author: Patryk Fijalkowski
Good Games, Bad Launches - 11 Titles With Flunked Releases
My disappointment is immeasurable. You sure know that feeling, when a game you've been anticipating for years is released and it turns out a complete flop. Today, we're talking about cases of great games that were almost unplayable upon release.
Table of Contents
- Good Games, Bad Launches - 11 Titles With Flunked Releases
- Batman Arkham Knight
- Star Wars Battlefront II
- GTA Online
Batman Arkham Knight
- Released in: 2015
- Who flunked it? Warner Bros. and Rocksteady
- Main issue: PC version had huge optimization problems and was unplayable for many people
- How did it end? The PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight was back on sale after four months in much better condition. Batman remained the Dark Knight. Gotham survived. A new day came... But the bad taste remained.
The culmination of the Arkham trilogy was a real humiliation, mostly related to the PC version of the game. For many, it was simply unplayable. While on consoles Arkham Knight ran like a dream, winning the hearts of players and reviewers on the spot, on PC, the performance problems made it very difficult – and often even impossible – to enjoy the adventures of Batman. At first, Warner Bros. advised gamers to... upgrade their GPUs. Brilliant, right? Quickly, however, the problems of the PC Batman proved so severe that the game was withdrawn from sale. Players were also admitted refunds on Steam, bypassing the standard return policy.
Adding fuel to the fire were reports that the publisher was aware of the technical condition of the PC edition months before the release. Testers claimed anonymously that they reported hundreds of bugs affecting the performance. Unfortunately, the corporate decided that Batman: Arkham Knight could not afford to delay its June release. Perhaps they were afraid of the harsh competition that ensues almost each fall?
Either way, Warner Bros. probably believed that the problem would be minor and would somehow go away, and that standard patches would take care of it. Well, they didn't. The game didn't go back on sale until late October 2015, and then, there were still complaints about technical problems. In the end, the game came out on top, but like we said – the bad taste lingered, and Rocksteady will only be able to regain its reputation with the release of its next big game.
Driveclub
- Released in: 2014
- Who flunked it? Evolution Studios
- Main issue: great difficulties in getting to play online (in a primarily online game); lack of promised PS Plus edition.
- How did it end? The servers stabilized, but the version for PS Plus subscribers didn't come out until more than six months after the release of the standard edition. Eventually, Sony first shut down Evolution's studio and then announced that the game's servers would be shut down.
Driveclub's bad streak had already started before its release. The game from Evolution Studios' was supposed to be a PlayStation 4 launch title. In the end, however, it scored a nearly year-long delay. It would seem that an additional eleven months of production would ensure that players would at least get a polished product... Unfortunately, Driveclub 's launch was a bit of a disaster.
Again, a game that relied primarily on the network module had great trouble connecting to servers, having players to play offline. Ironically, in a production named Driveclub you couldn't join clubs. The developers seemed genuinely surprised by this turn of events – with beta testing, everything seemed to work as expected. A company spokesperson even said to players, "We are as frustrated with server performance issues as you are."
As if that wasn't enough, alongside the full version of the game, a truncated edition was planned to be released simultaneously for PS Plus users. Unfortunately, due to aforementioned troubles, this release became postponed as well. As a result, this iteration was released more than six months late. So, it's safe to say that everything that could go wrong with Driveclub did go wrong. In a sad twist, these, after all decent racers were Evolution's last game before Sony decided to shut the studio down.
No Man's Sky
- Released in: 2016
- Who flunked it? Hello Games with emphasis on Sean Murray, the face of the project
- Main issue: The discrepancy between promises and the final outcome, as well as Hello Games' post-release silence
- How did it end? Surprisingly good! Hello Games has regained voice and taken to improving and developing the game. After nearly three years, No Man's Sky continues to receive updates and additions, offering a completely different, richer experience than on launch day.
The release of No Man's Sky will be remembered as one of the biggest disappointments and marketing blunders in the history of the industry. The game itself, however, was not completely bad – its problem was that it turned out mediocre and noticeably different than what we had been promised. After years of hearing hymns about the scale of the game, gamers expected a messiah, and got an ambitious, a bit undercooked indie instead.
Much of the general dissatisfaction also stemmed from the belief that the authors intentionally misled the audience. Some even said it outright that the creators were lying. No Man's Sky lacked numerous elements that had been prmised – either in advertising descriptions or shown explicitly on trailers – huge ships, multiplayer, flying just above the surface of planets... The list grew and grew, as gamers couldn't get over the massive disappointment they experienced with this production. Hello Games itself didn't help, either, and despite a wave of criticism in the first few months after the release, the company went completely silent.
No Man's Sky was even reported to the Advertising Standards Authority, the UK's fair advertising standards organization. After a two-month investigation, however, the ASA acquitted Hello Games on the grounds that the game has a procedurally-generated, infinite universe, so the screenshots on Steam may differ from what players see during their gameplay. Which itself is quite rich.
