'The Guy Game' Reared Its Ugly Head at a Con in 2024 — A Brief Look at the Controversy Surrounding It

Content warning: This article contains mention of child sexual abuse material.

You know that feeling you get when something awkward that you did when you were younger suddenly pops into your head in the present day and makes you convulse with embarrassment? Even years or decades after the fact, you still feel the sting of how cringeworthy that thing was as if it had just happened to you in that moment. Now imagine that happening with one of the most infamous, misogynistic, and controversial video games of the early 2000s.

Well, that's The Guy Game for you.

This ill-begotten party title was released on the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and PC back in 2004 to a slew of negative reviews and even major controversy to boot. In fact, the backlash against this game was so severe that it was removed from store shelves and banned from distribution by law.

The game reportedly resurfaced at a Pennsylvania gaming convention in June 2024, two months shy of its 20th anniversary. Now, people have been reminded of how truly deplorable The Guy Game was back in the day.

If you're fortunate enough to have never heard of The Guy Game, here's a quick but nauseating rundown. Developed by Topheavy Studios and equally controversial lead developer Jeff Spangenberg, The Guy Game was a party trivia game in which players must answer multiple-choice questions in a game show-like setting. Each round of questions is complemented by FMV footage of the game's host, Matt Sadler, asking similar questions to real women wearing bikinis during spring break.

The women in the footage were encouraged to remove their clothing if they answered questions incorrectly. Said footage would become less and less censored as players earned more points.

The game was largely panned by both critics and even U.S. legislators at the time for its tasteless presentation and overt misogyny, sparking debate over its distribution. As if that weren't enough, it was hit with a major lawsuit mere months after its release.

In December 2004, an anonymous plaintiff pursued legal action against the game's publishers over her depiction in The Guy Game. The plaintiff had reportedly been a 17-year-old minor when she was approached to record footage for the game and was allegedly misled over how she would be presented in the game. The case attempted to argue that The Guy Game willfully depicted child sexual assault material based on these facts. As a result, the game was completely removed from store shelves.

Distribution of The Guy Game was subsequently ceased and made illegal, though the team at Topheavy argued at the time, "the Man has decided that our fun and hilarious presentation of spring break revelry just wasn't appropriate for the world of gaming."

Twenty years later, however, it's still making some headlines.

The game appeared for sale at a gaming convention in Pennsylvania called TooManyGames. A vendor put a copy of the Xbox version up for $250. However, gamers were quick to note that purchasing the game or even putting it up on display could be grounds for legal action thanks to its underage explicit content. According to Kotaku, the vendors removed the game from their booth shortly after it was reported to con security.

In an age of gaming where people can claim and reclaim their sexuality and freedom of expression through video game protagonists of all genders, The Guy Game remains one of the worst and most blatant examples of everything wrong with the depiction of women in video games.

And as a side note of schadenfreude, Topheavy Studios was unceremoniously closed shortly after The Guy Game was released and lead developer Jeff Spangenberg subsequently dropped off the face of the earth.