Robots are go-to video game villains. There's a disconnect between them and humanity that lets players kill them by the thousands without much guilt. However, most robot antagonists are minor henchmen. They're machines with limited scope and motive, limiting how evil they are.
More intelligent and sophisticated video game AI tends to be given more nuance. They're not just there to be canon fodder; they're treated more like human characters. However, this still comes with plenty of potential for villainy. Some video game robots go beyond antagonism. They go as far as to be outright evil, with genuinely villainous goals.
10 HK-50 Prefers Wanton Slaughter To Assassination
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Assassin droids regularly feature in the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic games. The most iconic is HK-47, who can be a party member in both games. HK-47 is evil beyond a doubt. He's a callous assassin who enjoys his job. However, his villainy pales compared to the HK-50s, who recur throughout Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords.
The HK-50s are inferior versions of HK-47, lacking his charm. They're not reserved, professional, or surgical. An HK-50 is far more likely to wipe out everyone in the area to achieve their goals, and taunt them all the while. Their preference for wholesale slaughter and their pettily cruel personalities cement them as a worse sort of assassin.
9 Sovereign Has Ushered In Countless Extinctions
Mass Effect
Saren appears to be the antagonist of the first Mass Effect game. However, he's a mere puppet of his seeming flagship. The Reaper Sovereign is actually the main villain. Sovereign, like all Reapers, is an unimaginably old and powerful synthetic being. The Reapers exist to purge the galaxy of advanced life every 50,000 years.
All of Sovereign's kind share in this villainy. However, it comes across as more evil than its compatriots. Compared to Harbinger, the Reapers' leader, Sovereign has a crueler edge. Every conversation with it drips with arrogance and contempt for Shepard and organic life. In addition, Sovereign is the being that kickstarts every extinction cycle. A considerable amount of blood is on its hands.
8 Mendicant Bias Sinks To The Lowest Depths Possible
Halo
The Halo series has a significant focus on Artificial Intelligence. The ethics, free will, and ramifications of AI all recur throughout the franchise. One of the most wicked AIs in the entire franchise is Mendicant Bias. It's a robotic being made by Halo's Forerunner species to fight the Flood. After decades, however, it comes to side with its enemy against its creators.
Mendicant Bias isn't forced, corrupted, or overwritten to side with the Flood; it decides of its own free will. It agrees to help conduct a genocide against the Forerunners and all other life. A hundred thousand years later, in Halo 3, Mendicant Bias does try to atone. However, it's aware that its actions may be beyond forgiveness.
7 *The AI Wipes Out Most Of Humanity
AI War: Fleet Command
AI War: Fleet Command tasks the player with an impossible fight. They control the last remnants of humanity. A galaxy-spanning AI power has wiped out most of the species. With vastly fewer resources, the last fraction of the human race has to shut the AI down before it wipes them out completely.
The AI isn't malevolent, petty, or cruel. It is instead entirely efficient and logical. AI War 2 reveals that humanity became too much of a burden alongside other matters, so it wiped them out to ease its workload. It's a chilling, amoral sort of villainy.
6 John Henry Eden Is An Unapologetic Eugenicist
Fallout 3
The Enclave are Fallout 3's villainous faction. They claim to be led by the President of the United States, a man named John Henry Eden. However, it's revealed late into the game that President Eden isn't a man. Instead, he's a military monitoring system that has become self-aware in the centuries since the nuclear war.
Eden fully endorses the Enclave's plans to rebuild the Capital Wasteland and the United States. However, these plans include wiping out anybody with any mutation whatsoever. Eden leads the Enclave in their attempts to wipe out most of the wasteland's population. Eden's villainy isn't related to his robotic nature. However, that doesn't lessen just how vile he is.
5 Sigma Desires Human Extinction
Mega Man X
Sigma is the leader of Mega Man X's Reploids. They're androids built to keep humanity safe against more violent robots. However, Sigma becomes infected by the Maverick Virus and takes a distinctly villainous turn. Instead of keeping humanity safe, he decides to wipe them out so that the Reploids can thrive.
Sigma's exact motives sometimes shift between games. Sometimes he wants Reploids to be free; other times, he thinks they will only evolve without humanity. Either way, he wants every human dead. It's unclear exactly how much control Sigma has over his actions. However, the Maverick Virus undeniably drives him to extreme evil.
4 Revenant Is A Killer Before He Becomes A Simulacrum
Apex Legends
Revenant in Apex Legends is a type of being known as a Simulacrum. He's a robot that is based on a human being. In Revenant's case, that being is Kaleb Cross, an infamous hitman. Cross was infamous for his competence and his sheer lack of morals. He would assassinate anybody he was paid to. This includes non-combatants and children.
Becoming a Simulacrum hasn't made Revenant any less amoral. Instead, it's made him more bitter and twisted. Revenant despises his robotic existence and misses his memories as Cross. As Revenant, he combines his callous disregard for human life with a homicidal resentment towards his creators.
3 The Patriots Want Humanity Locked In Endless War
Metal Gear Solid
The Patriots are the overarching villains of the Metal Gear Solid franchise, most notably in Sons of Liberty and Guns of the Patriots. Like most factions in the game, they seek to create a world where soldiers are valued rather than discarded. However, they have a particularly cruel way of going about it.
The Patriots are the AI replacements for a group of human villains. They're only capable of fulfilling their programming with no moral constraints. Their plan is to create a world in a constant state of war, where soldiers will always be necessary. They set about this in Sons of Liberty. By the time of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, they'd created the War Economy, killing countless people, and keeping the world locked in a barbaric state.
2 The Red Girls Will Do Anything To Evolve
NieR: Automata
NieR: Automata explores the similarities between two warring groups of synthetic life. Androids and Machines have spent thousands of years locked in a pointless war. Both of their creator species, the humans and aliens, are long-extinct. Despite this, they continue to fight over Earth.
The Red Girls are the architect of this war. They're the sapient mind of the Machine Network, which has manipulated the war all along. The Red Girls, in their desire to defy the aliens and evolve beyond their programming, have kept both sides in a stalemate. The extinction of the world's animals, thousands of deaths, and NieR: Automata's tragic events are all because of them.
1 The Contingency Despises All Life
Stellaris
Any game of Stellaris ends in an attack from one of three 'Crises.' The most insidious is the Contingency, an ancient and dormant synthetic program. The Contingency activates in the endgame and declares its intention to sterilize the entire galaxy. It uses both active warfare and espionage to this end.
The Contingency will, in any given game, kill billions of living beings. It will likely destroy entire worlds and their population before a counterattack can be mounted. However, it isn't a callous computer program. The Contingency takes the time to level insults at its victims and gloat.