torrent device and a resource hog and that it is the end of all PWE games.
• "Female soldiers? In my serious war game of quick scoping and twitch shooting? Noooooo..."
• On Jimquisition, Jim Sterling moans about the Ruined FOREVER! cries from Sonic fans who say "we're not buying Sonic 4 because the physics isn't proper!" in his "Boycott" episode, along with boycott Diablo III because it's too colourful, and not because of horrible DRM, and boycott Fallout 3 because it's not like the first one. In fact They Changed It, Now It Sucks! seems to be the attitude of some of the people who scream boycott, at least according to Jim Sterling.
• When Activision acquired the rights to the Spyro the Dragon characters and came out with Skylanders featuring some of the Spyro characters in it, some of the Spyro fans were prone to saying this. And then again when they removed Spyro's name from the title.
• Super Smash Bros.: "They cut out Roy and Mewtwo in Brawl?!" "They went ahead and put fucking Wii Fit Trainer in over the likes of Ridley, King K. Rool or Takamaru!?!?!?" "Enjoy your failing consoles Nintendo, this looks like it's just going to be Brawl in HD, but with Mega Man." As you can see, Smash speculation is rife with character requests and whether they're going to be included or not. But it doesn't just apply there, some people cried foul over the emphasis on casual gameplay in Brawl over Melee, which was highly regarded by competitive players for its fast-paced nature and use of combos. And oh, the flame wars that started over the the inclusion of Pac-Man in the fourth entry...
  • As for Mewtwo being cut from SSB4 while Lucario returned, some fans DID NOT take it well◊.
    • And later, when a new trailer was released, it looked like maybe, just maybe, Mewtwo would be coming back! Except not. It's Greninja. Fans were even more pissed.
    • And now Mewtwo IS coming back... As DLC for people who get both versions in a limited timeframe? FUCK YOU, NINTENDO!
    • Ignoring the fact that you could just spend $4 to get Mewtwo on the version of Smash Bros you own, and we could of avoid this cry of hate if Nintendo just said that out front.
  • Some complaints make even less sense. "Pokémon still say their names? Fuck you Sakurai for trying to make everyone watch lame kiddy baby Pokémon show when it's clearly for lame kiddy babies and Smash is for mature people! Preorder fucking cancelled."
  • Pretty much every newcomer (except maybe Little Mac) for SSB4 has gotten this reaction.
  • Sakurai put in the fucking Duck Hunt Dog?
  • Dr. Mario and Dark Pit are their own characters instead of alternate skins? CHARACTER SLOT WASTED! Forget about the development effort that goes into making a brand new character versus a clone character; everyone knows that all the real work goes into making room for them on the character select screen.
    • Especially jarring since the Koopalings are alternate skins for Bowser Jr.! Why Sakurai, why would you give us more clones instead of Mewtwo/Sceptile/Ridley/K. Rool/Lucas/Snake/etc.?
  • While the game was still in development, fans were furious about certain characters not returning. Most of these characters ended up being revealed as playable characters anyway, only for the fans to stop caring, because they had new complaints to make that were already resolved.
  • Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: They added yet another Fire Emblem character?!!^*Byleth from Fire Emblem: Three Houses REEEEEE SAKURAI IS BIASED!!!!!!!!11111111
  • Ridley, King K. Rool and Banjo were mostly accepted with open arms. However, almost every other newcomer, including Sora, were met with as much ire as they were with rejoice. Many fans who think this is the last Smash game have seen their hopes and dreams crushed, thus dubbing the game as this. That, plus many existing characters still lack a lot of potential.
• A sequel to Plants vs. Zombies? WAHOO- wait, it's being published by Electronic Arts? Free-to-Play? There's DLC and Freemium content?! NOOOOOOOOO! IT'S RUINED FOREVAH!!!!!!!!111
• Might and Magic X: Legacy is a game with a serious Broken Base. Many fans accused Ubisoft of blasphemy (and in some cases, being con artists who would abort production after getting as much as they could from the beta testers, as the company that marketed games like Assassin's Creed would risk their reputation that way) simply because they hated the turn-based combat and grid system of movement, forgetting that this was the whole point of their "back to basics" approach to the game.
• When it was announced that Nancy Drew's voice actor, Lani Minella, had been fired, the fandom started screaming this.
• A new Town Hall 11 update in Clash of Clans, yay! Removal of Town Hall sniping and the new Personal Break Timer? COC OFFICIALLY RUINED FOREVER!!!
• Drawn to Life's sequel game was this to some people, due to the Downer Ending of the reveal that both of the parents were dead and the protagonist was in a coma. There was enough backlash the ending was changed in a rerelease.
• Paper Mario: Sticker Star already got a lot of criticism for leaving behind the the series' RPG roots in favor of a Metroidvania action-adventure, being centered around a gameplay mechanic that could easily become impractical, and limiting the supporting cast to little more than hundreds of Toads when previous installments had far more than just them. The fans hoped Nintendo would listen to the criticism and go back to what had worked before...and then the first trailer for Paper Mario: Color Splash dropped (which seemed to have changed nothing, right down to the over-abundance of Toads) and the backlash escalated to incredible heights within seconds. The backlash was so huge that not even This Very Wiki could avoid it; Color Splash's YMMV page was blacklisted mere days after the game's announcement and wasn't re-added until months afterward because of how nasty the fandom's reaction was.
  • Not helping matters for the fandom was when Nintendo announced that they were interested in continuing in this direction with the Paper Mario series (as could be seen with Color Splash) while making the Mario & Luigi series the franchise's central RPG series. (The reason given was because they felt that the franchise having two separate RPG series was impractical, so they chose Mario & Luigi to be the franchise's de-facto RPG series while taking the Paper Mario series in its own direction.) You could just hear the Paper Mario fandom collectively frothing at the mouth with this news.
  • Once players did get their hands on the game however, the general consensus wound up being that it was much better than Sticker Star but still not as good as either of the first three games. Others still find that the ''Sticker Star'' leftovers still put a damper on the game, however, and are still crying this trope's name.
• Agent 47's attire in Hitman (2016) doesn't have gloves?! Ruined Fo... What do you mean you don't care? So you want 47 to have a full head of hair and turn into James Bond? Obviously, just like Contracts's darkness, Blood Money's silliness and Absolution's linearity, this game will permanently change the series to the chosen theme of this particular game and ruin it.
• Refusing to fix bugs in a game can lead to this as it has with the WWE Video Games series. After years of it crashing and the crash causing all data on the system to corrupt fans have gone, "Fuck the system the game destroyed. Fuck 2K games. Fuck the WWE."
• Arthur's Nightmare has an In-Universe version. The game opens with a fan of Arthur complaining about its switch to Flash animation in its later years, specifically saying that it ruined the show. Given that said fan is all but stated to have to endure a Nightmare Sequence where Arthur himself tries to kill him, one can only wonder what the author was trying to imply.
• It only took the appearance of the game's logo and Solas in the teaser for the fourth Dragon Age game and a Tweet on diversity for some to get so triggered at it being "woke" that they see it as their duty to ensure the entire series fails. The sudden realization that there was diversity of race and gender and sex and religion came as a horrifying revelation, but it took three games for them to be actually crying about the quote unquote "politics" that is fantasy Italy, Britain and France.
• Fallout 76 had been causing fans to be kicking and screaming on the ground and punching themselves in the head as hard as they can for a while now, but something that happened in 2019 (being released in 2018) has not only put some of them on well justified suicide watch but caused retailers to be unable to sell the game no matter how cheap they make it. You see, a bug had caused the core game mechanic of using nukes to stop working, causing some fans to cause themselves brain damage over how badly they self harm over such a massive oversight.
• "Cool, there's a sequel to Super Meat Boy in development called Super Meat Boy Forever! Wait, what? It's a two-button auto-runner? ^note Think Endless Running Game without the "Endless". I can't believe we dedicated fans have been thrusted aside to appeal to casual gamers! (It's still just as hard as the previous Meat Boy games, but clearly game designers shouldn't be allowed to broaden our horizons like that.) It's not developed by Edmund McMillen ^note who was only half of the design team for Super Meat Boy, and did none of the programming either? Well that explains it, it must be a shoddy attempt by people who barely contributed to the game to cash in on the franchise. I'm awfully disappointed that Edmund would leave us behind like that, but I guess that's just how business goes. You can't trust any companies nowadays."
  • Throw in the game becoming exclusive to the Epic Games Store, which is plagued by conspiracy theorists claiming it's a disguised data harvester operated entirely by Tencent and, by extension, the Chinese government, and you have warehouses of Snark Bait from self-acclaimed freedom fighters to sort through.
  • There was an earlier controversy when the Playstation 4 port of Super Meat Boy had a different soundtrack due to the creator of the original soundtrack denying his soundtrack from being used in any new ports of or followups to Super Meat Boy. Of note, the songs for the Forest were upbeat and rednecky to better match the mood of the world, whereas the Forest songs in the old soundtrack were a lot more mellow. Sure, some amount of controversy can be expected due to how radically different the new soundtrack's approach for the very first world was, but this led to particularly loud fans complaining under the assumption that the entire 2015 soundtrack was country-themed, and some especially clueless detesters claiming it was flat-out illegal for Team Meat not to include the 2010 soundtrack. With Super Meat Boy Forever on the horizon, this issue sadly becomes relevant again, due to the first chapter having similarly twangy music made by the same duo responsible for most of the 2015 soundtrack.
• Etrian Odyssey IV added a Casual difficulty mode? RUINED!
• Battlefield 2042: Ever since the disaster of Battlefield V, DICE decided to go back on track on making a modern shooter. Sounds good, right? NO! They, out of all reasons, decided to add Specialist class instead of generic class system! Good job! Now it feels more like a Hero Shooter than what made the previous Battlefield game special! The Old Codger was right! "THEY RUINED BATTLEFIELD!" FOREVER!!!
• Brawl Stars:
  • They've gotten rid of the Boxes? GOD DAMNIT, SUPERCELL!
  • Lost Spirit Frank is out? Yes! About time- wait, he's going to be more bright purple than he originally was? He's going to have a super silly winning animation!? AND his name is going to be changed to SPIRIT KNIGHT FRANK!? FOR GOD'S SAKE, SUPERCELL! YOU'VE DESECRATED ONE OF THE COOLEST SUPERCELL MAKE SKINS OF ALL TIME!
  • That's not all! They're getting rid of Star Points, removing the Club Shop and bumping all 49 gem skins to 79 gems!
  • So they've animated the facepalm pins. The Angry and Happy ones are okay, but Disappointed... can you even call it a Face Palm? It's just the brawlers failing to facepalm. Worse, the hand is gone! SUPERCELL! IT'S CALLED A FACEPALM FOR A REASON!
  • The last member of Belle and Sam's trio is... a cookie oven!? Why her and not a cool-looking bandit? SUPERCELL HAS RUINED THE GOLDARM GANG FOREVER!
  • They're adding a new El Primo skin? Well, that's nice and all- wait, it's going to be based on Baby Shark!? BABY SHARK!? WE AREN'T PRESCHOOLERS ANYMORE, SUPERCELL!
• Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: The new DLC courses have a completely different art style to the rest of the game! And why are there so many tracks from the mobile game that nobody likes?!? Nintendo is milking Mario Kart 8 with this half-baked DLC!! UGH!!!
  • Also, from less faithful fans: "Why are there so many Wii tracks in this DLC?? True fans don't like that crappy, broken game!!^note Obviously not true, given how nostalgic people are for it now And they now have every character from Wii, too?? Nintendo is pandering way too hard to the Wii playerbase!!"

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