The creators of the new "Street Fighter" game are being savaged by gamers for the "jiggle physics" of character Chun-Li's breasts.
But the producers insist it's all a mistake.
Footage from "Street Fighter V" was revealed this week as part of E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, an annual video game conference.
Game creator Capcom has been previewing the game on a Twitch livestream. But in between hadoukens, gamers have seen something they really don't like.
The following GIF, a clip from the game, was uploaded to Reddit on Wednesday.
It shows game character Chun-Li's breasts bouncing in an unnatural manner. Some social media users have referred to them as "jiggle physics."
The topic of women in video games has long been the focus of discussion in gaming circles.
Canadian-American commentator Anita Sarkeesian has addressed them on her website, "Feminist Frequency" and an accompanying YouTube channel, which has almost 200,000 subscribers.
In a 2012 interview with Gamespot, she talked about women's sexualized appearances in video games.
"Obviously, I'm in favour of more female protagonists across the board, but it has to be linked with an intentional shift away from the idea that women in games exist primarily as objects of sexual desire," Sarkeesian said.
There's also a gender disparity on the design side. The Boston Globe reported in 2013 that women make up only 11 per cent of game designers and three per cent of programmers.
This contrasts with statistics showing that women make up approximately 60 per cent of employees in graphic design, and 25 per cent of technology employees.
So we're interested in what Sarkeesian would have to say about Chun-Li, "Street Fighter's" first female fighter, and seeing her breasts move in such a strange fashion.
Capcom associate producer Peter Rosas told Kotaku that the odd movement is a bug.
"The whole Chun-Li jiggle thing is a glitch that only happens on the second player side of the E3 build and it will be fixed," he said.
Kotaku went on to point out that not all footage from the game shows Chun-Li's breasts bouncing as they do in the GIF above.
Indeed, another GIF showing "Street Fighter V" footage shows them remaining stationary.
They only seem to bounce when she's positioned on the right side.
Some, however, remain unconvinced by Capcom's explanation.
"I have a hard time believing that nobody at Capcom noticed it before E3. Chun-Li’s bounciness feels more like a bit of market research than a glitch," wrote Uproxx's Nathan Birch.
While it may seem like a minor topic, Kotaku's Patricia Hernandez wrote a lengthy piece on the physics of video game breasts earlier this year.
She outlined the complex process that goes into designing characters' bodies and the difficulty amateur developers have had designing breast movements.
Hernandez pointed out that it's not easy for anyone, let alone developers, to remember precisely how breasts move. One developer she spoke to said that people recall the "fantasy of breasts."
The same developer said that when designing characters, animators will ask colleagues to stand up and move in order to figure out certain motions.
But he added that he had "never worked with any female animators."
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