Well, well. Look what just rolled into the shop. It’s the planet Earth, which has successfully made yet another trip around the sun, added another 584 million miles to its odometer, and is in serious need of an oil change.
As we wrap up another year of PC gaming it’s always worthwhile taking a look back at the past 365 days to see what really stands out. Consider this an invitation to join us as we reminisce about the things that surprised, shocked, annoyed, and/or baffled us in the year of 2022. The best path to discovering these surprising moments isn’t by searching our memories—remembering stuff with your brain is soooo last century—but by searching PC Gamer’s Slack channel history to see how many times we typed “holy shit” over the past twelve months, and then recording what it was we said “holy shit” about.
Often our holy shits are about games, game trailers, or gaming news, but there are plenty of other things we say holy shit about, like pies, fakes popes, an AI depiction of Jay Leno dressed as Geralt of Rivia, the impending threat of total nuclear annihilation, and Korean BBQ.
It’s become a holiday tradition: We said holy shit 62 times in 2020 (opens in new tab), and 91 times in 2021 (opens in new tab). Here’s the 69 things (nice!) that made us say “holy shit” in 2022.
January 5
Tim kicked off the new year by not only swearing but italicizing, after seeing a picture of Evan in fencing gear: “Holy shit it’s the lead character in a From Software French fencing game I never knew i wanted.” We’re off to a promising start!
January 11
Mollie is quick to follow a few days later, issuing a “holy shit” after Andy receives a press release about Dog the Bounty Hunter signing a deal to develop multiple games based on his persona. Call me a pessimist but I don’t think those games are gonna get made, and if they are, they’ll be filled with NFTs.
January 14
Morgan says “holy shit, that’s a freaking name” when learning about the game WARNO (opens in new tab). He is correct. That is a freaking name.
January 18
A big day with three distinct “holy shits.” My favorite holy shitter on the PC Gamer staff is Andy, who often adds some flair. “Holy dog shit” he says after learning Microsoft was acquiring Activision Blizzard.
A discussion of Korean BBQ leads Mollie to state “holy shit paying to cook your own food shouldn’t taste that good.”
And Jacob drops a HS bomb when learning the Velocity Micro Raptor Z55 gaming PC is $5000. (“$5000 is the new $2000” Alan adds.)
January 28
Imogen: “holy shit the guy who puts minecraft videos on pornhub has got back to me.” The things we do for journalism (opens in new tab).
“Holy shit, beer o’clock” Andy says at quitting time. He then continues to work for what appears to be another 2.5 hours.
January 31
“Can we put “holy shit” before this one?” Imogen suggests when Sony announces it is buying Bungie. We did not put a holy shit in the headline (opens in new tab). We should have.
That was a total nine holy shits just in January. We have 11 months to go. Brace yourself.
February 14
Alan says “holy shit” after seeing an advertisement on social media (now deleted, and I won’t repost it here) by a game retailer which was in astoundingly poor taste. “Holy shit that’s a bad ad” agrees Jacob.
February 16
In more bad taste news, a PR blast for a game I won’t name contains some insensitive language I also won’t repeat here. Graeme reacts: “holy shit”
February 18
“Holy shit” Imogen says because Storm Eunice was ripping up the O2 Dome in London. We were all watching planes land in high winds that day, remember (opens in new tab)? But that wasn’t Imogen’s biggest holy shit of the day.
“NEOPET MERCH” she declares in our first all-caps entry of the year: “HOLY SHIT.”
February 23
It’s the day Elden Ring review scores arrived! “there are so many perfect scores holy shit” Mollie says.
Jody says “holy shit” upon seeing a (doctored) image of The Beatles wearing sweaters that spell out JRPG (opens in new tab). “John absolutely insists Final Fantasy 6 is the best one and Paul is basic for liking Final Fantasy 7 more.”
March 2
Katie makes her first appearance on the list, saying “holy shit” upon learning EA was removing Russia from FIFA 22.
March 8
Context for Jacob’s “holy shit” on this day—some media outlets covered a story about someone paying a cam girl $20,000 to play Elden Ring with him, a story which (naturally) turned out to be fake.
March 9
Another triple today. Mollie: “holy shit they put ff14’s sastasha in ff origin (opens in new tab).”
Andy delivers another headline suggestion: “Holy shit, Skull and Bones is actually looking for testers.” We went with “Believe it or not (opens in new tab)” for the headline instead. Another missed opportunity to get our favorite phrase in print.
Jorge watching Sony’s State of Play showcase: “holy shit that t-rex ate that guy.” I’m afraid I am not sure which game, which t-rex, or which guy he was referring to.
March 11
Mollie says “holy shit” when Nat reveals Itch.io’s Bundle for Ukraine generated $4 million in sales.
March 14
“holy shit, how??” Sarah, upon seeing that a speedrunner beat Elden Ring in under 30 minutes.
March 18
“holy shit no way” Jacob says seeing the Bundle for Ukraine was now up to $6 million. Slava Ukrani!
March 29
“holy shit is that you, great british baking show?” Lauren M. says upon seeing a 3D model of a pie (opens in new tab).
April 6
Imogen tells us she shook hands with Tim Schafer. “Holy shit (edited)” says Andy. Unfortunately there is no way to know what was edited, the holy or the shit. It is lost to time.
April 8
“holy shit, I’m back” says Sarah after an internet outage. An animated emoji titled “partyblob” accompanies the announcement. The emoji is a blob that is attending a party.
May 3
Mollie: “holy shit spotify can actually go fuck itself” after some sort of convoluted Spotify/Roblox download situation I could probably explain but won’t.
Always nice to see a freelancer contribute to the cause: Philip Palmer says “holy shit yes” when Jorge asks if anyone is interested in the Blade Runner tabletop game.
May 13
Nat says “holy shit lmaoooo” when reminiscing about the Halo TV show’s sex scene (opens in new tab).
June 1
Brace yourself for a big month, which begins with a “holy shit lmao” from Natalie after watching the beans scene (opens in new tab) from Life is Strange. “He really was eating those beans.”
June 8
Jorge understandably says “Holy shit” upon seeing this Sonic keyboard, mouse, and headset combo (opens in new tab).
June 9
Nat offers another “holy shit” when Mollie shows us what an AI-art program did with “hitman agent 47 at butlins” which is some sort of UK resort, as far as I can tell.
On the same day, Mollie holy shits at Edge Magazine’s sweet June cover (opens in new tab), which features Cuphead.
Moments later, Wes drops a holy shit at an AI depiction of “jay leno cosplaying as Geralt.”
June 10
It takes until June, but the guy who compiles this holy shit list every year (that’s me, Chris, hello) finally adds to his workload by saying “holy shit I somehow missed a game about being an animal therapist.” (The game is san Zoolin (opens in new tab), which isn’t out yet.)
June 12
Mollie delivers an unusual one, saying “holy SHIT” over the visuals in a Forza trailer. We don’t typically see half the phrase lowercase and half-capitalized. I like it.
June 14
Natalie says “holy shit” after watching a video of Among Us characters invading Mass Effect.
June 15
Tim says “holy shit” when we see an image of the guy who claimed his AI was sentient (opens in new tab).
June 16
Philip Palmer gives Jorge a “holy shit” over the excellent headline: This Sonic the Hedgehog-themed ‘gaming kit’ has gotta go fast into the trash (opens in new tab). (Of course he bought it).
June 23-28
To close out an extremely holy shitty month, Mollie delivers several “holy shits” over the span of a week: one about the heat, one about Nonary Games being 60% off, and one about three Persona games coming to PC. She’s on a roll!
July 11
Andy: “Holy shit, were they running a blue light special at the Lens Flare Store?” after seeing Doom 3 in Unreal Engine 5 (opens in new tab).
July 12
A completely understandable “holy” shit from Imogen as we see images from the Webb telescope of the Southern Ring nebula (opens in new tab). A few minutes later she says it again, this time about the Cosmic Cliffs (opens in new tab).
The same day, Andy says it again after we learn New York City Emergency Management apparently aired a video about what to do after a nuclear attack (opens in new tab). A summary: get inside and take a shower. I feel much safer already.
July 27
Roblox removes the “oof (opens in new tab)” sound. Mollie: “holy shit the end of an era”
August 1
Remember Multiversus? I sorta do. Mollie: “holy shit iron giant has no right being as fun as he is”
August 4
Jorge regales us with a story about playing Lost Odyssey via Gamefly, a service that would mail you game discs. “holy shit” says Ted (italics his).
August 5
Another from Ted, seeing a cover of PC Gamer from 1995. “dark forces and mortal kombat 2 in the same issue holy shit”
August 11
Andy gets extremely excited about Windows hotkeys.
September 9
Babylon’s Fall shut down after a mere 194 days (opens in new tab). “Holy shit” says Mollie, before writing a news story about it that unfortunately did not contain the words “holy shit.”
September 16
EVGA straight-up stops making GPUs (opens in new tab). Wow. Or, as Jorge put it: “holy shit”
September 27
Kiddie MMO Wizard101 got hacked (opens in new tab) and profane notifications (like “dick and balls”) were added, resulting in a “holy shit” from Ted.
October 7
Andy says “Holy shit this is huge” to Ted regarding his excellent (and huge) story about a third-party QA company (opens in new tab).
October 13
“Holy shit this kinda rocks” Ted says of a device that lets you play Game Boy cartridges on your Steam Deck (opens in new tab).
October 17
There was some vaguely game-related NFT announcement I won’t specify because I can’t because the tweet was deleted. But Tim declared “Holy shit it looks so fucking weak” which can honestly be said about just about every vaguely game-related NFT announcement.
October 21
We have a “Meet the Team (opens in new tab)” page on PC Gamer which people probably only visit when they want to send us hate mail, but for some reason the portraits of both Josh Lloyd and Joshua Wolens were huge, basically taking up the entire width of the page.
October 25
Mollie: “holy shit the bayo 3 reviews (opens in new tab)“
October 31
I can dimly recall a blessed period of time where Elon Musk wasn’t the topic of daily chatter. I think this is where that era ended. “holy shit lmao” Ted says when we learned Musk became “sole director” of Twitter.
November 1
Giant balls roll through London (opens in new tab), continuing the trend of weird shit happening in the UK. “Holy shit” says Imogen, continuing her trend of reacting to weird shit happening in London by saying “holy shit.”
November 3
I love PC Gamer staff member lore, and I don’t think any staffer has as much lore as Fraser. Today we learn he worked for a mobile telecom company 20 years ago but somehow still gets a discount on his phone contract. “holy shit nice” Mollie says.
November 10
Andy, reacting to a number of people impersonating the Pope on Twitter due to the whole stupid Twitter verified fiasco.
November 14
The bible launches on Steam (opens in new tab). Many jokes are made in Slack. “holy shit guys” says Katie. “y’all are going to hell.” Undoubtedly true.
November 28
“holy shit lol” says Morgan upon seeing the clusterfuck of a store page Hitman 3 has on Steam (opens in new tab).
November 30
Andy holy shits because Valve is giving away one Steam Deck per minute during The Game Awards.
December 8
Needless to say, our Slack was delighted by Al Pacino’s never-ending introduction and Christopher Judge’s even-more-never-ending speech at The Game Awards. There was only one “holy shit” though, by me (Chris again, hello).
December 13
To close out the year, one last one from Mollie. While I try to avoid meta uses of “holy shit” (such as discussions of this article in Slack) I’ll include this final one from Mollie, who said simply “man i say holy shit a lot wtf.”