NetEase badmouths Nintendo fans, offers up half-hearted apology, and then gets caught in a lie

This is a story that just keeps getting more and more awkward, so prepare yourself for some pretty cringe-worthy stuff!

Chinese video game company NetEase has apparently been caught up in some social media trouble. It all started when people started calling out the company's game, Operation Windcloud Island, a rip-off of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

The image above certainly gives off some Zelda: BotW vibe, but I'm not going to cast judgment on the whole experience as I'm not familiar. It seems these comments from various gamers caught the attention of someone at NetEase, so they took to social media site Taptap, a smartphone app distributing platform where developers and users can interact, to fire back.

Instead of explaining how the two games differ, NetEase decided to badmouth Nintendo fans who don't consider mobile games to be true games. Moving on, NetEase said that all PC games are superior to games on Switch, and then started spewing derogatory names for Switch fans. Then just for the hell of it, NetEase started to bash PS4 fans as well.

Eventually someone at NetEase caught on that their social media account was spouting some controversial stuff, and the post was removed. Here's where things get really cringy though. The account then shared a message saying the the team are actually big Nintendo fans, and they were joking around. To prove their Nintendo fan status, they took a picture of their Switch and some games.

Unfortuantely for NetEase, the internet was quick to do a reverse image search on their picture, only to find that it came from another source. In other words, NetEase apologized for mocking Nintendo fans, shared a picture supposedly proving their love of Nintendo, but actually just stole someone else's picture and claimed it was theirs.

As of right now, that's where the story stands. Remember awhile back how NetEase's president said he wanted to work with Nintendo on future projects? Something tells me Nintendo might not be too keen on doing that now.