Top 22 Video Game Fails of Each Year (2000 - 2021)
2001: Dreamcast Dies
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Perhaps due to trying to platform ridiculous games like “Shenmue”, the Sega Dreamcast was confined to the annals of video game history in 2001 when it was unceremoniously discontinued barely three years after its original release in Japan. Considering the Sega Genesis’ lifespan was an entire decade, the Dreamcast’s meager three years look even more disappointing – though the Saturn didn’t fare much better. By the early 2000s, Sega just couldn’t hold its own in the hardware market against the wildly successful PS1 and PS2, not to mention the N64. In the end, Sega got out of the console wars and started focusing on software instead. Despite it being a solid machine, they were hundreds of millions of dollars in the red.
2002: No First Amendment
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Despite being disproved time and time again, the debate around whether violent video games are harmful rages on even today. But back in 2002, it was a different story; “GTA” had only just gained its wild popularity, and “Mortal Kombat” had existed for less than a decade. In this often-forgotten chapter of history, back in April 2002 US judge Stephen Limbaugh passed a ruling that video games were so dangerous they shouldn’t be protected under the First Amendment – in stark contrast to violent movies. Of course, this didn’t last for long and by 2011 there was far less censorship of violent games in America. Limbaugh failed to ban video games and today, nobody knows who he is.
2003: Nokia N-Gage
Before smartphones, if you wanted to play games on the go your only real option was a Gameboy. Of course, Gameboys were great and had plenty of outstanding titles, so this wasn’t much of an issue – unless you’re a cell phone company that desperately wants a piece of the portable gaming pie. That’s why Nokia released the N-Gage in 2003, a tiny handheld device that wasn’t just a games console; it also had an MP3 player built-in and some actual cell phone functionality, but it was still a total flop. It had a lot of good ideas, since the iPhone would later successfully combine all those features, but they just didn’t coalesce into a device anybody actually wanted.
2004: EA Spouse
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This was possibly the first-ever window we got into the crunch culture that remains rife in the gaming industry, and it was a massive fail on the part of EA. Writing anonymously at the time, Erin Hoffman wrote a long, public blog post detailing how her husband was working extremely long, grueling hours on “The Sims”, as he was stuck in the office for twelve-hour days six days a week. It was a disaster for EA, but ultimately their failure to have reasonable labor practices at the time led to the company being one of the better ones for crunch in the 2020s – albeit with plenty of other problems.
2005: “Conker: Live & Reloaded”
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This filthy 3D platformer hit the N64 in 2001, bringing with it foul language and dirty jokes – all of which served to make it iconic. However, shortly after making it, the golden days for Rare were over, and the company was acquired by Microsoft in 2002. What followed was a remaster on the original Xbox, one which is widely regarded as a deeply inferior product. Not only are the uncanny graphics downright unpleasant to look at, but much of its beloved toilet humor was bizarrely censored. You’d think that Nintendo would have been the company to tone down the game rather than Microsoft.
2006: “Ōkami”
Holding a bittersweet world record for being the best Game of the Year winner that almost nobody played, “Ōkami” was, and still is, an outstanding game. But commercially it was a flop of immense proportions, despite Capcom having high hopes for it – though they didn’t give the developers much room to breathe. It came right at the end of the PS2’s lifetime and hardly anybody bought it, though everyone who played it loved it. Ultimately, it was such a big failure that Capcom closed Clover Studio in 2007 after “God Hand” released, a similarly acclaimed game that also sold nearly no copies.
2007: Xbox 360 Extended Warranty
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The Xbox 360 was a great console that many people have fond memories of, but boy did it have a lot of issues. The base model of the console that launched in 2006 was plagued with technical difficulties, chief among them the infamous Red Ring of Death that could totally kill your console. In 2007, Microsoft had to finally admit that they’d failed with the base model 360 and extended the warranty to three years, also applying the warranty retroactively to every console that had yet been bought. It’s estimated that the 360’s problems cost Microsoft over a billion dollars to repair. The failure was letting it release in this condition.
2008: “Wii Music”
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It was “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band” for the Nintendo Wii – except, by 2008 there were already “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band” games for the Wii. Admittedly, “Wii Music” had the benefit of you not needing to get those expensive peripherals, but it still didn’t stack up against some other flagship Wii games like “Wii Sports” and “Wii Fit”. You were left waving your arm around to the vague rhythm of the music, or even just tapping the “A” button over and over again, to a selection of bizarre songs that ranged from out-of-copyright folk songs and nursery rhymes, to the theme songs for big Nintendo properties. It was a commercial failure.
2009: PSP Go
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In 2020, both Microsoft and Sony released digital-only versions of their flagship consoles. Digital storefronts are now prevalent and plenty of people no longer buy physical games. But in 2009, the market was totally different, and there was no place for Sony’s digital-only PSP Go. The PSP Go was a slimmer, lighter device but people didn’t like being stuck buying digital games – nor did they like the lack of UMD drive. So, nobody bought it, despite Sony slashing prices. The PSP Go put the writing on the wall for Sony’s portable consoles, as the PS Vita was also a failure – largely because of Sony not supporting it enough.
2010: “APB: All Points Bulletin”
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The year was 2010: David Jones, one of the original founders of Rockstar, had a vision, and that vision was “GTA Online”. Releasing a few years before the actual “GTA Online” would appear, “APB: All Points Bulletin” was an open-world MMO in the modern-day, setting it aside from other popular MMOs at the time like “World of Warcraft” and “Final Fantasy XI”. But the failure wasn’t just that the game was bad – though it was – it was that Realtime Worlds placed a review embargo on the game for an entire week after it came out. This meant that reviewers couldn’t warn players that the game was terrible. Despite costing $100 million, it didn’t last three months until getting shut down.
2011: The PlayStation Network Hack
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A massive data breach that took Sony years to recover from, in April 2011 77 million PSN accounts were breached by hackers with plenty of information stolen. Network hacks have happened to many companies over the years, but what makes the 2011 hack so notable was Sony’s terrible behavior. It didn’t take PSN down for days, and it wasn’t until the following month that the company finally confessed that personal information was compromised. Multiple lawsuits were brought against Sony for its failure to respond appropriately to the hack, and in the end, it tried to buy back consumer goodwill by giving away two free games and one free month of PS Plus. Thanks, Sony.
2012: The Wii U
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The strange middle child between the Wii and the Switch, it wasn’t clear back in 2012 exactly what Nintendo was aiming for. Of course, in hindsight, the Wii U makes a lot more sense as a step towards the Switch, but at the time it was a weird and baffling device. Marketed on the large gamepad that could be used to play games without the TV, the Wii U was even more underpowered compared to its contemporaries than the Wii was. It had some great first-party Nintendo games, sure, but nothing that would sell the console to people who weren’t already die-hard Nintendo fans. It was the biggest failure in the company’s history.
2013: Xbox One’s Pre-Launch
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The 360 had a rough time after it was released, but the Xbox One struggled as soon as it was announced. That was thanks to Microsoft’s draconian DRM policy; this would have prevented people from lending out game discs to their friends and would effectively destroy the second-hand game market. The backlash was so monumental that Microsoft backed down, but it wasn’t the only problem with the Xbox One. The console was being marketed as your one-stop entertainment hub, hence the confusing “One” name, and it was also going to be always online, which would mean anyone with an unstable internet connection would struggle to play.
2014: Digital Homicide Sues Jim Sterling
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Influential games critic Jim Sterling had Digital Homicide in their sights back in 2014 for releasing yet another piece of asset-recycled shovelware, “The Slaughtering Grounds”. “The Slaughtering Grounds” was widely regarded as terrible, with its Metacritic user score sitting at an impressive 1.1 out of 10. But Digital Homicide brought a lawsuit against Sterling for libel to the tune of $10 million – as well as another lawsuit against some anonymous Steam users for also poorly reviewing the game, that time for $18 million. Unsurprisingly, the lawsuit was eventually thrown out of court with prejudice, and Valve removed the studio from Steam.
2015: “Batman: Arkham Knight” on PC
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If you were playing on PS4 or Xbox One, then you probably had a great time with “Arkham Knight”; it was extremely fun and one of the most graphically impressive games ever made. But if you played it on PC then you probably struggled to play it at all because its performance was terrible. It was clear enough that Rocksteady didn’t care about the PC port of the game, and the issues were so pronounced that it was temporarily removed from Stream. Even playing it today, you’ll have to do a lot of fine-tuning to optimize it and prevent all those dropped frames and unpleasant stutters.
2016: “No Man’s Sky”
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Seeing potential in this universe-sized survival game, Sony put the weight of its marketing machine behind “No Man’s Sky”, promoting it to hell and back. But this turned out to be the last thing “No Man’s Sky” needed. Made by a small team, at launch the game did not live up to the wide scope of its promises. It was empty, difficult to play co-op, with no real aim beyond “reaching the center of the galaxy” – a feat which, if you accomplished it, just put you back to the beginning. The game has improved by leaps and bounds since 2016 thanks to constant updates and support, but its disastrous launch will never truly be forgotten.
2017: “Star Wars Battlefront II” Loot Boxes
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Microtransactions are annoying enough when they’re only cosmetic items, but what happens when you include actual, pay-to-win mechanics in your game at launch? Well, you suffer a monumental backlash just like EA did over “Battlefront II”, which was a horror show when it released in 2017. It took dozens of hours to unlock high-level characters in-game, while wealthier players could simply pay for loot boxes and earn those characters right away – which made the game easier for them. People were irate and the mechanics were finally removed in an update the following year, months after launch when many had already given up.
2018: “Fallout 76”
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The game itself has improved a lot, but it’s the situation beyond the game that has made “Fallout 76” such a beautiful disaster. First, like many Bethesda games, it launched in a broken state – but as it was an MMO, modders were unable to step in and fix the issues. Then there was the recalled collector’s edition with the moldy Power Armor helmets, and the “canvas” bags made of plastic. It was full of microtransactions despite costing $60; it didn’t have any human NPCs – just robots; its developer room was easily accessed leading to a black market of in-game items; Bethesda’s own forums doxxed people trying to get refunds, and it had an additional paid subscription for private servers.
2019: Google Stadia
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The Stadia service has definitely improved, but its launch was an overwhelming failure thanks to Google’s poor marketing. Stadia was a bizarre subscription-based product that would cost you $10 a month to access the service, with the actual games themselves commanding high prices on top. It wasn’t until April 2020 that Stadia’s free version went live, in which free-to-play games like “Destiny 2” could be accessed without paying a cent. But why it didn’t launch like this is anyone’s guess. However, it’s not clear how long Stadia has until Google kills it; in 2021 the only first-party Stadia studio was shuttered before it even made a single game.
2020: Scalping
The global semiconductor shortage began in 2020, exacerbated by the pandemic and by the soaring price of Bitcoin making high-end components desirable to miners. But it’s led to worldwide ramifications, particularly in the production of consoles. Even a year on from the launch of the PS5 and Xbox Series consoles, it’s still difficult to buy one, and there are still scalpers using bots to buy up machines and sell them for giant profit margins. Following the announcement of the Steam Deck in 2021, Valve put a lot of checks in place to try and prevent scalping, which further shows Sony and Microsoft’s failures in doing anything about the scalper situation the previous year.
2021: Apple vs. Epic
Originally, this lawsuit was brought in 2020; dissatisfied with Apple taking a 30% cut on “Fortnite’s” microtransactions, Epic tried to circumvent this, and Apple subsequently removed the game from the App Store for breach of contract. But it wasn’t until 2021 that we got the final ruling: both Apple and Epic were in the wrong, in a resounding – and hilarious – failure for both companies. Epic, itself a massive and extremely wealthy corporation, tried to position itself as a hero of the people against Apple and Google, a move everybody saw through. It was ruled that Apple had to allow external payment options, but that Epic had to pay Apple millions of dollars in compensation.
