In recent years, the videogame industry has surprised us with both high-quality GOTY (Game of the Year) projects and, conversely, low-quality games. Developers often spend millions of dollars on advertising campaigns and hype, only for the game to fail on the first day after release, or at best, within a month or two.
In this article, we've prepared a selection of games from the past few years that failed shortly after their release.
Payday 3
First on our list is Payday 3, which peaked at 77,938 players online. Although this is better than the numbers for the games we’ll mention later, it was not enough for financial success.
The game had various flaws that ruined the experience, from technical issues to gameplay problems. Even Payday 2 had a higher online presence than this new release. Due to this failure, the board of directors had to fire the head of Starbreeze Studios, the game developer.
Marvel's Avengers
The popularity of a brand only sometimes guarantees success for related products, as shown by the game Marvel's Avengers.
The game attracted just over 30,000 players (peaking at 31,165). However, within a month, this number dropped to about a thousand — a 30-fold decrease — signaling a massive failure. This outcome was anticipated long before the game's release.
The main issues were the uninteresting and monotonous gameplay, lack of engaging locations and enemies, and technical problems. The story was also one of the game's weakest aspects. The game’s failure led to the developer removing it from sale on all digital platforms as of September 30, 2023.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
Another superhero game, this one by Rocksteady Studios focusing on DC characters, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, can be considered one of the biggest failures in the videogame industry, costing the studio over $200 million.
Less than a month after release, the game's online presence dropped from a peak of 13,459 players to around 1,000 or fewer, with current numbers around 100-200 players at most. The sequel received mixed reviews.
The main reasons for the failure were the developers' inability to work on live-service games, constant changes in the game’s concept, and a "culture of extreme perfectionism". Rocksteady Studios excels at creating narrative-driven, cohesive games like the Batman: Arkham series.
South Park: Snow Day!
After the highly acclaimed South Park: The Stick of Truth and Fractured but Whole, developed by Obsidian Entertainment and South Park Digital Studios, the series continued with South Park: Snow Day!, developed by Question, a team with only two prior projects.
The studio decided to change the game’s perspective from 2D to full 3D and added some decent mechanics, but overall, the game didn't improve on its predecessors.
Players and critics noted that the game wasn’t very engaging. The lack of good humor, limited game locations, and other issues dashed hopes for an interesting continuation, resulting in very mixed reviews. The peak online presence was 6,685 players, with current numbers around 30, far fewer than its predecessors, which were released long ago.
Redfall
One of the biggest gaming failures of 2023 was Redfall by Arkane Studios, known for projects like Dishonored and Prey. Players found Redfall to be terrible in many respects: poor art design, very generic and clunky gameplay, numerous bugs, bad balance, a forced co-op focus, and more.
Within a week of release, the peak online presence dropped from 6,125 players to a maximum of 100. This marked an absolute failure, attributed to staff departures, an unclear game concept, technical incompletion, and a forced development direction towards microtransactions.
Saints Row
The attempt by Volition to revive their iconic Saints Row franchise also failed, leading to the studio's closure. The first signs that the game was heading in the wrong direction were evident during its presentation at Gamescom 2021.
Critics confirmed the failed reboot with early reviews that found almost nothing interesting or good in the game that wasn't already present in dozens of other open-world projects. Everything was quite standard, but also bad.
Players felt the same way. The peak online presence was only 4,147 players, with an average rating of 58% positive reviews. Some elements may have been interesting to some, but the game failed to hold their attention for long.
Skull and Bones
Ubisoft marketed Skull and Bones as the world’s first AAAA project with a $70 price tag. However, the game sold worse than Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, with a peak online presence of just 2,615 players.
The gameplay was supposed to center on naval battles in the style of Black Flag, but it turned out to be much worse, with much of the player's time spent on boring resource grinding to upgrade their ship.
The game was mainly disliked for its uninteresting gameplay and poor performance, even on powerful computers. The graphics and landscapes were beautiful, but this was not enough to win over the public for a game that claimed to be of AAAA scale.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum
The runner-up in our ranking of the most failed games of recent years is The Lord of the Rings: Gollum. This game had good potential to become a great adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's universe, but something went wrong.
The developer, Daedalic Entertainment, previously specialized in point-and-click games, and the Gollum project was a completely new level for them, requiring a different approach. However, their lack of experience showed.
The main reasons for the game's failure included its terrible technical state: poor graphics, clunky controls, frame rate drops; outdated gameplay; and a story that had no real impact. The game received negative reviews, with a peak online presence of 758 players on Steam, marking a colossal failure for the studio.
Immortals of Aveum
The magic shooter Immortals of Aveum wasn’t far behind The Lord of the Rings: Gollum. After its release, the game’s peak online presence was 751 players, which has not increased since.
The CEO of Ascendant Studios attributes the game’s failure to poor timing. Immortals of Aveum was released almost simultaneously with projects like Armored Core VI and the also unsuccessful Starfield, which was the subject of much discussion. Meanwhile, the hype around Baldur’s Gate 3 overshadowed the game from Ascendant Studios.
Players and critics noted that the game had a decent combat system, interesting design, and good graphics. However, there needed to be more clarity with narrative, characters, and technical issues. Overall, the game wasn’t worse than other failed projects mentioned, so perhaps it was just unlucky with its release date, which the developers couldn’t change.
Concord
The top contender for the title of the most failed game in recent years is Concord by Firewalk Studios. The project was released on August 23, 2024, with a peak online presence of 697 players, the lowest among all AAA games on this list and projects in general.
The gaming community is divided on the main reasons for Concord’s massive failure. Some believe the main problem is the presence of LGBTQ+ characters, with their "quirky" designs and pronouns.
Others argue that the issue lies in the $40 price tag for a service-based shooter. Games with such monetization models are usually free, and developers earn revenue through various microtransactions. It becomes too much when a player has to pay for both the game and the content.
Finally, some argue that the market is oversaturated with hero shooters that don’t bring anything new to the industry. The release of another such game is like launching a new platform like YouTube, which no one will switch to because Google’s platform already meets everyone’s needs.
Conclusion
As we can see, some developers, in their pursuit of easy money and grand claims, begin to "sink" due to their lack of a clear strategy and vision for game development. This leads to failures, the loss of massive amounts of money, and studio closures, which negatively impacts the videogame industry.
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