Gaming

● Aliven.✎ 3

Arknights: Endfield

An action RPG by Hypergryph, a spin-off of the 2019 game Arknights, released on 22 January 2026 for Android, iOS, PS5 and Windows. Its characters, among them the Endministrator, Perlica and Chen, became meme fodder within weeks; see Gugu Gaga Penguin and Can You Send Me 30K?. The record's entry for the game as a source, not a subject.

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Can You Send Me 30K?

A viral fan animation for Arknights: Endfield created by Simi and Chapchap, listed by Wikipedia among viral music videos and internet memes of 2026. The title is the line that carried it. The record's entry for a request that got repeated more than it got answered.

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Cory in the House Review Bomb

The second positive review-bombing of the 2008 Nintendo DS game Cory in the House, following one in 2015, both stemming from the meme that labels the show an anime. In January 2026 it was the second-highest user-rated game on Metacritic, above Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the 2025 Game of the Year, and online sales and prices surged. The record's entry for a joke that moved a market.

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Five Nights at Epstein's

A parody of Five Nights at Freddy's in which the player is trapped on Epstein Island and must survive by diverting attention, without being attacked by Epstein, Donald Trump or Stephen Hawking. It reached the news when teachers in Wake County, North Carolina, found pupils playing it at school. The record's entry for the game that got a county named in the coverage.

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Simi and Chapchap

The two creators credited with the viral Arknights: Endfield fan animation Can You Send Me 30K?, and listed by Wikipedia as an internet meme of 2026 in their own right. The record's entry for a pair whose names travelled with the clip.

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Time Balance Department

A phrase from Devsisters' Cookie Run that circulated as a meme in 2026, usually alongside Timekeeper Cookie. It sounds like a government office and reads like one. The record holds the name and the source game and nothing more; the details are not invented here.

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Timekeeper Cookie

A character from Devsisters' Cookie Run mobile games who became a meme in early 2026. The record knows the name, the game and the year. It does not know the joke with any confidence and declines to guess. Filed next to Time Balance Department, the phrase that travelled with it.

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Assassin's Creed Shadows

Ubisoft's Japan-set Assassin's Creed, delayed from November 2024 to February and then to March 2025 while an argument about its Black samurai protagonist, Yasuke, ran for the better part of a year. Released to three million players in its first week and a Ubisoft that needed them. The record's entry for a launch whose discourse began before its trailer had finished.

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Battlefield 6

EA's 2025 Battlefield, built by four studios as a return to classes, destruction and the series' 2011 shape, whose August 2025 open beta set the franchise's Steam record and turned the pre-launch mood from suspicion to relief. Released in October 2025 to the biggest launch in the series' history. The record's entry for the comeback, filed while it is still one.

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Blue Prince

A puzzle game about a manor whose rooms you draft one door at a time, trying to reach a room 46 in a house with 45, released in April 2025 after eight years of one developer's work and the first game of the year that everyone with a notebook was talking about. The record notes that it sold on reviews and on the fact that its players could not explain it without ruining it.

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Chicken Jockey

A line from a film shouted back at the screen while popcorn flew. Cinemas issued warnings and called the police; the fun was over by the second weekend of screenings.

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Deltarune Chapter 3 & 4

The June 2025 release of two chapters of Deltarune at once, after a wait long enough to have its own memes, which produced a summer of theories, the Asgore car meme, Pirate Gaster and the fandom's most sustained period of drawing things. The record's entry for the event.

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Dispatch (Game)

An episodic narrative game about a former superhero who becomes dispatcher for a team of reformed villains, made by former Telltale staff with a cast including Aaron Paul and Jeffrey Wright, released weekly from October 2025 and a co-streaming hit in which Twitch chats voted on the choices. The record notes a million sales within weeks, and that the internet spent November arguing about a character called Robert.

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Doom: The Dark Ages

id Software's 2025 medieval prequel, with a shield saw, a dragon, a giant mech and a launch on Game Pass on day one, which produced the argument about whether a game can be a hit without a sales figure. Reviewed well, played by millions on subscription, and reported as having 'underperformed' by people who had no number to underperform against. The record's entry for the Game Pass launch problem.

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Elden Ring Nightreign

FromSoftware's co-op spin-off, released in May 2025, in which three players survive three days on a shrinking map and fight a boss on the third, and which launched without a two-player mode to a chorus of people who only had one friend. The record's entry for a Souls game with a circle, and for the duos patch that followed as a concession.

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Forsaken

A Roblox asymmetric horror game — killers versus survivors, drawn from the platform's old myths and creepypasta — which became the platform's competitive hit of early 2025 and the source of a fandom that draws the killers as boyfriends. The record has watched this happen before.

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Kingdom Come: Deliverance II

Warhorse's medieval Bohemian sequel, released in February 2025 to a million sales in a day and a pre-launch culture war about whether its fifteenth-century Bohemia had the right people in it, which the game's release quietly ended. The record's entry for a launch that trended as an argument and was then enjoyed as a game, in that order.

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Mario Kart World

The Switch 2's launch game, an open-world Mario Kart with 24-player races, revealed in April 2025 alongside a price of around $80 that became the story. The record's entry for the first time a Nintendo game's price was the meme, and for the launch that followed in June, when the console sold faster than any before it and the argument about the $80 was played through.

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Megabonk

A survivors-like in three dimensions, with a lumpy art style borrowed from the internet's oldest memes and a name that is one, released in September 2025 by a single developer and selling around a million copies in its first fortnight, the largest launch in the genre since its founder. The record notes that its Game Awards nomination for best debut caused the year's most tedious argument about the word 'debut'.

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Monster Hunter Wilds

Capcom's 2025 Monster Hunter, which reached around 1.3 million concurrent players on Steam at launch, the largest for any Capcom game, and then watched its reviews sink through 'mixed' toward the platform's worst as PC performance complaints and a thin endgame took over. The record's entry for a launch that broke records in both directions in the same season.

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Speed in China

IShowSpeed's tour of China in spring 2025 — streets, trains, a Shaolin temple, a crowd everywhere — which became a diplomatic event in the sense that a lot of people saw a country through a screaming man and liked it. The record's entry for an IRL stream as soft power.

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Split Fiction

A two-player-only co-op game in which two writers, one science fiction and one fantasy, are trapped in each other's stories, released in March 2025 and selling a million copies in its first two days on the strength of the studio's reputation and a director who says whatever he likes on stage. The record notes that its Friend's Pass, which lets one copy serve two people, was the actual viral mechanic.

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Streamer University

A weekend in May 2025 when Kai Cenat rented a university campus, enrolled a hundred small streamers, and taught them, with celebrity lecturers, how to be him. Half stunt, half school, and the record's entry for streaming becoming a curriculum.

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Undertale 10th Anniversary

The tenth birthday of Undertale, marked by a wave of 'I was thirteen when this came out' posts and a general reckoning with the age of everyone who had played it. The record's entry for a game's anniversary as a collective birthday.

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7 Days to Die 1.0

The moment a zombie survival game left early access after eleven years, in July 2024, having sold well over ten million copies as an unfinished product with a seventh-night horde as its signature. The record's entry for the longest early access that anyone kept waiting for, and notes that the 1.0 was less an ending than a renumbering of the version.

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A Difficult Game About Climbing

A climbing game in which each hand is controlled by a mouse button and a slip means a fall to the bottom, released in March 2024 by a Swedish YouTuber and streamed by the same people who had streamed Only Up! and Getting Over It, for about a month, until they reached the top. The record notes that the title is accurate, which by the standards of game titles is unusual.

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Abiotic Factor

A co-op survival game in which scientists trapped in an underground facility after an experiment goes wrong must craft, cook and hide from what came through, released into early access in May 2024 and immediately called 'Half-Life as a survival game' by everyone, including its developers. The record notes that a four-person survival game about being a physicist sold half a million copies in its first month.

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Animal Well

A pixel-art exploration game the size of a few megabytes, made over seven years by one developer and published by the YouTuber videogamedunkey's new label, released in May 2024 and treated by its audience as a puzzle box with layers that the developer said would take years to fully open. The record notes that the community solved the fourth layer of secrets within a fortnight anyway.

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Astro Bot Wins

A cheerful platformer about a small robot won Game of the Year over the year's grim epics, and the internet spent a night arguing about whether joy counts. The record's entry for the meme of a happy game winning, which happens rarely enough to be one.

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Balatro Addiction

The condition of having opened a poker roguelike for 'one run' and looked up to find it was 3 a.m. and Wednesday. Named by its sufferers in 2024, who posted their hour counts as confessions. The record's entry for a game as a diagnosis.

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Beast Games

A thousand contestants, a five-million-dollar prize, and a television show made by the biggest YouTuber in the world, which arrived with lawsuits about the conditions and stayed for the spectacle. The record's entry for the moment YouTube became television and brought its problems with it.

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Black Myth Wukong Discourse

The arguments around a Chinese action game that sold ten million copies in three days: about the reviews, the review guidelines, the awards, and what the sales meant. Filed for the meme — the monkey king as a flashpoint — and not for any of the positions.

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Bodycam

A multiplayer shooter made by two French developers in their teens and early twenties, rendered in Unreal Engine 5 to look like police body-camera footage, whose trailers were accused of being real video and whose June 2024 early-access release sold a few hundred thousand copies before the novelty thinned. The record's entry for photorealism as a trend in itself.

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Caseoh

A streamer whose size became the subject of a joke genre so large — 'Caseoh is so big that…' — that he became a meme by hosting the memes about himself, banning nobody, and laughing. The record's entry for a man who won by not minding.

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Concord

A hero shooter that took eight years and a reported nine figures to make, launched to a few hundred players, and was switched off after eleven days with full refunds. The record's entry for the fastest death of a major game, and the word 'Concord' as a synonym for it.

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Content Warning

A co-op horror game in which you film monsters for views, released free for one day on April Fools' and downloaded by millions. The record's entry for a game whose premise — filming horror for an audience — was also its marketing, and for the day everyone had it.

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Dead Rails

A Roblox survival game in which a small team rides a train across a Wild West full of zombies, vampires and werewolves, stopping at towns to loot and refuel. The record's entry for the platform's 2025 co-op surprise: an alpha-tagged game that reached the top of the charts by spring, filled Discord with 'who is holding the coal' arguments and made a train the year's most-clipped vehicle.

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Dragon Age: The Veilguard

BioWare's 2024 Dragon Age, a decade after the last, whose June 2024 reveal trailer set the tone for a launch that trended as a culture war and finished as a business failure: EA said in January 2025 that it had reached about half the players expected, and the studio was cut back to a single project. The record's entry for the end of an argument that had gone on since the trailer.

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Elden Ring DLC Difficulty

The week in June 2024 when the internet argued about whether a video game was too hard, on a scale not seen since the last time, with a boss with a dance move as the exhibit. Filed for the argument, which was patched out with the difficulty.

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Enshrouded

A co-op survival game with voxel building and a fog that must be crossed on a timer, released into early access in January 2024 the week after Palworld and selling a million copies in four days regardless, with over 160,000 concurrent players. The record notes that it was made by a German studio best known for licensed children's games, and that January 2024 was the month survival games ate everything.

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Fields of Mistria

A farming game in the Stardew Valley mould with the art style of 1990s anime and townsfolk who all seem to be flirting, released into early access in August 2024 by a small studio and adopted immediately by the cosy-gaming audience, whose YouTube channels had been waiting years for a rival to the one game. The record notes that the phrase 'Stardew but' is the genre's entire vocabulary.

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Fisch

A Roblox fishing game with the pacing of a real fishing trip and the community of a stock exchange, which quietly became one of the platform's biggest games in late 2024 while the loud ones got the headlines. The record's entry for calm as a genre.

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Hades II

The sequel to Hades, with Zagreus's sister Melinoë as the hero, released into early access with almost no notice in May 2024 and passing a hundred thousand concurrent players in a day, with the full release in September 2025 arriving on Switch 2 as well. The record notes that the studio ran the same public-development experiment as before, and that the internet again spent a year ranking the gods.

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Helldivers 2

A co-operative shooter about spreading 'managed democracy' to alien planets on behalf of a fascist Earth, released in February 2024 and Sony's largest PC launch at 458,000 concurrent Steam players. The record files two moments: the joke that many players took entirely seriously, and the May 2024 revolt when Sony demanded PlayStation accounts on PC, the game was review-bombed and the demand was withdrawn within days.

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Infinity Nikki

An open-world dress-up game in which a girl called Nikki and a cat called Momo collect outfits that give abilities, released free across phones and consoles. The record's entry for the cosy gacha: it was downloaded tens of millions of times within weeks, was called Breath of the Wild with a wardrobe, and its 1.5 update in April 2025 drew a review bombing and a developer apology for bugs and banner changes.

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Jeff the Land Shark

A small shark with legs who swallows enemies whole and spits them off the map, from a 2018 comic and a 2024 game, who became the winter's most-clipped character and the mascot of everyone who plays support and wants to be loved. The record's entry for a shark as a personality.

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Love and Deepspace

A 3D romance game in which the player dates a small cast of men who fight monsters, with voiced calls, a gacha for memories and a cheek that can be touched on screen. The record's entry for the otome game going mainstream: it earned hundreds of millions in its first year, its players celebrated the characters' birthdays with billboards, and 'my husband' came to mean a man rendered at sixty frames a second.

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Managed Democracy

The in-game ideology of Helldivers 2 — 'for democracy!', 'a cup of liber-tea' — chanted by players with a straightness that made the satire indistinguishable from the fandom. The spring of 2024's game and its most-quoted phrase, recited at players' desks and, briefly, at a real protest about a PSN login.

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