Gaming news: Latest instalment of NBA 2K, world’s most popular basketball video game series, sucks

The world’s most popular basketball video game is in huge trouble, writes Sports News Blitz’s Wanga Charma.

2K have released an underwhelming set of games over the past couple of years – but the recent release of NBA 2K27 may be the community’s final straw as many players hate the new game.

Peak 2K

Before 2K, there were no gaming companies that produced and specialised in basketball, but since they started making NBA games in 1999, they have built one of the most loyal fanbases in all of gaming.

As that fanbase continued to grow over the years (as gaming itself has expanded as an industry), the 2K games became a mainstay among the annually anticipated games.

With few other gaming companies willing and even fewer able to make basketball games on par with 2K, it became the most popular basketball game in the world.

Many fans feel the franchise peaked between 2K14 and 2K17, but 2K20 became the franchise’s best-selling title. 

It sold over 14 million copies worldwide, an unexpected consequence of the pandemic that year.

With the exponential rise in the game’s popularity over the 2010s, so too did its popularity on YouTube grow.

And while there are many subcommunities within the larger umbrella, a particular few creators would stand out and become the voice and pillar of the 2K community.

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Community voices

That group of creators consisted of YouTubers 'KOT4Q', ‘Sixringsofsteel’ (SROS) and Danny2K.

The three of them have a combined 2.2 million subscribers.

They would play a mode called ‘MyLeague’ and use their NBA knowledge and game knowledge to attempt to make NBA teams champions.

Throughout the years and the many 2K cycles, they would complete all sorts of challenges and feats that were beloved by many.

All three creators are still active and regularly produce content, though there is a common complaint and hitch that plagues not only them but the entire 2K gaming community.

The problem is that the game is horrible and has been for the last couple of years.

The fall-off

Although 2K was a beloved franchise for most of the 2010s and peaked in sales in 2020, the franchise began to somewhat evolve.

In some ways, it was for the better, but in more ways than not, it took a turn for the worse.

Firstly, many of the games’ enjoyable aspects became hidden and locked behind a paywall. 

Progressing your player became a matter of how much VC (virtual currency) you could afford as opposed to how much you played and how skilled you were at the game.

The online modes became littered with microtransactions – it felt like you were paying for every online mode and feature. 

If you could not afford to be among the best, you could not enjoy playing online.

As a result, a lot of players enjoyed the offline modes, which were designed to resemble and emulate the real-life NBA as much as possible. 

It is within these offline modes where the ‘MyLeague’ mode was found, and the aforementioned creators would play this mode to create content.

The offline aspects rarely got as much love and attention year-to-year, but it was a functioning game mode, and despite the constant clamouring from the creators for a change, they were begrudgingly content with the mode.

The final straw came during this year’s release of 2K27, where players and creators alike finally got fed up.

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2K27 arrives

When news updates began rolling out about the 2K27 release and all the new changes around offline mode were made known to the public, there was finally some much-needed anticipation and excitement within the fanbase.

When the game was released on September 4, 2026, the initial reception was positive as the new features showed promise.

Sadly, within two weeks, the community was up in arms about the game, particularly about the MyLeague mode.

A multibillion-dollar company failed to accurately emulate the statistics and tendencies of the real-life players, and it resulted in users’ in-game simulations yielding wildly different and underwhelming results.

Enough was enough for the 2K community.

In just over a month after release, the game is already on sale on the PlayStation Store as it looks to entice more players onto the game.

It was so bad that one of the only spokespeople and correspondents of the gaming company itself and of the developers, known as Mike Wang, deactivated his X account due to the sheer amount of backlash he was receiving about the game.

The MyLeague creators also took to each of their platforms and each gave scathing reviews of the game that has generated over 300 000 views combined.

2K’s reply? A half-hearted patch update that fixed none of the concerns raised by the community.

It is almost unfathomable to think that a game that was once so popular and beloved was so consumed by greed and sloth that they may actually be the architects of their own demise.

Great gaming franchises are not immune to steep declines and complete cultural erasure, and if 2K are not careful they may follow in the steps of franchises such as Halo, Mass Effect, and Far Cry.

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