Top 10 Things Game Developers Regret Saying

Although "Ark: Survival Evolved" was generally well received, some players resented the way that the developer handled the release of the Scorched Earth expansion for the early access game. The negative backlash even ended up turning the game's overall review score on Steam from "mostly positive" to "mostly negative." In 2016, a player wrote a detailed post in the "Ark: Survival Evolved" Discord listing off all their issues with the game's newly-released expansion, a QA dev named Ben responded with a post of his own, pulling apart and belittling the player's criticisms before finishing with: "Your entire post screamed of rage because you are too cheap to pony up 20 dollars for a game worth $60 which we undercharged for in the first place.” Ben concluded by saying: “If you don't want to pay up, that's fine, we are not holding a gun to your head." The post blew up in Studio Wildcard's face and Rob would later apologize to fans via Reddit, explaining: "[I] took it personally and felt like my own efforts were completely unappreciated and undervalued.”

In 2016, "ORION: Prelude" was pulled from Steam after Activision launched a DMCA request alleging that "Orion: Prelude" included stolen weapon assets from COD: Black Ops 3 and Advanced Warfare. In response, a Trek Industries developer, David James, took to social media to refute the allegations. According to him, in lengthy posts to both Facebook and Steam, Activision was needlessly bullying an innocent indie company. However, Trek later backpedaled on this and admitted that the artwork had actually been stolen by a freelancer. Although the thief was eventually fired, the damage to Trek's reputation was significant, but they continued to support the game and somehow managed to right the ship after a disastrous launch.

In 2013, "Payday 2"'s Almir Listo took a stand against microtransactions, saying: "We've made it clear that Payday 2 will have no microtransactions whatsoever (shame on you if you thought otherwise!)" A pretty strong statement. Which is why it came as a shock when Overkill released the "black market" update in 2015, which allowed players to crack safes in order to claim loot drops. The problem was, that in order to crack the safes, gamers needed drills -- which cost $2.49 a pop. If there was still any doubt that this was pay-to-win, the safes contained skins with "stat boosts". After months of backlash, the developers made drills part of the random loot drop system but didn’t remove the ability to purchase them from the game.

After "No-Man's Sky" dropped an impressive trailer at E3 2015, some big promises were made. However, "No Man's Sky" did not live up to the hype, and many of the promises made by Hello Games' Sean Murray were disproven. Quickly. For example, streamers proved that you couldn't actually encounter other players on the day of release. Also, most of the more impressive creatures from the E3 demo were missing from the game, and what was there became the focus of derision, not wonder. Later patches fixed some of the problems and allowed interactions with other players -- but only as glowing, faceless orbs.

The beloved series "Dungeon Keeper" allows you to experience the narrative of good versus evil from the bad guy's perspective. So when EA released a "free-to-play" reboot full of aggressive microtransactions, it seemed that they had taken the game's premise to heart. The furor from fans at this predatory tactic ended up killing its developer, Mythic Entertainment. And although EA's president would later apologize and admit that what they did was wrong, Frank Gibeau, then executive vice president of EA Mobile, had a much more passive-aggressive stance. During an interview with GamesIndustry International, he said that he felt that EA's biggest mistake with "Dungeon Keeper" was "innovating too much."

In 1998, when the Sega Dreamcast was the next big thing, then president of Sega USA, Bernie Stolar, offered his opinion on why he didn't think DVDs had a future in game consoles. "Many people have asked us why we have not built a DVD into Dreamcast. It's a simple question of economics. History tells us that most consumers will not buy a $350 video game machine." Not only did history prove Bernie hilariously wrong about DVDs -- people who bought the PS2 and Xbox actually SAVED money from not having to buy a DVD player separately -- but his opinion that gamers would not buy a $350 console is now laughable. The Dreamcast was Sega's last attempt at a console.

Lorne Lanning is well respected amongst gamers due to the fact he created the beloved "Oddworld" franchise. But when Lorne appeared on "Kinda Funny" he ended up ripping into Nintendo for their shoddy hardware and lack of third-party support. Although these statements could be chalked up to just a simple opinion, Lorne's other assertion, that Nintendo's thinking had something to do with the death of its ex-president, Satoru Iwata, could not. Iwata had actually passed away from cancer. Lanning later apologized for how this quote was phrased. However, the full interview is still quite scathing about Nintendo's Switch, leaving many wondering if Lanning's criticisms arise from how “Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty!” performed on the Wii-U.

Before we reveal our number 1 entry, here are a few honorable mentions:

Masahiro Sakurai on fan complaints of “Smash Bros.”

Peter Molyneux on the Infamous “Fable” Acorn

Jack Tretton on “KillZone 2” Footage

Microtransactions: gamers don't like them. So when EA was called out for filling "Star Wars: Battlefront II" with them, and including a "cool down" throttling any perks earned by simply playing the game, EA responded to fan concerns in a Reddit post, claiming that their intent was "to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes." Unfortunately for EA, that post went on to become the most downvoted in Reddit history. As if that wasn't bad enough, Mat Everett, EA's Community Manager, later added fuel to the fire by complaining about "arm-chair developers" on Twitter. He later deleted the tweet, but not before the damage was done.