Video games have the power to change people’s lives, inspiring creativity and bringing friends and couples together.

But they can also destroy relationships. And it turns out that even Splatoon, the cute, brightly colored squid-themed shooter from Nintendo, is a culprit—although not quite in the way you might be thinking…

The latest Splatfest in Japan ran over the weekend of October 10-11 and the theme was Squid vs Octopus. In a Splatfest, you choose a side and battle it out in Turf War mode for victory and Super Sea Snail prizes. You pick your team by answering a question of which you prefer, and in this particular Splatfest the game asked: Which do you prefer as a sushi topping: ika (squid) or tako (octopus)? (By the way, we also have similar Super Mega Important Debates here on RocketNews24 from time to time which you can vote in.)

The thing is, while innocent on the surface, these questions have a habit of bringing dark secrets to light…

▼ Squid on the left and octopus on the right. Which team would you choose?

Who’d have thought such an innocuous choice in a cutesy game could have a life-altering impact on a normal married Japanese couple? One Twitter user posted a message they’d spotted in-game detailing a sad Splatfest story from one probably soon-to-be-separated wife.

▼ “Splatoon changes lives.”

[tweet https://twitter.com/LiptonOcO/status/652529810976083968 align=center]

▼ “When I was talking to my husband about whether he preferred squid or octopus, he mentioned a meal I’d never made. In the end we got in a huge fight and his stupid affair came to light. I’m a bit late, but let’s do our best, fellow squids. Wipe out those octopuses.”

While many Netizens were flinging around the usual insults of “must have been her imaginary husband”, and so on, or trying to work out just how such a conversation might have gone down, others pointed out that since there are no chat options in Splatoon, this must be a fake. But was it faked by the Twitter user, or by Nintendo themselves? The jury’s still out on that one. But let’s pretend for a moment that it’s real; would this jilted wife have found any solace in the results of the Splatfest?

Of course the squid team was always going to be the most popular, since this is a game all about squids (and kids). This is a debate that goes much deeper beyond the mere decision of which topping is the tastiest: in the single-player mode of the game you play as an Inkling fighting against the evil Octarians, so choosing your team in this Splatfest was like choosing your overall alliance in the game universe. And so, as expected, squid won, but only by a sliver! While the squid team had 66% of the votes compared to octopus’s 34%, in terms of wins squid came in at 47% with octopus in 53%. This brought the overall score to…

▼ Squid 245 – Octopus 246

And so the squid team was crowned victorious. Alliances were formed and marriages were ripped apart; you’d better brace yourselves for the next Splatfest!

Source: Jin115, @LiptonOcO on Twitter,

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