Video game development is one hell of a tough racket – developers can spend over half a decade working on their passion project, only to send it out into the world and have it be soundly rejected by critics and players alike.
This can obviously spell ruin for all but the most financially insulated of dev teams, and even if not, the moral blow of a years-in-the-making game being forgotten in short order must be absolutely crushing.
And that’s absolutely what happened with each of these 10 video games, which despite having some serious pedigree or a recognisable brand name behind them, all landed on the marketplace with a colossal thud of indifference.
It won’t surprise many to know upfront that this list is dominated by live service games, where developers evidently focused too much on how they could keep players engaged for the long haul rather than simply making a game that was fun to play in the moment.
Each of these game flatlined upon launch, failing to make a positive impression with the masses and basically falling off the face of the Earth within months, weeks, or perhaps even mere days…
Let’s kick things off with a game which, despite receiving its fair share of pre-release hype sank like a stone in near-record time.
Babylon’s Fall marked PlatinumGames’ attempt to break into the live service arena with this co-op multiplayer action-RPG, though even with the developer’s acclaimed prior work (Bayonetta, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Nier: Automata) and passionate fanbase, there was basically negative hype for this thing as release day approached.
The visuals looked dated, nothing about the gameplay seemed remarkable, and that’s precisely what critics said when they finally got their hands on it.
The critical pannings only exacerbated the staggering indifference about the game, which peaked with less than 1,200 concurrent players on Steam, and in less than two months that figure permanently dropped below 100 players.
PlatinumGames stuck it out for six months before announcing that they were cancelling support for a game that nobody was actually playing, and the servers were ultimately shut down less than a year after launch.Â
And so, with this being an online-only experience, there’s now no way for anybody to play Babylon’s Fall – not that anyone actually was even when the servers were up.