Cult classic shooter alienates passionate fanbase with sexist ‘Booba’ update

There’s always something morbidly fascinating about watching a game dev studio completely self-destruct by failing to read the room—and it looks like the creators of Murder Miners X are the next to bite the bullet of fan controversy with their latest “Booba” update. 

In all fairness, no one would reasonably expect anything tasteful from a name like that—not to mention that Murder Miners X is a Garry’s Mod-style of indie game that promises to deliver juvenile humor and slapstick spectacle. Judging by the comments section, however, it looks like even the fans think the video takes it a bit too far this time. 

Be warned: The contents of the following video don’t even approach the vicinity of workplace-safe and may cause varying degrees of malaise. Watch at your own risk, or skip to the TL;DR below. 

To summarize, the Booba update in Murder Miners X will include female miner models as a new summonable object instead of an available player model. They wear nothing but pink helmets, arm and foot armor, and a white apron with only a thong underneath. Major features include:

• Customization via four sliders for Fairness, Bosom, Derrière, and Fat.
  • At the bottom of the customization screen, there is a monetary value that fluctuates depending on the sliders labeled “worth as a human being.” 
• The “Boobaball” and “Holy Booble,” the items used to summon and command the “handmaids” respectively.  
• Four commands in the “Holy Booble” where the “handmaid” will:
  • Cook the player a buff-granting meal, with the option to slap her “derrière” in the process.
  • Boost the player using her breasts as a bouncing pad.
  • Inflate into a rolling bomb after being “wed” to the player. 
• Jiggle physics rivaling even the raunchiest of indie hentai games found on Steam. 

The update has been included in the development roadmap of this cult classic Halo and Minecraft hybrid shooter for some time, but with no details on what it would actually add to the game until now. With the inclusion of a sardonic jab at “Sweet Baby Inc.,” it’s clear that JForce Games was appealing to a very particular demographic that famously campaigns against “woke-ness” in video games. 

Despite somehow instantly materializing en masse to heckle any mentions of diversity or non-sexualized women in games, the usual Youtube crowd of “real gamers” did not show up to cheer the devs on. Instead, the comments are filled with very unhappy fans, with reactions ranging from disappointed confusion to outright anger. Many former supporters expressed they will no longer be following the project. Another common sentiment is that they can no longer recommend the game to friends or be publicly associated with it out of sheer embarrassment. 

Technically speaking, not everyone is unhappy with the update, if you include the staunch fans in the Steam discussion page accusing the “wokies” and “haters” of bot-spamming the comments. However, the response across Youtube and Reddit so far is a nearly unanimous “no, thank you.” Where once was a passionate fanbase built on the cult classic status of the original Murder Miners, there is now a stream of alienated would-have-been-players abandoning the project for good.

While it’s impossible to take an exact count of how many prospective players JForce is losing, it’s clear the game will lose a good portion of its supporting community over the Booba update. What the indie studio does next in response to the backlash may decide what kind of audience Murder Miners X will have—if it even has a substantial audience left at all at the end of its decade-long development cycle.