Top 10 Games That Lost Publishers Millions
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VOICE OVER: Riccardo Tucci
WRITTEN BY: Kurt Hvorup
These are the games publishers wish they could forget! For this list we'll be looking at the game that lost their publishers millions of dollars such as Shenmue, Too Human, Daikatana, Homefront and Psychonauts. Did you actually purchase any of these games? Let us know in the comments!
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Top 10 Games That Lost Publishers Millions
Video games are a business, and businesses need money to keep the gears turning – or risk everything coming to a devastating halt. Welcome to WatchMojo and today we’re counting down our list of the top 10 Games That Lost Publishers Millions.
For this list, we’re looking at the games which proved most financially costly for their respective publishing companies. Be they major releases with a significant pop culture presence or smaller works that sought to gain a foothold, these works all fell short and caused serious damage on their way down.
So much anticipation, so little gain for public and developer alike. From the troubled and controversy-laden launch of Gearbox Software’s “Aliens: Colonial Marines”, there emerged rather alarming details about the production budget. Reports abounded of the developers racking up significant costs and needing to outsource the game, coupled with allegations that Gearbox had misused funds from publisher Sega meant to go towards “Colonial Marines”. Supposedly, the game didn’t even earn back its budget, with Gearbox co-founder Randy Pitchford claiming to have lost $10 million of his own money in the process.
The Walking Dead may have been a sucsessful venture for Telltale ... at least until they went belly up. But for publisher Starbreeze Publishing, their venture was an absolute disaster. Overkill Software’s take on The Walking Dead was a co-op first person shooter that was plagued with a troubled development, including the cancelation of it’s PS4 & Xbox One ports. But things didn’t fare better on the PC as technical problems and missing features lead to the game earning only an abysmal $3.4 Million in revenue on Steam. And in comparisson: the rights to “The Walking Dead” license was $10 million on its own. Forcing Starbreeze to go into administration, and it’s board reshuffeled.
How can something with substantial monetary backing and grounding in previously-successful open-world design go so wrong? It’s a question many people asked following the failure of“APB: All Points Bulletin”, an ambitious cops-versus-crooks MMO from Realtime Worlds. Its game budget having risen past the $100 million threshold, what “APB” needed was a large, satisfied player base and careful management of resources. Instead, the launch period was rife with technical shortcomings and limited engagement from people, leading to the game’s slow shutdown alongside the impending closure of Realtime. “APB” would eventually be purchased for a fraction of the original development cost and relaunched... as a free-to-play game.
No amount of driving skills can save you from poor game sales, that’s for certain. “Driv3r” spent over three years in development, racking up costs in the tens of millions on both production and marketing fronts. Coupled with fees tied to printing and shipping game discs to retailers, these costs made it so that “Driv3r” publisher Atari had a LOT to lose should their product falter. And falter it seemingly did; critics considered the game middling fare at best, with Atari’s fiscal report for the year suggesting poorer-than-anticipated sales. In the years to follow, layoffs ensued, while the “Driver” franchise and developer Reflections Interactive were both sold off, likely leaving a bitter taste behind.
When it hit shelves in April 2005, Double Fine Productions’ inaugural title “Psychonauts” seemed like a classic in the making. Its focus on exploring the eccentric dreamscapes of various characters was novel, its writing sharp and layered with emotional nuance, and its tone a careful balance between heartfelt drama and offbeat humour. Yet in spite of widespread praise the game still faltered when it came to unit sales, with publisher Majesco going from a profit of about $18 million USD to a loss of the same amount by year’s end. With its budget said to have risen past $11 million, “Psychonauts” is a prime case study for how critical acclaim doesn’t always translate to big sales.
Unrestrained ambition, sloppy business practices, questionable use of resources – so much went wrong here. As a studio, Ion Storm held great promise when it set up shop in late 1996, commencing work almost immediately on a game project that looked set to break new ground in narrative and audio-visual design. This game, “Daikatana”, would spend just over three years in development limbo and rack up a bill of more than $40 million, getting bogged down in behind-the-scenes turmoil. We’d like to say that Ion Storm overcame the odds to launch their game in style, but alas “Daikatana” proved devastatingly costly to Ion Storm and their owner, Eidos.
So much for those trilogy plans. First conceived as a property for the Sony PlayStation, “Too Human” spent about a decade shuffled from console to console and undergoing multiple shifts in design. Its developer Silicon Knights would accrue a budget of between 60 and 100 million dollars – a portion of which was contributed by final publisher Microsoft Game Studios. With hype appearing to have been cultivated thanks to the game’s widely played demo, “Too Human” launched in 2008... and fell flat on its face. Selling under 1 million copies, the game was eventually pulled from digital and physical store fronts per a court order, with Silicon Knights closing up shop in 2014.
A lot was already going wrong for THQ, but this failure definitely didn’t help matters. Known for having had a troubled production cycle – including sloppy management and misuse of funds – Kaos Studios’ “Homefront” went to retail in need of support. Funny enough, it managed to sell approximately one million copies in the first week despite ambivalence from much of the press. However, THQ would still end up losing millions of dollars and watching their stock drop, further pushing them towards their eventual bankruptcy come 2013. Worse still, the relatively poor performance of “Homefront” would lead to Kaos Studios being shut down that same year.
Once upon a time, Atari managed to attain quite the seemingly-profitable deal: permission to distribute Namco’s arcade titles for Atari-branded systems. To that end they tasked lone designer Tod Frye with porting “Pac-Man” to the 2600 console, getting it onto store shelves in March 1982. Initially sales seemed to suggest folks were quite pleased with the game… but not for long. Widely derided for its glitches and bizarre alterations to the core gameplay, Atari’s “Pac-Man” would soon find itself rejected by the public at large. Atari themselves would report more than $500 million in losses come 1983, having been stuck with millions of unsold or refunded copies of the game.
Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honourable – or in this case dishonourable – mentions:
“The Secret World” (2012)
“Brutal Legend” (2009)
“Okami” (2006)
“Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric” (2014)
Sometimes even important, groundbreaking works can also be disastrous flops. Case in point: “Shenmue” was built as a forward-looking game that’s remembered as the foundation for much of the open-world genre. It’s also known to have cost at least $47 million USD to produce, which it failed to recoup upon release despite the sale of more than 1 million copies. “Shenmue 2”, meanwhile, was developed for significantly less money yet still struggled in terms of sales. Shenmue couldn’t bolster Sega’s low Dreamcast sales, and the lack of existing Dreamcast owners made financial profitability a pipedream for the franchise.
Video games are a business, and businesses need money to keep the gears turning – or risk everything coming to a devastating halt. Welcome to WatchMojo and today we’re counting down our list of the top 10 Games That Lost Publishers Millions.
For this list, we’re looking at the games which proved most financially costly for their respective publishing companies. Be they major releases with a significant pop culture presence or smaller works that sought to gain a foothold, these works all fell short and caused serious damage on their way down.
#10: “Aliens: Colonial Marines” (2013)
So much anticipation, so little gain for public and developer alike. From the troubled and controversy-laden launch of Gearbox Software’s “Aliens: Colonial Marines”, there emerged rather alarming details about the production budget. Reports abounded of the developers racking up significant costs and needing to outsource the game, coupled with allegations that Gearbox had misused funds from publisher Sega meant to go towards “Colonial Marines”. Supposedly, the game didn’t even earn back its budget, with Gearbox co-founder Randy Pitchford claiming to have lost $10 million of his own money in the process.
#9: “Overkill’s The Walking Dead” (2018)
The Walking Dead may have been a sucsessful venture for Telltale ... at least until they went belly up. But for publisher Starbreeze Publishing, their venture was an absolute disaster. Overkill Software’s take on The Walking Dead was a co-op first person shooter that was plagued with a troubled development, including the cancelation of it’s PS4 & Xbox One ports. But things didn’t fare better on the PC as technical problems and missing features lead to the game earning only an abysmal $3.4 Million in revenue on Steam. And in comparisson: the rights to “The Walking Dead” license was $10 million on its own. Forcing Starbreeze to go into administration, and it’s board reshuffeled.
#8: “APB: All Points Bulletin” (2010)
How can something with substantial monetary backing and grounding in previously-successful open-world design go so wrong? It’s a question many people asked following the failure of“APB: All Points Bulletin”, an ambitious cops-versus-crooks MMO from Realtime Worlds. Its game budget having risen past the $100 million threshold, what “APB” needed was a large, satisfied player base and careful management of resources. Instead, the launch period was rife with technical shortcomings and limited engagement from people, leading to the game’s slow shutdown alongside the impending closure of Realtime. “APB” would eventually be purchased for a fraction of the original development cost and relaunched... as a free-to-play game.
#7: “Driv3r” (2004)
No amount of driving skills can save you from poor game sales, that’s for certain. “Driv3r” spent over three years in development, racking up costs in the tens of millions on both production and marketing fronts. Coupled with fees tied to printing and shipping game discs to retailers, these costs made it so that “Driv3r” publisher Atari had a LOT to lose should their product falter. And falter it seemingly did; critics considered the game middling fare at best, with Atari’s fiscal report for the year suggesting poorer-than-anticipated sales. In the years to follow, layoffs ensued, while the “Driver” franchise and developer Reflections Interactive were both sold off, likely leaving a bitter taste behind.
#6: “Psychonauts” (2005)
When it hit shelves in April 2005, Double Fine Productions’ inaugural title “Psychonauts” seemed like a classic in the making. Its focus on exploring the eccentric dreamscapes of various characters was novel, its writing sharp and layered with emotional nuance, and its tone a careful balance between heartfelt drama and offbeat humour. Yet in spite of widespread praise the game still faltered when it came to unit sales, with publisher Majesco going from a profit of about $18 million USD to a loss of the same amount by year’s end. With its budget said to have risen past $11 million, “Psychonauts” is a prime case study for how critical acclaim doesn’t always translate to big sales.
#5: “Daikatana” (2000)
Unrestrained ambition, sloppy business practices, questionable use of resources – so much went wrong here. As a studio, Ion Storm held great promise when it set up shop in late 1996, commencing work almost immediately on a game project that looked set to break new ground in narrative and audio-visual design. This game, “Daikatana”, would spend just over three years in development limbo and rack up a bill of more than $40 million, getting bogged down in behind-the-scenes turmoil. We’d like to say that Ion Storm overcame the odds to launch their game in style, but alas “Daikatana” proved devastatingly costly to Ion Storm and their owner, Eidos.
#4: “Too Human” (2008)
So much for those trilogy plans. First conceived as a property for the Sony PlayStation, “Too Human” spent about a decade shuffled from console to console and undergoing multiple shifts in design. Its developer Silicon Knights would accrue a budget of between 60 and 100 million dollars – a portion of which was contributed by final publisher Microsoft Game Studios. With hype appearing to have been cultivated thanks to the game’s widely played demo, “Too Human” launched in 2008... and fell flat on its face. Selling under 1 million copies, the game was eventually pulled from digital and physical store fronts per a court order, with Silicon Knights closing up shop in 2014.
#3: “Homefront” (2011)
A lot was already going wrong for THQ, but this failure definitely didn’t help matters. Known for having had a troubled production cycle – including sloppy management and misuse of funds – Kaos Studios’ “Homefront” went to retail in need of support. Funny enough, it managed to sell approximately one million copies in the first week despite ambivalence from much of the press. However, THQ would still end up losing millions of dollars and watching their stock drop, further pushing them towards their eventual bankruptcy come 2013. Worse still, the relatively poor performance of “Homefront” would lead to Kaos Studios being shut down that same year.
#2: “Pac-Man” [Atari 2600 version] (1982)
Once upon a time, Atari managed to attain quite the seemingly-profitable deal: permission to distribute Namco’s arcade titles for Atari-branded systems. To that end they tasked lone designer Tod Frye with porting “Pac-Man” to the 2600 console, getting it onto store shelves in March 1982. Initially sales seemed to suggest folks were quite pleased with the game… but not for long. Widely derided for its glitches and bizarre alterations to the core gameplay, Atari’s “Pac-Man” would soon find itself rejected by the public at large. Atari themselves would report more than $500 million in losses come 1983, having been stuck with millions of unsold or refunded copies of the game.
Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honourable – or in this case dishonourable – mentions:
“The Secret World” (2012)
“Brutal Legend” (2009)
“Okami” (2006)
“Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric” (2014)
#1: “Shenmue” and “Shenmue II” (2000-02)
Sometimes even important, groundbreaking works can also be disastrous flops. Case in point: “Shenmue” was built as a forward-looking game that’s remembered as the foundation for much of the open-world genre. It’s also known to have cost at least $47 million USD to produce, which it failed to recoup upon release despite the sale of more than 1 million copies. “Shenmue 2”, meanwhile, was developed for significantly less money yet still struggled in terms of sales. Shenmue couldn’t bolster Sega’s low Dreamcast sales, and the lack of existing Dreamcast owners made financial profitability a pipedream for the franchise.
