Worst Game Launch?

[Moonface]

In light of the recent releases of Fallout 76 and Red Dead Online and the negative response to their respective launches, I was wondering what everyone thinks is the worst launch a game has had.

I can't decide yet what one I think is the all time worst, but Fallout 76, No Man's Sky, and Star Wars Battlefront II all come to mind as games that had horrific launches, all for the same reason of failing to deliver on promises or repeating past mistakes but doing them even worse this time around.

[Maniakkid25]

Aliens: Colonial Marines comes to mind, considering I can think of at least one game critic (Jim Sterling) who is still mad about it and will never let that go. Also, was hilarious when it turned out that the crappy AI on the Aliens in that game was because of a typo in the game code.

[Karo]

I still find Battlefront 2 to be the worst launch mainly because of how scummy they were about the whole thing.

Or maybe Andromeda?

[Dragon Lord]

No Man's Sky holds the title of worst game launch.

No other game will ever take that title from NMS. If Fallout76 couldn't do it (and they sure tried their hardest), no game can.

[Karo]

So because I have the attention span of a snail how come No Man's Sky was such a bad launch? I think I heard the game was unfinished, but I didn't necessarily think that would give it the title of worst launch of a game ever? :thinking:

Is their something I'm missing?

[Dragon Lord]

Game was lacking like 80%+ of the content it was promised to have at launch, including multiplayer (which is a huge reason people even got the game to begin with).

The game was extremely empty with hardly anything to actually do (when they claimed otherwise). It was a huge joke. They finally started to patch in the content that they had promised, but that doesn't change how disastrous the launch was.

[queenzelda]

The Silent Man. A movie/game recently released by squarenix. Have you heard of it before now? I sure didn't which is exactly why I consider it to be the worse game launch since no one really knew about it until square silently released it & tweeted about it once; iirc. That & the reviews for it didn't really make me want to care to get it anyway.

[Maniakkid25]

Oh, you mean The Quiet Man, right? The game with the gimmick of the entirety of it been with muffled audio? Yeah, how did SqueEnix let THAT one slide by?

[Kyng]

Batman: Arkham Knight.

The console versions were fine; however, the PC launch (on 23rd June 2015) was a total disaster. It was plagued with numerous technical problems (e.g. textures not displaying correctly, stuttering when using vehicles, framerate capped at 30FPS). On 24th June 2015, just a day after launch, the game was pulled from sale while the issues were patched - and it wasn't until October 2015 that it was on sale again.

It's all fixed now, of course; however, to this day, it boasts a User Score of 2.9 on Metacritic.

[fantanoice]

When Governments across the world have to make new laws because your game is scummy and predatory then yeah, you basically have a shit game. So SWBFII definitely comes to mind. Having the most downvoted post on Reddit is a poor look as well.

Another strong contender is Ashes Cricket (2013) (not to be confused with Ashes Cricket (2017) which is a v good game no bias) which got pulled from sale after launch because it was such a buggy mess, then cancelled on all platforms.

[Maniakkid25]

I think if there's a game that's trying to give it a good go at a horrendous launch, it's Battlefield 5. I mean, sure, it's not mired in controversy (it just had the STUPID controversy over the rewriting of the Norwegian Heavy Water Plant story and the robo-woman soldier in the trailer), but less than half the sales of Battlefield 1?! How do you fail THAT badly?! Well, maybe by having only half your content available at launch! That'll probably not help you out!

[Monocle]

Nothing beats The Culling 2. They pulled the game after only a week and gave out refunds. A week! That's how bad the game did.

[Maniakkid25]

Oh, if you're bringing up games that got pulled for whatever reason, then a "bad game launch" discussion wouldn't be complete without Too Human. Failing so bad you get sued into oblivion by Epic Games? Insert Roblox "Oof!" here.

Oh, you've probably never seen a Too Human game in the wild and forgot it was a thing? It was a decade ago, after all. See, when Epic Games won the lawsuit, the court ordered Silicon Knights to recall any and all unsold copies, and to remove the game from any online sales. Despite this, you can still get the game at stupidly cheap prices! Jesus, 5 bucks?! I might just start using eBay again...

[Moonface]

Aliens: Colonial Marines comes to mind, considering I can think of at least one game critic (Jim Sterling) who is still mad about it and will never let that go. Also, was hilarious when it turned out that the crappy AI on the Aliens in that game was because of a typo in the game code.

I completely forgot about this game (like I'm sure most people try to do). That one is definitely up there are a terrible launch, and one that didn't even see an attempt from the developers to fix it.

The Silent Man. A movie/game recently released by squarenix. Have you heard of it before now? I sure didn't which is exactly why I consider it to be the worse game launch since no one really knew about it until square silently released it & tweeted about it once; iirc. That & the reviews for it  didn't really make me want to care to get it anyway.

I'd heard of it but had no idea it had released, then once I learned that I didn't see anyone really justifying it having a big launch anyway. I'm guessing Square knew the game wasn't that good and just decided to push it out quietly rather than draw attention to it and waste money on marketing.

Nothing beats The Culling 2. They pulled the game after only a week and gave out refunds. A week! That's how bad the game did.

I didn't even know The Culling had a sequel.

NMS I think takes the title of game launch with the least amount of promises fulfilled. Props on the developers for continuing to work on the game and add content, but I can't even think of anything the game had to redeem itself with when it launched in the state that it did. FO76 lacks in things promised but I don't think it's to the extent of NMS. FO76's biggest downfall was that Bethesda promoted it as having XYZ and within less than six months the things they talked about weren't how they claimed. I can understand it when a company promotes something over a year out with vertical slices and such and they haven't determined what the full game can/can't handle, but surely FO76 was along far enough at the time of its announcement for Bethesda to have a decent understanding of what they were going to pull off for the launch.

[lp0 on fire]

Aliens: Colonial Marines comes to mind, considering I can think of at least one game critic (Jim Sterling) who is still mad about it and will never let that go. Also, was hilarious when it turned out that the crappy AI on the Aliens in that game was because of a typo in the game code.

I completely forgot about this game (like I'm sure most people try to do). That one is definitely up there are a terrible launch, and one that didn't even see an attempt from the developers to fix it.

The Silent Man. A movie/game recently released by squarenix. Have you heard of it before now? I sure didn't which is exactly why I consider it to be the worse game launch since no one really knew about it until square silently released it & tweeted about it once; iirc. That & the reviews for it  didn't really make me want to care to get it anyway.

I'd heard of it but had no idea it had released, then once I learned that I didn't see anyone really justifying it having a big launch anyway. I'm guessing Square knew the game wasn't that good and just decided to push it out quietly rather than draw attention to it and waste money on marketing.

Nothing beats The Culling 2. They pulled the game after only a week and gave out refunds. A week! That's how bad the game did.

I didn't even know The Culling had a sequel.

NMS I think takes the title of game launch with the least amount of promises fulfilled. Props on the developers for continuing to work on the game and add content, but I can't even think of anything the game had to redeem itself with when it launched in the state that it did. FO76 lacks in things promised but I don't think it's to the extent of NMS. FO76's biggest downfall was that Bethesda promoted it as having XYZ and within less than six months the things they talked about weren't how they claimed. I can understand it when a company promotes something over a year out with vertical slices and such and they haven't determined what the full game can/can't handle, but surely FO76 was along far enough at the time of its announcement for Bethesda to have a decent understanding of what they were going to pull off for the launch.

I think Fallout 76 outdid NMS, you had the buggy to hell (but with it being a bethesda should surprise no one, but no console commands to unfuck things or mods), then you had "Oh hey I paid 200 dollars for what was advertised as a canvas bag but its a cheaper nylon bag..." thing, and now you have "Oh yeah Bethesda now has had a data leak of their customer data that wasn't even the work of a bad actor".

Oh and Fallout 76 going on 50/55% off sales not even a week after release.
Fallout 76 is bringing me way more free entertainment that I was expecting.