Yellow poster of the Glorious PC Gaming Master Race figure with a small dirty console peasant stick figure

The Glorious PC Gaming Master Race

2008catchphraseclassic

Published October 1, 2026

The Glorious PC Gaming Master Race is a tongue-in-cheek label PC gamers use to crow about their rigs while mocking console players as 'dirty console peasants.' Coined by Zero Punctuation reviewer Yahtzee Croshaw in a 2008 video for The Escapist, the phrase broke containment, built a Reddit community of millions, and became shorthand for every elitist hardware argument that followed.

gaming console war memes catchphrase memes tech humor memes late 2000s memes

Overview

The Glorious PC Gaming Master Race is a satirical title PC gamers slap on themselves when arguing hardware supremacy over console players, who get labeled 'dirty console peasants' in return1. The joke works both ways: some people use it with genuine smugness about their frame rates and modding, while others use it to mock that exact smugness in their own community3.

The format rarely needs a template. It lives in forum posts, Reddit flairs, and reaction images that pair high-end rigs or crisp screenshots with the phrase and a sneer at console graphics or locked framerates2. A widely shared illustration by digital artist Saejin Oh, which packs in a Gabe Newell cameo and a swarm of hardware worshippers, became the visual shorthand for the whole bit after Kotaku highlighted it in 20123. The phrasing also seeded knockoff tiers for other hobbies, like 'filthy casual' as an insult aimed at low-commitment players1.

Origin & Background

Platform
The Escapist (origin) / Reddit (viral spread)
Creator
Yahtzee Croshaw
Date
2008

The catchphrase comes from a January 23rd, 2008 episode of Zero Punctuation, the rapid-fire review series by Yahtzee Croshaw hosted on The Escapist magazine's website. In his review of the PC role-playing game The Witcher, Croshaw joked that the game's dense mechanics made it ideal for PC players so that 'those dirty console playing peasants don't ruin it for the glorious PC gaming master race'1. The line was clearly satirizing PC elitism, not endorsing it, but viewers latched onto the phrasing and ran it straight.

The original Escapist review episode pulled in hundreds of comments on the site before the clip was reposted to YouTube on July 21st of a later year, where it kept racking up views and discussion4.

How It Spread

The phrase migrated to dedicated communities fast. A Facebook page called 'Glorious PC Gaming Master Race' went up on February 23rd, 2010, pulling in several thousand likes over the following years1. The real engine, though, was Reddit: r/pcmasterrace launched on April 30th, 2011 as a hub for PC gaming shitposts, build porn, and anti-console jokes, and grew into one of the largest gaming subreddits1.

Mainstream gaming press picked up the term by 2012. On June 14th, VG247 used the phrase while covering Bethesda director Todd Howard's comments at E3 about wanting console players to experience PC modding on games like Skyrim2. That November, Kotaku ran a feature on artist Saejin Oh's elaborate 'master race' illustration, framing the whole subculture as both self-aware and genuinely obnoxious3. The piece noted the Gabe Newell cameo and linked out to the full image, which pulled close to a million views on Imgur in the months after1.

From there the catchphrase scattered across forums like Newgrounds, IGN, Rooster Teeth, and even the Bodybuilding.com boards, and Tumblr tags like #pc-gaming-master-race and #master-race collected fan art and jokes1. The term outlived the original 2008 context and is still the default shorthand for PC gaming elitism, affectionate or otherwise.

Timeline

2008-01-23

Yahtzee Croshaw drops the phrase 'glorious PC gaming master race' in Zero Punctuation's review of The Witcher on The Escapist[1].

2010-02-23

The 'Glorious PC Gaming Master Race' Facebook page is created[1].

2011-04-30

The r/pcmasterrace subreddit is launched on Reddit[1].

2012-06-14

VG247 references the 'glory of PC mods' and the master race framing while covering Todd Howard's E3 modding comments[2].

2012-11-25

Kotaku features artist Saejin Oh's master race illustration, including a Gabe Newell cameo[3].

Frequently Asked Questions