From disastrous launches to complete studio meltdowns, the gaming industry has seen some huge failures over the last ten years. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the most spectacular flops of the last decade that left gamers frustrated, disappointed, and sometimes just plain confused.
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00:00Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the Top 30 Biggest Failures
00:08of the Video Game Industry from the past decade.
00:16Number 30.
00:17Overwatch 2
00:25The decision to pull the plug on the original Overwatch was a choice many players still hang
00:29over Blizzard's head today.
00:30The least Blizzard could have done for Overwatch 2 was deliver a couple of new maps with a
00:34smooth launch.
00:35Alas, that was not the case.
00:37Overwatch 2 launched with players being stuck in a queue for hours upon hours on end.
00:42Those who managed to get in at launch quickly discovered how meaningless this sequel truly
00:45was.
00:46Just about every map from the previous game was back, with nothing new outside of lighting.
00:51As soon as Blizzard cancelled their plans for story content, fans have begun turning
00:54their backs to a company they once adored.
00:59Number 29.
01:00Balan Wonderworld
01:01A new 3D platformer from the co-creator of Sonic the Hedgehog.
01:09That sentence alone should perk anyone's ears up, but by the time Balan Wonderworld launched,
01:14the writing was on the wall.
01:16What could have been a fun and quirky game themed around musical theatre turned into
01:19the video game form of Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark.
01:22Not only was the game a technical mess, it was overly simplified for a 3D platformer
01:26as it dedicated six separate buttons on the controller to one function and one function
01:31only.
01:32Your costume ability.
01:33Yeah, if you were to look up mundane in the dictionary, Balan Wonderworld would definitely
01:37be the example shown.
01:45Number 28.
01:46Battlefield 2042
01:53If you ever needed some kind of a clue as to how bad Battlefield 2042 was, imagine this.
01:59The game launched with no leaderboard.
02:01That should be enough to barely scratch the surface.
02:03The next hint would be to just watch all of the compilations of bugs and glitches that
02:07cropped up on YouTube at launch.
02:09Vehicle physics were completely tanked, online functionality was unstable, and the most trivial
02:14actions could possibly launch you to the top of the skybox.
02:17To be fair, Battlefield 2042 has supposedly gotten better at the time of this video, but
02:21considering the stellar quality behind previous games like Battlefield 1, this should have
02:25never been shipped.
02:34Number 27.
02:35Warcraft III Reforged
02:42Blizzard makes yet another appearance, and we aren't even a third of the way through
02:46this list.
02:47Warcraft III Reforged will forever be a humiliating stain on Blizzard's reputation for a variety
02:52of reasons.
02:53First, we were told that this remaster would feature new cutscenes that would further enhance
02:57the story.
02:58Well, that was a bold-faced lie as the cutscenes remained the exact same way as the original
03:02Warcraft III.
03:03Then, there was the EU-LA agreement that forced users to forfeit all creative ideas and concepts
03:08should they use Warcraft III to mod in additional game modes.
03:12Combine all of that with even more missing features that were advertised initially, and
03:16you have the biggest embarrassment in Blizzard's history so far.
03:26Number 26.
03:27The Lord of the Rings Golem aka Lord of Ring Golem
03:38Lord of Ring Golem will be forever remembered as one of the worst games ever seen in the
03:422020s.
03:43It was bad enough that no one had any confidence in the game being remotely decent in the weeks
03:47leading up to launch.
03:48The thing is that no one expected it to be so bad that a setting for hair physics was
03:52removed from the game completely for making the game unstable.
03:55No one expected it to be awful enough that you could repeat numerous bugs without fail.
03:59No one expected it to be so beyond broken that you could travel outside of the levels.
04:04And with a terrible public apology that was allegedly written by AI, Lord of Ring Golem
04:08caused way more migraines than it should have.
04:22Number 25.
04:23Unity's New Fees
04:25Unity was once regarded as one of the cheapest game engines to obtain and one of the easiest
04:30to use.
04:31Unity opened the door to game development for hundreds of thousands of would-be developers,
04:34allowing them to finally fulfill their dreams and put out their first games.
04:37Well, in September 2023, Unity decided it wanted more money from small-time devs and
04:43announced they would be implementing a new policy that would grant Unity additional royalties
04:47from indie devs, royalties based on the number of times a game was downloaded.
04:51Everyone hated that.
04:53Several indie developers, including some that are prominent in the space, would announce
04:56delays or even cancellations of their games as many scrambled to find a new game engine
05:01to work with.
05:02Unity would not cancel the policy until September 2024, a whole year after the backlash began.
05:08Number 24.
05:09Godfall
05:15Ever since Borderlands 2 launched in 2012, Gearbox has continuously failed in reaching
05:19that same level of success.
05:21Even after the bomb that was Battleborn, maybe a new IP could renew the faith from old fans.
05:26Not with Godfall.
05:27In the weeks leading up to its launch, Gearbox placed a bizarre emphasis on how good the
05:31endgame content is.
05:32Okay, but what about the game itself?
05:35Well, it was nothing special.
05:37Godfall was a melee-centric Borderlands, but with a world coated in lens flares and absurd
05:41sheen instead of scrap and flesh, and a better combat system, albeit for a few short minutes.
05:47So if the main game loop is boring, what reason is there to stick around long enough for a
05:51supposedly fun endgame?
05:52It's like advertising a moldy dinner while promising an exquisite dessert.
06:04Number 23.
06:05New Tales from the Borderlands
06:12So if Godfall is the bad dinner with a great dessert, then what does that make New Tales
06:16from the Borderlands?
06:18Imagine being handed the soggiest bag of fast food by a person with the brightest smile
06:22on their face.
06:23Once again, Gearbox tanks its reputation further by delivering a narrative-driven game with
06:27a poorly written story filled with unlikable and annoying characters.
06:32It was even more infuriating to witness, as Gearbox heavily banked on the nostalgia people
06:36have for the original Tales from the Borderlands, which was developed by Telltale Games.
06:40At some point, maybe we need to start discussing whether Borderlands 2 was just a flash in
06:44the pan for the franchise.
06:56Number 22.
06:57Skull & Bones
06:58When you're describing your upcoming game as being the first quadruple-A game, that's
07:06a red flag if your game is anything like Skull & Bones.
07:09After festering within Ubisoft for over a decade, we finally got to see if Sea of Thieves
07:13was about to have a competitor next door.
07:15That idea was extinguished within minutes after launch.
07:18Launching in February 2024, Skull & Bones turned out to be nothing more than an online
07:22open-world game with naval combat nowhere near as exciting or complex as Assassin's
07:27Creed 4 Black Flag.
07:29In October 2024, insiders leaked information about Ubisoft's financials, revealing that
07:33Skull & Bones had a budget between $650 million and $850 million.
07:38Those same insiders revealed that the game has been a major reason as to why Ubisoft's
07:41stock and revenue went on a rapid decline throughout 2024.
07:49Number 21.
07:51The Day Before
07:52It's very easy to label a bad game as a scam, but everything surrounding The Day Before
08:02looks, smells and tastes like a scam.
08:04The marketing was shady from the start, with possibly plagiarized trailers, frequent delays
08:08and a strangely hyperactive amount of attention the game was getting for what was essentially
08:12an online survival zombie game.
08:15It was even more bizarre when accusations of unpaid labor and asset flipping began to
08:19crop up.
08:20Once The Day Before launched, it was all over.
08:22It launched in a horribly unstable state and became the laughingstock of the internet.
08:26Developer Funtastic has tried getting a second and third game off the ground to no avail
08:32at the time of this video.
08:39Number 20.
08:40Mortal Kombat 11 and Mortal Kombat 1
08:51For a game that is graphically intense, one might be quick to say that Mortal Kombat should
08:55maybe not release on a Nintendo console.
08:57After all, Nintendo's consoles aren't really meant to be powerhouses like the PS5 or Xbox
09:02Series X.
09:03And yet, Warner Bros. had to make it so.
09:05Both MK11 and MK1 were the worst ports we had ever seen on a Switch with their creepy
09:10character models and severely compromised visuals.
09:13And can you believe Warner Bros. wanted $50 for these abysmal ports?
09:16Supposedly, they've gotten a little better over time, but still, why would anyone settle
09:21for this?
09:27Number 19.
09:28Grand Theft Auto Trilogy Definitive Edition
09:39Speaking of piss-poor work, the GTA PS2 Trilogy was done dirty in 2021.
09:43With the original games being delisted from all digital storefronts, Rockstar Games was
09:47ready to put out this bundle that put some spit and polish on GTA 3, San Andreas and
09:52Vice City.
09:53The only problem is there was a ton of spit and no polish.
09:56All three games were marred with visual glitches that occurred for weather effects, textures,
10:01signage and even some of the character models.
10:03Turns out developer Grove Street Games had used AI to upscale textures only for it to
10:08screw up most of them.
10:09Rockstar would take another three years to go in and fix the game themselves, releasing
10:13a patch in 2024.
10:15Grove Street Games had its name completely scrubbed from the credits by Rockstar, which
10:18Grove Street's CEO was not super thrilled over.
10:25Number 18 Fallout 76 Today, Fallout 76 enjoys a healthy playerbase
10:36that genuinely loves the way the game has turned out over the last several years.
10:40Time travel to 2018, though, and it was a completely different story.
10:43Fallout 76 launched with an endless sea of problems.
10:46Quests bugging out to the point of being unbeatable, connection issues causing cheap deaths, problems
10:51rendering objects as the player traveled.
10:53It was all a disaster.
10:55People were furious, thus giving Bethesda a more negative reputation than it used to
10:58have.
10:59At least they managed to turn F76 around today.
11:08Number 17 The PlayStation Classic
11:16Nintendo's success from the NES and SNES classic prompted Sony to do the same.
11:20Clearly, players would want a small digital library of classic PS1 titles.
11:24Well, as it turns out, if you implement a bunch of aspects players hate, the answer
11:29is a resounding no.
11:36The mediocre game lineup was an easy criticism pre-launch, but the poor user interface, subpar
11:41image and emulation quality, and an insane $100 price tag made the game lineup the least
11:47of our worries.
11:49and Sony has gone through several price cuts to get people to buy them.
11:57Number 16 Crackdown 3
12:07Our hearts go out to the developers of Crackdown 3.
12:09The latest entry of the hectic third-person shooter series went through four delays before
12:13finally releasing in February 2019.
12:16And they were all products of trying and failing to keep the hefty promises the game
12:20was supposed to deliver on.
12:25Fully destructible environments through the Xbox One's highly-touted cloud processing
12:29were harder to implement than they had originally thought.
12:32The delays, crowded release schedule and mediocre game design made Crackdown 3 sell pretty poorly.
12:38It didn't actually do much different from the original Crackdown, which was released
12:41in 2007.
12:43It's such a shame this was a failure given the importance riding on this title.
12:47The future is secure as long as the agency's threat dies.
12:52Number 15 Metal Gear Survive
13:01The first Metal Gear game without Hideo Kojima was always going to be met with serious scrutiny.
13:06Unfortunately for us, Konami dropped the ball pretty hard.
13:10None was the focus on stealth gameplay the series was known for.
13:13Instead, Survive was an action-survival game set in an alternate universe that tasked players
13:18with combating zombie-like creatures.
13:25If that doesn't convince you the tacked-on Metal Gear name was just a cash-grab, the
13:29inclusion of microtransactions should.
13:32The story and characters, which by the way had nothing to do with the iconic characters
13:36players know, were also met with fair criticism.
13:39Nevertheless, it underperformed, and it's a rather sour note as the so-far last installment
13:44of such a cherished series.
13:52Number 14 The Wii U
13:59While the Wii U had some great games, it was almost set up to fail from the very beginning.
14:04Revealed at E3 2011, Nintendo focused so heavily on the new controller that many didn't
14:09realize it was an entirely new console, and naming it after the popular Wii to sound like
14:13an add-on didn't really help.
14:21The console would struggle through mediocre third-party ports and a trickling of great
14:24first-party fare for five years.
14:27With nothing really new to draw players in, the Wii U was a colossal financial failure
14:31for Nintendo.
14:32At least this failure has a happy ending.
14:34It led to the inventive and highly successful Switch.
14:44Number 13 The PlayStation Vita
14:54Sony's handheld consoles were always going to be second fiddle to Nintendo's lineup,
14:58but things didn't go well for the Vita at all.
15:01From the moment the system launched, sales were very slow and never had the chance to
15:05take off.
15:06This was attributed to the fact that there weren't that many must-own exclusives on
15:10the system, and its multimedia features were being bested by smartphones at the time.
15:18Eventually, game development for the Vita ended mid-decade, with most of its exclusives
15:24being ported over to the PS4, and Sony quietly discontinuing the Vita in March 2019.
15:30Sadly, unlike the Wii U, there's no successor to the PS Vita in sight.
15:42Number 12 Mighty No. 9
15:51When it comes to Kickstarter campaigns for every incredible shovel knight, there are
15:54at least three like this.
15:57Mighty No. 9 was meant to be a spiritual successor to Mega Man, and even came from the Blue Bomber's
16:01artistic creator, Kaiji Inafune.
16:03Given the popularity of the Capcom franchise, Mighty No. 9 blew through all of its financial
16:07milestones incredibly quickly.
16:10After many delays, it was met with tremendous backlash from both players and critics.
16:21Underwhelming graphics, a bland story, and poor technical performance were all favorites
16:25to pick apart.
16:27Even those who backed the project reported receiving broken download codes and mismatched
16:31rewards.
16:32An overall disaster of a project, it didn't help that it received one of the worst launch
16:36trailers of all time.
16:41Number 11 No Man's Sky Launch
16:51When promoting a game, it's best to keep your promises in check.
16:54Hello Games learned this the hard way when they launched No Man's Sky in 2016.
16:59Players were ecstatic to explore a procedurally generated galaxy with their friends, discovering
17:03new planets and species.
17:13A victim of overhype and overselling, the title released without many of the promised
17:17functions.
17:18Multiplayer components and gameplay elements, such as those in terms of crafting resources
17:22and different planetary features, were absent from the game.
17:25This obviously sparked outrage from players sold on a certain experience.
17:29This failure to live up to expectations is something Hello Games has had to work very
17:33hard to fix with updates to the game.
17:36And the game is actually pretty good now.
17:42Number 10 Telltale Games
17:52Rest in peace.
17:53While they were around since 2005, Telltale Games earned fame by creating point-and-click
17:57games based on popular IPs.
18:00Their most successful being 2012's The Walking Dead, where tough choices made for engaging
18:04storytelling.
18:11But some of the most expensive costing franchises like Batman and Game of Thrones, combined
18:15with diminishing sales, meant they had to shut their doors in 2018.
18:19But that's not even the worst part.
18:21The worst part is how they went about it.
18:23With little notice, Telltale laid off 250 employees with no severance pay.
18:28What remains of the studio was purchased by LCG Entertainment in 2019, but this was an
18:33undeniably awful handling of an already bad situation.
18:43Number 9 Anthem
18:52BioWare's online sci-fi shooter would probably still make the list for its repetitive grind,
18:56generic story, and its failure to meet EA's selling expectations.
19:00But it's the behind-the-scenes story that makes things so much worse.
19:10Shortly after the game's release, Kotaku's Jason Schreier interviewed a group of anonymous
19:14BioWare employees, and the picture they painted was not pretty.
19:18Poor management, crunch, high stress, indecision about what the game should actually be, and
19:23a forced usage of EA's frostbite game engine all resulted in a half-baked title.
19:28Anthem is a tedious, unfun mess that doesn't live up to BioWare's standards.
19:39Number 8 Battleborn
19:48Gearbox's hero shooter is actually an okay game.
19:51It had enough variety in each character's gameplay mechanics to keep players interested.
19:55Its failure, however, can mostly be attributed to its launch window.
19:59It was released in May of 2016, mere weeks before the much more highly-anticipated Overwatch
20:04from Blizzard.
20:13Though they were similar, Overwatch was clearly the better game and had the larger marketing
20:17budget.
20:18Battleborn sold decently at launch, but player count dropped immensely after Overwatch released,
20:23with the PC count dropping from 12,000 to 1,000 just two months later.
20:28The game would eventually go free-to-play in 2017, but was shut down in January 2021.
20:34So long, Battleborn.
20:40Number 7 Radical Heights
20:47With the boom in popularity of battle royale games like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds
20:51and Fortnite, we've seen many studios follow the trend to varying degrees of success.
20:56At the very bottom of that list sits Radical Heights.
21:02Developer BossKey Productions likely thought this title would help them recuperate losses
21:06from their first game, the FPS Lawbreakers.
21:09However, Radical Heights, classified as being in extreme early access, was criticized for
21:14using unpolished assets and recycling gameplay from much more successful counterparts.
21:19It was obviously a slapdash combination of things BossKey thought would bring players
21:23in.
21:24Instead, it brought financial ruin to the studio as it closed shortly after.
21:28Cliff Blazinski, the studio's founder and creator of Gears of War, even retired after
21:32BossKey's closure.
21:42Number 6 Mass Effect Andromeda
21:50Things started going downhill at BioWare before Anthem.
21:53The fourth, and so far final, entry in the Mass Effect series was built by the company's
21:57Montreal team.
21:58Montreal represent?
22:00Just like with Anthem, though, Kotaku's Jason Schreier reported mismanagement issues.
22:04Goddammit, Montreal.
22:05Notably, the team was forced to use the Frostbite engine, which required them to build everything
22:10from the ground up.
22:11Many team members, especially those in leadership positions, would leave BioWare during the
22:15difficult production.
22:16Upon release, facial animations were a constant source of jokes from players.
22:25And a bevy of technical bugs and glitches made it frustrating to play.
22:28It was so bad that EA shut down BioWare Montreal as a result of the failure.
22:38Number 5 Babylon's Fall
22:46Square Enix's third attempt to break into the live service market required the help
22:49of Platinum Games, famed studio behind Bayonetta, Vanquish, and Madworld.
22:53However, neither studio seemed to be prepared for this endeavor, let alone capable of pulling
22:58it off.
22:59Babylon's Fall wound up being a game filled with corridors, unremarkable environments,
23:03and poorly explained mechanics.
23:04The game did not even last a year before it was shut down in February 2023, and it's
23:09part of the reason why some have become more skeptical of Platinum Games recently.
23:18Number 4 Redfall
23:28During the previews and marketing campaign, Redfall seemed like it could be a sleeper
23:31hit for Xbox.
23:32There weren't a ton of people excited for it, but Arkane Studios had prestige thanks
23:36to its efforts on the Dishonored games.
23:38Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
23:41Redfall became one of Xbox's biggest blunders in the brand's history.
23:44Not only did we get a dull open world, we got a world where the AI was insipidly stupid
23:49and wouldn't properly detect or react to the player.
23:52The fact players were required to create Bethesda accounts and have an online connection was
23:56equally aggravating.
23:57In the end, Arkane lost its branch in Austin, Texas, all future plans for Redfall were cancelled,
24:02and the game was preserved by allowing it to function offline.
24:11Number 3 Marvel's Avengers
24:19Before Babylon's Fall came Marvel's Avengers.
24:21This should have been an easy win for Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics, but when you have
24:25a studio built for single player games to design an online multiplayer title, things
24:29are gonna get ugly.
24:30What we got was a game where mashing one button to attack solves almost all of your problems,
24:35and the Avengers get to spend much of the game opening boxes for gear.
24:38Marvel's Avengers was delisted from digital storefronts as of 2023.
24:42Square Enix suffered a massive loss of more than $60 million, leading them to sell Crystal
24:46Dynamics to Embracer Group along with the Tomb Raider IP.
24:59Number 2 Suicide Squad – Kill The Justice League
25:13Yet another sad attempt at a live service, and once again, a publisher had its own single
25:17player game studio make a multiplayer online service title.
25:21No one other than Warner Bros. wanted an online shooter from Rocksteady.
25:24No one was asking for a Suicide Squad spinoff from the folks known for the Batman Arkham
25:29And yet, we somehow got one that was packed with a messy UI, a bland story, and a poor
25:33ending that only serves as an excuse for the live service element's inclusion.
25:37Suicide Squad – Kill The Justice League sold so abysmally that Warner Bros. blamed
25:41the game as the reason why they suddenly lost $200 million.
25:45Despite this, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav insists that WB Games will continue
25:50investing into live service games.
26:21Number 1 Concord
26:28Sony may as well have told Warner Bros. to hold their beer because Concord is the most
26:32prolific video game failure we've seen since E.T. on Atari.
26:36Sony burned $400 million in almost an instant when it saw Concord was floundering in development.
26:42Not only did they spend $200 million to acquire Firewalk Studios, they injected $200 million
26:46just for them to finish a standard PvP hero shooter.
26:49Developers were so uninterested that Sony pulled the game from sale and shut down the
26:52servers less than two weeks after launch.
26:55Firewalk Studios was shuttered in October 2024, and to think that Sony internally championed
27:00this game as the next Star Wars.
27:08Did you play any of these failures for yourself?
27:11Let us know down in the comments.
27:20Don't forget to like and subscribe!
27:21See you next time!