French IGN Slams Stellar Blade for "Objectifying Women" — Players Call It the Best Ad Campaign Ever, Rush to Pre-Order

French IGN has done it again — this time taking aim at Stellar Blade, Shift Up's PS5 action RPG. In a scathing critique, the outlet accused the game of "objectifying women" and went as far as claiming the game director has "never seen a real woman." But when this review hit the NGA forums, instead of sparking a thoughtful discussion, it triggered an absolute roast session.

Here's the most ironic part: Stellar Blade's character models aren't fictional exaggerations — they were created using 3D body scans of a real female model/actress. Players were quick to point out the contradiction: "Does the IGN editor dare post that hot take on the actual model's Twitter?" Others noted that Shift Up — the studio behind the massively popular gacha game NIKKE: Goddess of Victory and Destiny Child — brought the same commitment to realistic female body scans to their console debut, making the "never seen a woman" accusation completely fall apart.

The comment section became a masterclass in roasting IGN's well-known political correctness (政治正确, zhèngzhì zhèngquè) stance. One top-voted reply cut straight to the bone: "The moment you see the three letters I-G-N, do you really think there's anything worth reading?" Another player lamented: "The reach of political correctness is genuinely terrifying — it's seeped into the military, and now even gaming, the one place that's supposed to be pure fun." Someone else fired off the classic gotcha: "How dare you assume the game character's gender is female?" — mocking the absurd extremes of Western identity politics discourse.

But the real show-stealer was the "reverse marketing" moment. One player dropped a screenshot of their pre-order with the caption "Oh really? Guess I'm buying it then" — perfectly embodying the phenomenon where an IGN negative review becomes the greatest ad campaign a game could ask for. Others echoed the sentiment: they weren't particularly interested in Stellar Blade before, but seeing IGN this mad about it suddenly made it a must-buy.

Not everyone was purely in "roast IGN" mode, though. A few dissenting voices worried about character design becoming a race to the bottom — one commenter said they "don't want single-player games turning into cyber brothels" either. Another player took a different angle, sarcastically contrasting Stellar Blade's aesthetic with Western AAA titles that have been criticized for making female characters deliberately unattractive, listing traits like obesity, exaggerated masculinity, and forced diversity as supposedly being what "beautiful women" look like in Western games. (Note: these are user comments and do not represent editorial positions.)

Worth noting: Stellar Blade's developer Shift Up is also the studio behind NIKKE: Goddess of Victory, the wildly popular mobile gacha game known for its, shall we say, generous character designs. That's why this post was tagged [NIKKE] and appeared in the mobile gaming gossip section — the same aesthetic philosophy that thrives in the gacha world collided head-on with Western gaming media when applied to a AAA console title.

As it stands, French IGN's review has achieved peak "Streisand Effect" in the Chinese gaming community. Rather than dampening interest in Stellar Blade, the controversy boosted its visibility and directly converted into pre-orders. Sometimes the best marketing money can't buy is simply having IGN tell people not to buy something.