I have three picks. Three of the biggest games mired in controversy thanks to decisions (or complete lack of decisions) made by their idiot studio heads.
Halo:Infinite
After years of hype for the new game the gameplay trailer 343 put together was as lazy as the team's leadership. The Xbox Series console's feature attraction and clearly intended launch title (so much merchandise, everywhere) was delayed while the studio went into full send mode trying to get the game to a state they could release it. It ended up needing a year and Microsoft had to call in help from outside the studio. When Bonnie Ross surrendered the 2021 E3 stage to the guy that saved her game and it followed with a multiplayer trailer that not only looked good, but looked really fun, I actually laughed out loud. Things actually got to the point that hyper-feminist Ross needed to bring in a straight white male who worked on the original games to correct the ship. The gameplay trailer from 2020 was among the most disappointing and lazily made things I could imagine for such an important project and it really pointed a spotlight on the studio leads who were galavanting around doing side projects while they left the studio in the hands of a guy who had no idea how to run a studio and lacked any sort of leadership skills.
What they showed in 2020 resulted in this:
The Last of Us 2
The first game was universally loved. Anyone that played had something good to say about it and with 100+ million PS4s on the market the sequel would likely be one of the best selling games ever made. The second game released to about half the fanbase hating it and selling about as well as the typical Mario Tennis game. Some fans even had rational reasoning for disliking the game but they were immediately demonized by the other half of the fanbase. The studio head decided to make things worse, coming out swinging at fans who questioned his choices. Sony, used one of their shell corporation issued copywrite strikes against Youtubers who criticized the game before and after launch just like they did with No Man's Sky. In the end the "The Last of Us 2" subreddit became a place for fans of the original game who detest the new game to gather and shit on the other side who enjoyed the "misery and torture porn tied to the vision of a nu-male with a man-bun" that was The Last of Us 2. The game quickly went on heavy discount with images of pallets of the game selling for a fraction of it's retail price immediately after launch, one endcap picture that made the rounds that August had the game selling for $19.99 and the endcap was hilariously labeled with a BOGO card.
The game went on to be a staple on 4chan for the next couple weeks. Choke, Bite and Bonk were some of the more popular meme templates in 2020. Not quite Bowsette levels of popularity but there was a lot of original stuff to dig through. You might even recognize some of them from the Craig video above. This is but a small snippet of what's out there as new ones are still being made to this day.
Cyberpunk 2077
This was my most anticipated game for almost two years. I loved The Witcher III and though I admittedly played a heavily modded version of the game with much better combat and visuals, the world CDPR created was really beautiful and full of interesting things to stumble across. Over time people kept pointing out that the game was having issues. Features were missing, gameplay changes were being made late into development. The game ended up delayed which instilled new hope into the minds of people still excited for the game (me). What released was one of the least polished games ever released with such a budget. The base console versions were unplayable and only people with a PC had any chance of getting a decent experience with the game. Sony even pulled the game from the Playstation for being buggy, which was odd as they hadn't pulled other bug-filled games like No Man's Sky or WWE 2K20 in the past. Perhaps it had something to do with CDPR telling angry customers to get their refunds from Sony. Either way, bad choices net bad results. The studio in the end went back and completely fixed the game and it no longer has a single bug, oh sorry that's not quite right. They only said they did and then ran away with bags of cash laughing hysterically.
The game quickly had about a billion Youtube glitch compilations uploaded. This is what console players were greeted with on launch day.
