6 Video Games That Wrecked Havoc On Your System

6 Dreamcast's Unintentional Trojan Horse In The Console Wars Against The PC

For a while, the Atelier franchise was a famous PlayStation series -- provided you spoke Japanese and played titles released only in Japan, that is. Then, the alchemy-themed franchise made the predictable move of changing systems, jumping on the Dreamcast wagon, where things began to go crazy. While the game itself couldn't do any harm to the Dreamcast, its GD-ROM (yeah, those were a thing) came unwittingly packed with Kriz, an exceptionally powerful and nasty virus that would set your PC to die ... on Christmas day. 

So how did a Dreamcast disk end up in people's PCs? Well, many games back in the day could be inserted into the disk drive of your computer to listen to music files, while some like Atelier Marie & Elie: The Alchemists of Salburg sweetened the pot even more by including an exclusive screensaver you could install. How the virus got on the disks to begin with remains a mystery. 

5 That Time Sony Destroyed Your Saved Data For A Demo

Playstation Underground was the "make it edgy" version of the Official Playstation Magazine that Sony sent in CD-ROM format to all members of Playstation's US Fanclub. You already know this one is gonna go off the rails very soon, but at least they looked cool.

The good news is that you can probably find many of them in the trash somewhere. But, if you do, maybe refrain from using them as anything other than decoration/throwing stars because one of them is cursed. The issue from December 2004 contained the demo for Viewtiful Joe 2, one of the most anticipated titles of back in the day, that, unbeknownst to players (and to Sony, we hope), would wipe every memory card in the console by merely running it. 

Sony then issued an official apology, stating that players could run the demo, provided that they removed any memory cards prior to turning on the console -- if they still had any data on them, that is.

And that's the true story of how the tide of the console wars turned against the Playstation, causing Sony to never again release another gaming console.

4 The Only Thing Pool Of Radiance Did Well Was Revenge

Pool Of Radiance: Ruins Of Myth Drannor is an RPG from the early '00s that went with the early '90s look either as an artistic choice or because it was bad. We don't really know, but answers to that mystery might arise when taking a peek at the game's code. At first, gaming sleuths found a bug that corrupted the game's very own save files as soon as you closed the game, rather undermining the very concept of saving.

But wait, it got even worse. They also found a bug that worked as an unwittingly incredible deterrence system against anyone trying to uninstall it. Even though it seemed as if PORROMD didn't enjoy being played, it had an even worse time leaving. When uninstalling it, players triggered a process that would straight-up delete other games, as well as essential system files with it. 

Yet, somehow, a lot of people are still asking for the game to come back on GOG's community wishlist.

3 Abstractism Allegedly Turned Your Computer Into A Money Printing Machine (For Its Creators)

One of the ways you can start mining cryptocurrency is by getting a rig to destroy the environment yourself. Another is by hijacking someone else's PC to do that for you. Indie platformer(?) Abstractism started garnering attention for taking a toll on computers. The developers replied to players' pleas of making the game less resource-heavy and explained that the game's high graphics settings were to blame for sluggish performance. Big words for a game that barely had any graphics to begin with.

Players soon started suspecting that the game was hijacking their computers to secretly send them to the crypto-mines, which the developers denied.

Steam, however, smelled something fishy and nuked the entire thing from orbit. They made Abstractism a ghost by removing the game from the platform and seemingly off the entire Internet. It's hard to even find high-res screenshots of the game nowadays -- though they might have never existed in a high-res capacity in the first place. While Steam didn't confirm that the game was hijacking PCs for mining, it dropped a statement saying it "removed Abstractism and banned its developer from Steam for shipping unauthorized code, trolling, and scamming customers with deceptive in-game items."

2 Mighty No. 9 Hardlocked Kickstarters' Consoles

Mighty No. 9 first became famous for a Kickstarter campaign that reignited the hype for the Megaman series it was meant to spiritually succeed. What followed was a release so disastrous that even the people doing the Sonic the Hedgehog games thought they had the right to roast it.

And getting a game that was mostly unplayable would have been a best-case scenario for anyone playing Mighty No. 9, as a non-negligible number of players had to deal with the game extending its unplayability to other games -- because it hardlocked the goddamn system. Even worse, this was happening to the people who'd directly financed Mighty Bricker no9. and got it directly from the devs. Imagine being a special backer, getting the awesome special code to unlock the game, then having to unplug/replug/repeat your console when you tried to play.

1 Counter Strike: Global Offensive Gives Your Computer To Hackers

Yeah, if you were counting on having a fun time laughing at yet another small game you'll never play and not on have to close Steam in a panic, we apologize. The Secret group, which is not an actual secret group, but merely a mysterious white-hat hacking nonprofit organization, found out an extremely and ever-present vulnerability in CS: GO that should scare about anyone who'd ever played the game. 

For the nearly nine years players have been busy tea-bagging each other, CS: GO has a bug that allowed for something even worse – people being able to access all of your private information. 

The exploit works when players click on invitations to play the game, then allows for an evil third party to completely take over your PC. The bug isn't even a CS: GO-only problem, but a source engine one, meaning it could still be lurking in many other games using Valve's engine. While the good news is that the bug is no longer present in most games, it is still in CS: GO as of the writing of this evergreen piece. Remember to always be careful who you go assassinating people with.

Top Image: Valve