Top 10 Biggest Gaming Failures of the 2010s
In a matter of two months, Bethesda has pulled some of the most fraudulent and illegal acts in the history of gaming and yet somehow still got away with it. Executive producer at Bethesda, Todd Howard, promised so many game-changing features for Fallout 76, yet in the end, Fallout 76 was not only a failure, but it was also one of the worst games ever made.
Thousands of bugs and exploits, boring repetitive gameplay, laughable visuals, and completely devoid of anything Todd promised at E3 2018. This entire game was falsely advertised, so there's your first illegal act. Let's also mention the canvas bag that was sold with the $200 edition of the game, yet was released as a cheap nylon bag. There's your second illegal act. Oh, and people also found out that Bethesda gave those canvas bags to online influencers. There's your third illegal act.
Let's also not forget the Nuka Dark Rum bottle merchandise that didn't resemble what was shown in the marketing, which is false advertising. There's your fourth illegal act. Add microtransaction influence, irresponsible customer service, unorganized developer exploits, randomized player banning, and the list goes on. Yet, there has been no justice. Bethesda has not been sued or prosecuted for several illegal acts involving this game, which also means they had to pull another illegal act just to weasel their way out of it!
Now, with a bill set to ban microtransactions, Bethesda, EA, and Activision are desperately fighting against it. We need to show these corrupt companies that we cannot just let them have their way with us. Action needs to be taken.
Many of you may remember the Ouya. I definitely do. It was a new console project led by Julie Uhrman, who promised that the console would rewrite gaming history. Her explanation and announcements regarding the console piqued the masses' interest, so the Kickstarter campaign for the console was a massive success, earning 904% of their predicted earnings.
Unfortunately, the actual product was cheap and broken. Even online influencers couldn't defend it. Therefore, the product sales were lackluster, and it was considered a commercial failure.
Seeing people support a mess is saddening. This game is an overrated trash heap. I know I sound like a bandwagon hater, but it truly is this way. Look, this game is insanely mediocre. Call of Duty's worst games are preferable to this. Its childish nature and poor gameplay really aren't that good. I prefer real games.
I've been a gamer since I was metaphorically born and prefer almost anything over Fortnite.
A successful game, but I hate it.
I've had a personal experience with this console. It was something that nobody wanted. Xbox even tried forcing people to buy it with the Xbox One, but that plan ultimately failed as people said, "Okay then, we'll buy a PS4." The Xbox Kinect was one of the worst gaming consoles ever developed. I've used it, and it hardly ever worked correctly.
The idea behind it was fine, but the console was virtually unresponsive to anything you did with your body. With customer dissatisfaction towards the console, Microsoft eventually discontinued it.
So useless and unwanted that it received massive backlash from the community.
You may have seen it coming. This is, by far, one of the most controversial gaming meltdowns of the last decade. Electronic Arts, aka the gaming devil, made a dastardly attempt to lure Star Wars fans and even children into their greedy microtransaction and loot box schemes.
Fortunately, instead of a majority of players buying into it, players and journalists were outraged, leading to the microtransaction practice bombing. It became so bad that even Disney had to step in and stop EA from tarnishing the Star Wars name. A year later, the game has improved a ton, showing DICE's dedication to the game and also setting an example that we, as an audience, can make the gaming industry change if we just speak out against these corrupt practices.
James Romine and his developer team at Digital Homicide displayed one of the most shameful acts of cowardice and poor resolution in gaming history. In 2014, they released a game called The Slaughtering Grounds, and after receiving a well-deserved negative review from popular gaming journalist Jim Sterling, Digital Homicide decided to personally attack him.
They mocked his negative video review, forced it to be removed from YouTube, and even attempted to file a lawsuit against him, expecting a full apology in court. Romine also filed a lawsuit against 100 different Steam users for "personal injury." In this case, the so-called "injury" was criticism toward his awful game.
Valve wasn't having it and personally removed all Digital Homicide content from their site. They didn't want a developer who whined over criticism to be working with them. Romine's schemes naturally fell apart, and he soon dropped the lawsuit charges against Jim and the Steam users. He also agreed to never abuse copyright and fair use terms again.
Anthem is my pick because it's one of the few things on here I can call an out-and-out failure. Something like the Ouya and Duke Nukem Forever also really had no chance of success. One was a new console with terrible options for games in a market dominated by three pre-existing titans, the other was a game that had been in development hell for over ten years and couldn't hope to live up to the hype.
Anthem, however, had all the cards in its favor. EA published, Bioware developed, live service stuffed with microtransactions, and a high budget boasting a massive sci-fi world to explore, looter-shooting action, and free flying. A story that you could craft through your choices like Mass Effect. This was set to be a huge release.
It kind of was, but at the same time, it undersold, went through its own unique development hell, was marred by critics heavily, poorly balanced, not fun, and is currently bleeding players while the roadmap is delayed time and time again. Anthem is already a bomb, and it's only been out for a few months.
As much as I LOVED this console, I cannot deny the fact that it was a failure.
I'm ashamed to say I spent money on this.
As the follow-up to the most successful of the seventh-generation consoles, the Wii U had a lot riding on it. Unfortunately, the system never really took off.
It had some interesting ideas. The gamepad had its own screen, allowing for more than just the TV screen, but you always had to have the console on if you wanted to play it as a handheld. The library of games, while good, was rather limited, with only a few original games like Splatoon. Most of the popular Wii U games were later ported to the Nintendo Switch anyway.
The Switch, in my eyes, was everything the Wii U wanted to be and a much more well-realized console. Between that and the Wii, the Wii U was an awkward period in the middle and not one of Nintendo's success stories.
The PlayStation Vita was promised to be a huge mobile gaming platform from PlayStation, as they gave players the idea that games for the Vita would be played with console-standard quality on the go. This sounded like a good idea, and sales were promising at first, but consumers began to see problems with their new Vita. The most prominent issue was that the memory cards used in the device ran out of storage quickly, and buying a new one was extremely expensive.
As the years passed, fewer developers were producing games for the Vita, and a majority of attention was drawn towards the PS4. The release of the Nintendo Switch was the final nail in the coffin for the Vita, and on March 1, 2019, the device was discontinued.
APB was released in 2010 and was promised to be a new multiplayer experience expanding on the likes of the Grand Theft Auto series. The game was announced in 2005, but with development being pushed several times, it released five years later. Unfortunately, even with $100M in funding, APB felt like an incomplete game.
Consumers were disappointed, and with Realtime Worlds' financial struggle, the game was eventually shut down in only three months. It is considered to be one of the most expensive game failures of all time. The game was relaunched through a new company, and even though it did much better than its first launch and still exists today, it's still not the game people were hoping for, as it's receiving poor reviews on Steam.
No Man's Sky had a similar controversy to Fallout 76, as it was a falsely advertised game led by Sean Murray. At release, the game was met with widespread backlash from players who were cheated out of the promises made concerning the content of the game, most of which were nonexistent.
Although a few years have passed and No Man's Sky has massively improved with game-changing updates and patches, resulting in much more positive reviews from Steam players, we should never forget why Angry Joe placed this at #2 on his Top 10 Worst Games of 2016. False advertising is fraudulent, and regardless of the developer's ambition, this is something that should not be overlooked.
This game received massive backlash.
I remember being so excited for this. Yeah, really a letdown. I'm impressed they even finished it, but that's the best thing I can say.
Failed to kill Fortnite. They had one job.
I remember being quite excited for Battleborn. At the time, there was no other game I'd seen quite like it, until Overwatch jumped in. Battleborn's marketing received confused responses, as the visuals weren't well-received and the trailers failed to provide info on what the game was actually about. This was opposed to the cinematic trailers Blizzard released for Overwatch, which were heavily acclaimed by audiences and immediately caught their attention.
With Battleborn being overshadowed by Overwatch, 2K Games made another poor decision by simply stating it was a MOBA for consoles. This drove players away because, at the time, MOBAs were considered to be hardcore and time-consuming games that were not meant for consoles. While Overwatch was also a MOBA game, Blizzard never advertised it as that.
With both games being released at similar times, it came down to player choice. Even though Battleborn had a head start in the launch date, Overwatch jumped in with a free-to-play beta the following weekend. Why pay $60 for a game when you can play another game that's heavily similar for free?
People then turned a blind eye to Battleborn. Considering the lack of content in the game, former Battleborn players ran from it, and just a year later, the game was officially shut down, making it one of the biggest AAA game failures of all time.
