A rather unpatriotic occasion was the packaging of a locker code for NBA 2K as a July 4th Eve gift. That was when a Deluxe Fireworks Pack was available for purchase in MyTEAM… and let’s just say the community reaction was far more explosive than those fireworks.
So, back to the story: 2K threw a locker code on the 4th of July with all the trappings of it being a holiday gift. Of course, upon redeeming it, players mostly got low-tier cards, doubles, or just outright garbage. An instantaneous backlash erupted, with Twitter turning into a warzone hotter than any Battle Royale lands.
A former player said pulling 99 Bronny James (LeBron’s son and technically an NBA non-player at the moment) was “bummy.” Another got himself a 99 Mo Bamba, threw down a skull emoji, and left it at that. And then there were those who opened packs only to pull out cards rated 87 tops-the equivalent in 2K of getting socks for Christmas.
Some of the response tweets were quite brutal. “Never seen a company move backwards so much,” one of them read. The next one stated, “2K got money grab all the time,” while another asked the official account to “delete your account.”
Now get ready for more chaos. Some players compared this year’s rewards with those of older 2K games, during which holiday locker codes actually did award legit top-tier cards. “In 2K23, it was a guaranteed invincible card!” exclaimed one avid fan. Now? Not so much.
With that, conspiracies started. Some gamers suggested that 2K made the rewards intentionally bad so that people would be enticed to buy packs with real money. “All y’all care about is money,” read one of the tweets. “Spitting in the face of the community you scammed all year.”
But not everyone found it terrible. A few players breezed through the tragedy with memes, including one posting an unimpressed-with-the-pack GIF. Then another player chimed in, saying: “I’ll take it,” leaving some hope for the 2K community.
The general atmosphere was anger-filled, however. There are players who say that they’ll skip NBA 2K26 altogether, while many others were showering the devs with all sorts of insults. One tweet stood out: “Who hired this dude dropping codes this year? Buddy gotta be on spectrum.” Harsh? Maybe. But when a holiday gift flops that hard, all bets are off.
If the codes haven’t reached meme-dom by now, they sure do. Last year were GOAT cards, this year were just mad disappointments. Will 2K respond to backlash? Probably not. But what is for sure-If next year’s 4th of July event fails to deliver, community riots would be the order of the day.
So yeah, happy 4th of July, NBA 2K fans. I hope you really enjoyed those digital fireworks… because all the real ones were in Twitter-land.
