7 Disastrous Launches That Games Will Never Live Down 

At least the governments did something right. Hopefully, they'll bring the ChiComs to the international tribunals for Uighur, the South China Sea, the COVID-19 epidemic, rampant censorship, Hong Kong, and so much more.

I thoroughly despise loot boxes and blind bags/blind boxes. Just charge me more for things I can see, dammit. I'm sometimes tempted by cute figurines, but then I get angry about blind bags all over again. I might even be willing to pay for several of them to get what I want, but ending up with six duplicates I don't want drives me nuts. What should I do with them? Throw them out? I bought them just to throw away? Bullshit. And why should I buy and sit through the stupid opening animation of digital blind bags full of garbage consumables to get a cool costume? No.

Gacha games are like that these days, praying on gambling addiction for profit. There should definitely be regulations on that stuff.

James Stephanie Sterling's "Surprise Mechanic" character was probably the funniest thing I've ever seen them do.

@@michaelandreipalon359 I wouldn’t hold my breath

NMS is a complete blast to play through nowadays, honestly

Honestly, huge props to them for sticking with it and realizing their vision.

@@Larcona_ They still shouldn't have released it in that state regardless. They shouldn't get bonus points for doing the work they should have already done, and also promised to do. Do you all not remember what their excuse was for the sorry state at launch? They expected the game to be more niche, they didn't expect millions of people to play it. They expected to be able to fuck over a small group of gamers by promising them content that wasn't ever going to be implemented. The fact that they stuck around and fixed it is good, but it should break them even not earn them praise.

@@NottherealLucifer it wasn't hello games decision. It was Sony's to release and Hello games had to oblidge.

@@samtepal3892 Sony didn't tell Sean Murray to lie about multiple features in the game right up through launch. Hello Games have done a great job fixing and expanding on the game, but Sony has nothing to do with Murray deceiving people.

As I stated above -- I played Mass Effect: Andromeda a year after launch, and was quite pleased to discover that it was actually an excellent game, though it's story was a bit predictable. The big problem with the story was that it withheld a lot of story resolution because it was supposed to be part 1 of a 3-part story, and thus the story at endgame was not very satisfying.

On the plus side for Mass Effect, Cyberpunk 2077 will help mitigate that launch disaster.

How ironic is that, huh?

Does that count as a "dishonourable mention" then?

I want that shirt, honestly. And the Quarian ark DLC, dammit

It is.

YES! I love that too. Unity is probably one of my favorite ACs anyway because of the setting. The story was bleh, but I loved the people you meet too.

@@MarySunshine25 i like the story, except how they killed off arnos love interest

Mine is that Ubisoft was giving the game out for free after the Notre Dame fire.

@@NeoSaturos123 i remember that, honestly thought that was really cool

So adorable.

I think we deserve an entire rendition from Mike. Its the only way to be sure.

@The Gaming Meta The second example must cease to exist!

And it thankfully is getting rid of the Jackbox circus music. :)

I was legitimately disappointed he stopped singing ngl I wanted to duet with him

This deserves more upvotes.

Wow, I never knew that so thanks, it just shows you can learn new things every day no matter how old you are.

Oh man, I'd forgotten. Thanks for this reminder.

_What?!_

Everyone should be entitled to own a self protection device,.. Including Grandma's! 😉

@@BennyGoId Thanks, but I never said that it did! Do you not agree with granny owning a PPD(?) ..Or do you just have nothing to contribute... other than pointing out typos?

@@BennyGoId The topic change from spelling correction to political correctness is the weirdest I recall ever seeing, and I've been on the Internet for a fair amount of time.

Apparently he gave an interview when some group dug up the landfill to find the cartridges and made a documentary on it. They really screwed him over, five weeks to make a hot game like that.

Growing up I had a copy of ET that didn't make it to the landfill. I can honestly say that is one of the worst games I ever played and I had a fair amount on the Atari.

the way i’m genuinely so proud of the ONE GUY who made et. for atari? y’all what the fuck. for one man in the year of 1983, over the course of five weeks? high fuckin praise, i need him to receive a medal of some kind,

Yeah. Much of the video games industry came from people quitting Atari, where the owners famously treated programmers much the same as they treated their equipment. And in that era, you had to sneak in an Easter egg to get a credit in the game at all.

Number 2 especially

I most definitely wanna see the second one.

I’m adding my vote for number 2 as well

The 2nd one is a good idea

OK, since the majority is with the second vote, who are the examples for the morally debatable heroes?

The explosive rubber duck and an eternally unfinished Dark Souls save file are the first DLC.

Should have got the deluxe edition. Mine arrived pre-exploded with some pretty sweet concept art

Really? If you buy the platinum edition, you get a sweet Mike figurine that you can paint yourself. Still no game, though. Unfortunately.

I suppose that will work like a whale oiled machine..!

I think you're supposed to have a VR system, but you can't *use* the VR system for it, you have to instead use a SNES controller, but put the game into an Xbox 360, and plug the VR into that.

Same 🤣

Patching them out was a travesty.

Our nerdy teacher once used it in a lesson about the importance of proofreading XD. That was a fun day

lmao you could argue the same right now for Destiny 2 actually

Only coz its the end of a season. At least doughts are only weeks instead of months now

That's still nothing compared to Anthem's complete lack of content and endgame. Anthem was like D1 where the endgame is only 3 Nightfalls.

Sorry, EDIT: *D1* wasn't disastrous tho, it sold well enough, still got a successful sequel, and was never BROKEN gameplay wise (like CP77), just every-otherwise. lol

@@youindeedsuck323 Datto said it perfectly. There's actually a lot of things to do but none of it matters

The fact that our response sent a shockwave all the way up the corporate ladder actually gives me a bit of hope.

I mean they've even done studies on the predatory nature of microtransactions. I can only hope that one day things will be different in a good way. But I already see people shrugging off crappy microtransactions and fear it's only a matter of time before a game company can get away with what EA tried to with Battlefront 2.

@@moonlitxangel5771 We did make enough noise to get national governments involved, hopefully people will continue to fight against shit like this.

@@Larcona_ Yeah EA's Loot Box System was Goddamn Awful to the point even My Uncle like a Tryhard Gambler said "This shit is beyond Gambling why the fuck you play this? Japanese Pachinko and Japanese Gacha System in Game is still better ffs!" Well that said Something.

@@Azazantei From what I've heard, there are actually regulations in Japan that limit lootbox mechanics. The result usually being that every lootbox comes with a secondary currency that can be used to buy anything from that lootbox's drop-table.

They'd need to actually improve before you can just call it a launch disaster

@@mohsin90ish good point

They were functioning just boring

Anthem was a totally unplayable mess. I played Avengers solo and only had like five crashes the whole time I was playing it. Anthem would crash like 9/10 times for the first few months every time you started a mission. Ffs Avengers was like 200 times more stable than Cyberpunk but it gets a break because those people made a single good Witcher game years ago.

@@theoutsiderjess4869 Some of the games on this list were functionally sound just controversial. Anthem would certainly fit squarely into that hole given how much of its development and release was plagued by controversies - like the accusations of widespread crunch and stress casualties, or the accidental loot drop rate increases that exposed how rigged the game's grind mechanics were. Even BioWare had to admit the launch was way worse than they'd expected.

Their issue is that they put out an unfinished beta as their launch product. Should've just called it early access.

This made me sad! It was fun to hate them during the launch and see how low they can fall! (Not to mention I never liked No Man's Sky when it was first announced, since I don't like space games at all, and it's entertaining to see a game you hate crash and burn!)

@@skimshady510 That could be said about several game-releases, but I think Hello Games deserves some slack, as they where an indie-studio who got dragged into the big-leagues way to fast and got caught up in everything, making it difficult to do such a thing without upsetting Sony. They deserve criticism, but they at least made up for their broken promises in a way few other have done.

@@jinhunterslay1638 So you want a game to crash and burn just from the mere fact that you hate the entire genre? Interesting view considering you can simply ignore its existence. (I know it's late but nonetheless)

Uhhh if they really cared they wouldn't charge $60 for what is at best a space exploration base builder. Not to mention most people had to buy it twice because it was so awful at launch it was returned in droves and now that it's fixed they're still charging full price. Definitely not what I would call the most caring developers

As I stated above -- I played Mass Effect: Andromeda a year after launch, and was quite pleased to discover that it was actually an excellent game, though it's story was a bit predictable. The big problem with the story was that it withheld a lot of story resolution because it was supposed to be part 1 of a 3-part story, and thus the story at endgame was not very satisfying.

It kind of got a "dishonourable mention", due to Mike's shirt.

@@Zayphar If I remember right, I even teared up slightly at the end when all the people you aided along the way come to help you out. I'm a sucker for "unexpected heroes arrive when all seems lost" moments though.

@@Zayphar we are talkimg about horrible launches not if you enjoyed it a year later

@@Zayphar 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

@ESparda A.K.A.悪魔の死神 more like a lifestyle

My life is an ever-continuing episode of The A-Team. You get used to it.

Are you saying when you were born your parents thought it was a disastrous launch? Ouch

It's good, but the main story is really short and *good lord!* the amount of collectibles.

The only assassin's creed game I've played are AC Blackflag and AC Rouge, and now I want all of the games.

It's just another example of releasing too early. Little extra time took it from a joke to a good game. Just like Cyberpunk, few extra months would change it from worst to maybe one of the best titles, but they botched it. Greed>Gameplay

Yeah the gameplay of Unity (especially the parkour & stealth) is the best in the franchise, shame about the buggy launch

Gonna be honest. I despise AC unity. I did a year where I just played and 100 percented every assassin creed up to and including origins in a row and AC unity was by far the most frustrating and one I least enjoyed. Whilst it does have redeeming qualities (particularly the return to the one big city gameplay) I found it extremely unfun and hated the story.

Don't talk about disco like that

Oh, disco never died. It just sorta went undercover and then gradually resurfaced, sometimes in the oddest of places. (I may never get over hearing Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" -- which I like, mind you, but which is definitely disco -- on the same alternative radio station that pretty much launched grunge.)

Alright, let’s not panic! at the disco

Hey, disco is way better than that game, and yes, it's getting a well deserved revival these days!

I so wanted that game to succeed. I was looking for a different game to play opposite of destiny 2 so I bought it along with all my friends and was sorely disappointed

Yep, he went to the Overlook later and it caught fire. Poor man

Few days ago I was reading about a armored car robbery that happened in ‘81, this guard Joseph Trombino was shot several times nearly severing his arm and I’ll let Wikipedia pick it up from there “Trombino survived his injuries, and continued to work for the Brink's company for the next 20 years; he was almost killed in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and eventually was killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks while making a delivery in the World Trade Center North Tower.”

@@dmcgee3 Nice story and all, but... The hell are you doing here, Curufinwë?

@@dmcgee3 Wait, is this true?! If so, that man just can't die easily, huh.

@@dmcgee3 Oh wow, 3rd time unlucky.

Indeed. Which is impressive, considering it was a Fallout game, containing essentially no Fallout.

Indeed. One of the gaming blunders that has most people in panic every time anything vaguely related comes up.

Aht was shite mate

(canned booing and thrown tomatoes ensue)

To quote andy: BOOOOOOO!

Maybe but at least you expect that from a game headed by Peter Molyneux

It’s definitely not what was promised but once you get past that let down, the Fable games are all very good and unique in their own way, but Fable: The Lost Chapters will always have my heart over the other 2 (we don’t talk about Fable Journeys)

The game is cool but the producer oversells it when advertising. Pretty much the entire gaming industry. They all make the same mistake. Build up the hype train, make it go faster... you know that train has to stop at some point, right? But they just make it go off the rails with false promises and then get crashed and burnt along with it. Not every game has to be advertised like it's a gift sent by god with 10.000 hours of playtime, featuring melee and ranged combat, farming, fishing, mining, bird watching, and some other sarcastic series of useless meaningless features that don't come to mind. People don't trust developers anymore because they just lie so damn much. Even the ones thought to be honest and dignified pull this crap on their customers. If you have already produced a good game, and describe your next game as-is, without overselling it, people will still flock to it. In fact you have a lot to gain from underselling the game. People will lose their minds over how good it is compared to the mediocre description you gave them, and it will create a bond of trust between the company and customers. Hype may be good short term, but awful long term. It will permanently damage any good will you had with your customers, and they don't buy your games with excitement anymore. Yes, the entire time I was writing this, CDPR was on my mind.

I heard every bad "rumor" (they were true) and kept up with the production. I bought it when it was on sale a a year or two ago, and it was worth that price. Anywho, you can hear bad information about a game and then just research the game and decide whether you want to buy it or not.

Just feels like a space version of Subnautica without the sense of danger or story. I bought it at launch and now again I've been disappointed twice

only if we can also have Jane punishing him for singing

+1 on both of these notions

I know I started in, and I sing almost exclusively off key.

@@annana6098 Same. I have a singing voice like nails down a chalkboard and I still sang along.

Why blame game from movie's bad success when movie itself is crap? First one was also crap.

@@vksasdgaming9472 Some people have a hard time believing that they might be either fully or partly at fault for something.

Now that you mention it, that was the first game in which I got to see an NPC's facial parts floating outside their head. My reaction was similar to Andy's in the video.

@@singmeastory6634 well, America was led by a man who literally never took responsibility for anything that went wrong.

@@jpkjnn6733 *long sigh* Yeah, I sadly know.

@Nolan Is Innocent its actually not that bad now. I enjoy it even though its not all that good a story

Or any chance of a sequel..... now as much as I’m looking forward to the remastered originals and wondering how they’re going to deal with ME3’s ending controversy for the 2nd time. I was really quietly looking forward to BioWare learning from the rushed bug riddled launch and building on this “universe”.

Agreed, was the game bad?:No. Did it have a terrible game launch?: Hell yes!

@@Red_Robin_Guitars I would rather have a sequel or at least a full remake of the trilogy. A remaster just feels cheap to me. We’re like two generations away from those games now.

I played Mass Effect: Andromeda a year after launch, and was quite pleased to discover that it was actually an excellent game, though it's story was a bit predictable. The big problem with the story was that it withheld a lot of story resolution because it was supposed to be part 1 of a 3-part story, and thus the story at endgame was not very satisfying.

All the TW games are an absolute mess at launch. Good thing is CA are quick to fix them!

That's the game that made me quite playing the series

That wasn't just a disastrous launch, but also a disastrous middle and end.

@The Gaming Meta aye

Andromeda was buggy, and aside from that pretty boring. I was hoping Anthem would restore my faith in Bioware but it definitely did the opposite. I genuinely don't care for Bioware's games anymore and am so relieved to hear they don't be working on the Kotor sequel that's being made.

It also had a pain in the ass first real mission with huge search area for a small thing to find. I’m still bitter I never got past it because there were four of them. This ends my rant

I gotta be honest, though. I played Battlefront 2 from launch and allways found the hate it got to be wildly overblown. And that was before the game pretty much made a 180° and became way better still.

I really hope Squadrons will have a far more superior sequel in the following years. Just imagine if they made the campaign more epic, interactive, and enjoyable.

@@michaelandreipalon359 I didn't get it because I only like story driven games, but from what I've heard of the mechanics, it would easily be able to sustain a full campaign. Although you'd probably need to add out of ship action to make things feel less passive. Even if it's just walking around and talking to people.

@@AbsolXGuardian True, and your out of ship idea does give me memories of Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader and Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike. Still, they better make sure the sequel has a strong singleplayer campaign. I already tried Project Wingman so to compensate, and believe me, it was pretty much worth it. Also, there's that game's soundtrack! Squadrons *should* have a unique and awesome soundtrack as well! You might want to check it out PW's soundtrack, it's really nice.

Oh yeah, I forgot that game even existed!

Oh, they better not mess up the upcoming Mass Effect: Legendary Edition.

Would be really hard to mess up a game that is already done. Just remastering the graphics engine.

@@sladeofriviatv Tell that to the Silent Hill HD Collection, the launch of Halo: The Master Chief Collection (it's fine now, though, apart from Combat Evolved Anniversary's insistence on using Gearbox's PC port), and Warcraft III: "Reforged".

Compared to these 7, Sim City doesn't seem so bad anymore. Still deserved, at least, an honorable mention.

Imagine a game being panned in 2021 for requiring internet connection to play, that seems to be the new standard sadly. To be fair i was livid at the time.

If BioWare fucks up dragon age 4 like they did with anthem I’ll literally blast them on every social media, the dragon age games are my all time favorites, I own basically every piece of dlc and even bought King Cailens armor for my Xbox avatar, I have such high hopes based on what we’ve seen so far and I just pray that EA keeps their big fat money hungry mitts off of it 🙄

@@sheilamyers1217 good luck with that. EA ruins everything it touches. Company should have been sued into oblivion for many many reasons. Absolutely garbage company.

I've watched a lot of videos comparing the different Sims games, and it astounds me how many things 2 had that were dropped from the others. But even during Sims 2, there were unofficial fan-made patches after expansions to fix all the crap EA broke. Iirc, the apartment life pack caused all vampires to commit suicide by having them go outside to pay their rent in the afternoon. There was a mod item I downloaded specifically to more easily free my Sims who somehow got stuck in a bed, and a bathtub I used because if I used anything else my Sims wouldn't stop bathing their toddler to feed her or let her sleep. I was really baffled by that one, I never had another family so obsessed with cleaning their child.

@@annana6098 Haha oh man feel that. Been playing since the first game, and 2 is bae honestly. But yeah, the broken shit was always there. Like not being able to delete sims or it corrupts the save game? But with all that, glitches and weird stuff included, it still feels like a full game. 4 just feels like... A shell? Like, very pretty don't get me wrong. Would kill for build mode too. But it's so...empty feeling. The non-stop child bathing is wild though xD *Sims*

And no one expected any problems? This is straight up foreshadowing

@@dragonlord3376 And he is still making games, the names of the games he worked on after War Z are: War Inc. Battlezone, Infestation: Survivor Stories and Outbreak New Dawn. All of these are essentially the same game. And also a woman named Lana Titov directed an War Z movie called War Z Day One. My best guess being that she's his wife.

@@MrFutago87 how is this person still finding work? He's like the f***ing mothman!

Damn, I tought final fantasy got that record

2021

Me too! 2020 had so many twists... We really need a continuation of the murder hornets!

But will it contain any singing content

I see what you did there

Only on the pc it was laggy

Came to say the same thing. Only on PC and both previous Arkham games had notoriously bad PC ports, so it wasn't a surprise to anyone except the people who bought it for PC.

Hopefully, Project Wingman should be here, and not only for its soundtrack.

It'll get delayed so by the time it releases it'll be called Mike simulator 2021

@@mullyboats It will be worth it

I cringed at the clip they included of that game's creator acting like he was proud of his accomplishment because people are still talking about his game.

​@@bdo7765 He's always been somewhat proud of it, given that he managed what he did in the short time frame. And I've heard it's actually a fun game after people patched out the bugs.

It made for a great Internet Historian video

Unpopular opinion: Dice games peaked with BF BC2, sure they made incremental improvements to the frostbite engine over time, but EA have also been increasingly EA in their meddling.

Yeah, and it took Mario to bring it back from the brink.

Except ET's quality wasn't strictly to blame: they mentioned Atari was banking on five million copies, but what they _didn't_ mention was that Atari hadn't even sold anywhere near that many consoles. Combined with other dumb decisions, a game simply poor enough that it suffered frequent returns(yes, this was an option at the time) would've destroyed Atari the same way - and even then it's questionable if they could've survived anything but the ultramassive hit they were banking on.

E.T. wasn't the actual cause of that though. For anyone who lived to remember the great video game crash, it was already happening well before E.T. the video game even came out. ET just became an easier target then the more complex explanation of what really happened.

Yeah kind of annoyed to see it listed here as if they haven't worked their asses off for 2+ years. Edit: Ok I hadn't watched the full section yet. I still don't think it belongs on this list but at least they DO mention that it's been actively developed since then.

No mans sky is far past is horrible launch. It’s basically a whole new game

I only EA Star Wars game I bought was Jedi Fallen Order.

I haven't bought an EA game since they desecrated the Dead Space franchise.

Agreed it reminded me of 3’s desolate and lonely wasteland in that regard