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I am playing a PC game.

After a lot of bad things happened that day, my character said , "Okay…this is officially the worst day ever.”

How can I interpret “officially” here? The dictionary does not help because it seems none of the definitions fit.

officially

  1. in a formal or authoritative manner:

  2. in a way that is formally acknowledged but is not necessarily the case https://www.thefreedictionary.com/officially

I found a possible answer here. I am not sure if it is correct.

Q: What does “officially “ mean in this sentence?“ I am officially jealous “?

A: Just to emphasize that he is openly declaring that he is jealous.

https://hinative.com/en-US/questions/13769540

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It's hyperbole. The implication is that the day has been so terrible that some hypothetical organisation, tasked with recognising the magnitude of bad days, has formally declared this one to be the worst ever. Clearly this isn't the case.

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    I've always thought it was more as though the speaker used their authority to issue a formal decree declaring a certain day the worst day of their life (as expert on the subject matter)
    – crizzis
    Commented Feb 3, 2020 at 11:14
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    I'd say "some hypothetical authority". It doesn't need to be an organization.
    – V2Blast
    Commented Feb 3, 2020 at 12:07
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This is a case of figurative meaning.

Officially is an adverb that, in your phrase, is used to firmly state that out of all the days in the characters' life, that one was the worst of all.

Now, note that in order to make it official, one would have to go through research, acquire proof, and so on. Clearly, this is not what happened when the character said it. It was just used to enforce the idea.

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    Hmmm... I don't think any research is implied to make something "official" - it just some "organization" that is responsible for recording such facts. I.e. "official land speed record" can be different from "highest land speed observed" just because it was the one officially confirmed. Something like "confirmed:", "validated:", "just found" would imply research when used in regular sentence, but pretty much anything in "this is XXXXX the worst YYYY ever." can be used and one would never expect any real research/comparisons to done befor using the phrase.
    – Alexei Levenkov
    Commented Feb 1, 2020 at 20:28
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This usage could also be called "ironic" -- intentionally using words in a way contrary to their actual meaning.

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