Video games are expensive entertainment, if not in terms of consumption, then certainly in terms of production. It takes several years of hard work and at least tens of millions of dollars to release a single AAA game. Of course, the stakes for developers and publishers are extremely high, because failure can lead to huge losses, layoffs and even the closure of entire companies. However, financial failures in the video game industry are still quite regular, because no one is immune from mistakes and losses, which depend on an almost infinite number of factors.
We have collected in this material the loudest and most noticeable financial failures in the history of the gaming industry. You will be able to note that the amount of money a game brought is not always identical to its overall quality. That is why many games that are considered today hidden masterpieces and cult classics turned out to be unnecessary for the mass player at the time of release.
Please note that we did not include games that never came out, even though the developers spent a lot of money on them. We will save this topic for a separate article. In addition, companies protect the numbers associated with their own mistakes even more than their development budgets, so we focused mainly on the "total weight" of the failure in the information field and its impact on developers and publishers.
Anthem
Platforms Windows, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One/Series X|S
Genre Action/RPG
Year 2019
BioWare is known primarily for large-scale role-playing games with well-thought-out worlds and interesting characters. However, Electronic Arts' desire to turn all its games into games-as-a-service, following the success of FIFA, or rather EA Sports FC, played a cruel joke on BioWare. And after the ambiguous Dragon Age: Inquisition and the frankly unsuccessful Mass Effect: Andromeda (the game was unlucky with the Frostbite engine, which was unfamiliar and inconvenient for the developers, two years later, when all the initial bugs were fixed, it was already a pretty good game - ed.) it was time for BioWare to get its own portion of "service therapy".
So the world got Anthem, in which everything was built around cooperative shooting of enemies in exoskeletons capable of flying. The exoskeletons in the game were called Javelins, by the way, so I leave all the jokes to your discretion. Frankly, the formula is far from the worst, and flying and shooting in the game is actually nice. However, the game was sorely lacking in content, and the fictional world and characters failed to capture the attention of players and create a loyal fan base. Who will even remember in 2025 what the game's story was about?
Bad reviews from critics and general disappointment among players resulted in poor sales, which in the first week were twice as bad as Mass Effect: Andromeda in the same period, which is already an eloquent indicator (the final sales of Mass Effect: Andromeda stopped at the level of sales of Mass Effect 2 and are slightly inferior to sales of Mass Effect 3 - about 5 million copies - ed.). This is despite the fact that overall initial sales were successful, and in February 2019 Anthem generated $ 100 million in revenue.
However, this was not enough for Electronic Arts, as only about $3 million was spent on microtransactions, and the game's reputation was hopelessly damaged. For some time, BioWare worked on a large-scale reboot of Anthem, but in 2021, work on the game was stopped. It is unlikely that the developers were very upset, because the production cycle of Anthem was associated with constant problems and crunches. It was also the failure of Anthem that led to the cancellation of the multiplayer mode for Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
Artifact
Platforms Windows
Genre card game
Year 2018
What Blizzard Entertainment cannot take away is its ability to create trends. The studio released Warcraft – and began the golden age of RTS. It released Overwatch – and now everyone is making hero shooters. It released Hearthstone – and players and developers are fanatical about collectible card games with new powers. Even the great and powerful Valve tried to adapt the latest trend, but it turned out rather dubious.
And it's not even about the quality of the game. Richard Garfield himself was called in to develop it, who invented the most popular card game Magic: The Gathering, which actually created and defined this type of game. Therefore, there are no special questions about the gameplay of Artifact, and the idea with three arenas at the same time looked interesting and echoed the concept of Dota 2. Artifact was ruined by the financial model. Valve wanted players to buy virtual cards for real money, which at the same time resembled real booster packs from Magic: The Gathering and skins from Counter-Strike and Dota. However, the skins do not directly affect the gameplay.
Players were outraged by a similar system, which was called pay-to-win – and this makes sense, because you could literally buy the best cards and win easier (in MTG this does not work in most formats – ed. note). In addition, Artifact turned out to be a difficult game to understand. Therefore, within two months of release, it lost 95% of its player base. Valve tried to remake the game without the need to buy cards for real money, but the moment was lost. Therefore, in 2021, the company stopped working on Artifact. However, you can still download the original and updated versions for free on Steam.
Babylon's Fall
Platforms Windows, PlayStation 4/5
Genre action
Year 2022
PlatinumGames is known for great action and slasher games like Bayonetta, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and Nier: Automata. But that doesn't mean that all of the company's games are good. And Babylon's Fall is probably the biggest failure of the famous studio. Although, it would seem, it is also a bright action with an interesting combat system.
The problem is that publisher Square Enix, like many publishers in the last 10 years, really wanted to get a game-as-a-service – this is generally a common pattern of many failed games, if you think about it – and PlatinumGames had no experience in this direction. As a result, the game turned out to be interesting to fight in, but it is not at all clear why to do it. The rather bland design did not help matters either. It seemed that even the developers themselves were not at all enthusiastic about the game, which is noticeable in some interviews.
In the first week of sales in Japan, the game sold about 5,000 copies on consoles. The maximum online figure on Steam reached 1,188 players. For a game-service, this is almost an instant verdict, especially knowing the ambitions of Square Enix. Therefore, six months after the release, PlatinumGames and Square Enix announced that further development and support for the game had been stopped. However, it is unlikely that anyone misses the game, which was called "the biggest failure of the year from Square Enix".
Brutal Legend
Platforms PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, S, OS X, Linux
Genre action/adventure
Year 2009
The genius of Tim Schafer, the charisma of Jack Black – which in 2009 was still frankly amusing and did not have time to get boring – slasher gameplay combined with RTS, and the style of Heavy metal with voice acting from legends of the level of Ozzy Osbourne. An absolutely crazy mix, but that's exactly what you will find in Brütal Legend. This is a unique game in many aspects, which, unfortunately, was not very lucky with financial indicators.
The main character Eddie, who helps the musicians with the stage setup, finds himself in a fantasy world inspired by heavy metal album covers. The game even had a place for multiplayer, but some players and critics complained that the slasher mechanics didn't mesh well with the real-time strategy. The RTS elements weren't advertised at all because publisher Electronic Arts didn't see any potential in them, so some players thought they were being misled upon release. In addition, Brütal Legend was released around the same time as Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. And Double Fine's work couldn't keep up with these games.
The game sold 215,000 copies in its first month, making it a failure in the eyes of Electronic Arts. The development team began developing a sequel, but the publisher did not approve it. Double Fine president Tim Schaefer said that as of 2011, Brutal Legend had sold 1.4 million copies.
Concord
Platforms PlayStation 5, Windows
Genre multiplayer shooter
Year 2024
A game whose failure is still fresh in the memory. And Sony itself, which will definitely not be able to recover from the "service" loop of its own plans for a long time. Again, it will not be possible to say that Concord is a bad game. It simply turned out to be unnecessary.
Concord was supposed to be Sony's answer to the success of Overwatch and hero shooters in general. The development cost over $200 million for Firewalk alone, and then the same amount when Sony bought the developers. $400 million budget is no joke, because Sony saw Concord as the "future of PlayStation". The "future" ended quite quickly, as the game was played by no more than 25,000 players. The high price, lack of adequate marketing and lackluster style also influenced the sad ending.
Concord lasted only two weeks. And Firewalk Studios was closed in October 2024, leaving many talented technical specialists without jobs. Sony admitted its mistakes and promised to be more careful with the service model, as well as to test such releases more qualitatively and actively. However, Sony's next game-service will now probably be perceived with maximum skepticism.
ET the Extra-Terrestrial
Platforms Atari 2600
Genre adventure
Year 1982
There are failures that are loud, there are those that are not so loud, but important from an industrial and financial point of view. And there are those that are made into movies, those that destroy the entire gaming industry. ET the Extra-Terrestrial is just such a failure, still unsurpassed and the largest.
Atari, once one of the pioneers in video games, made a big bet on a game adaptation of Steven Spielberg's ET the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). But the bet didn't pay off. The game turned out to be of terrible quality. Rumor has it that it took just five weeks to develop.
Atari managed to sell a significant 1.5 million copies at the time, but the company was counting on all 5 million. In addition, cartridges began to be returned en masse when players found out how bad almost everything was in this game.
Atari had to literally bury 800,000 ET the Extra-Terrestrial cartridges in the ground. The company's debt, adjusted for inflation, amounted to $1.75 billion. Crazy numbers even today, but imagine their scale in the fledgling gaming industry of the 1980s. The video game market was experiencing one of the biggest recessions. However, you also have to be able to fail like that, and ET the Extra-Terrestrial became an important part of video game history.
Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two
Platforms PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, Wii U, PlayStation Vita, Windows
Genre platformer
Year 2012
Warren Spector is one of the titans of the gaming industry, thanks to whom we have Deus Ex, System Shock, Thief, and many other great games and, no less importantly, talented developers. However, gamers like to forget that he also created a Mickey Mouse game. It's an unusual story, which is beautifully told in the book Press Reset: Burnout and Recovery in the Video Game Industry. Of course, Disney's greed was not without its share of problems.
With Epic Mickey, Disney management wanted to slightly change the image of the iconic mouse, emphasizing the hero's passion for adventure. That is why the game turned out to be an epic journey, full of interesting mechanics and bright events. Even the exclusivity for Wii did not prevent it from selling well, critics and players perceived the game positively. However, the multi-platform sequel Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two failed to interest players. In North America, the game managed to sell only 270,000 copies, which is about a quarter of the sales of the original.
Disney doesn't like such failures. That's why the Junction Point studio was closed, and the Epic Mickey franchise was put to rest. There was even a Donald Duck spinoff planned in a similar style, but we'll never see it again.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
Platforms Windows, PlayStation 3/4/5, Xbox 360/Series X|S
Genre: action/RPG
Year 2012
The basis of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is a combat system that successfully combines RPG elements with pure action. Today this seems like the norm, but in 2012 it was still unusual for first/third person games. The Big Huge Games studio gathered specialists in interactive battle design, who carefully worked on all the main elements of the game's battles. But the game was still unlucky, because it turned out to be a victim of large-scale problems, to which, frankly, it was not directly involved.
Extremely successful and wealthy baseball player Kurt Schilling wanted to create his own MMORPG. To do this, he founded 38 Studios and began hiring specialists to develop a large-scale Project Copernicus. It even came to financial loans from the state of Rhode Island - with sad consequences for 38 Studios and Project Copernicus, which never reached the release. The idea was that Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning was to become a kind of presentation of the world of Amalur to the gaming community, preparing the ground for the release of the MMORPG. At first, the game was not even connected to Project Copernicus, the developers from 38 Studios simply reworked one of their own prototypes to get additional funding.
The game was well received by the community and even pleased publisher Electronic Arts, which is a good sign. However, internal litigation within 38 Studios over bloated budgets and strange management led to the cancellation of the sequel. However, the Big Huge Games studio managed to survive. However, it is now part of the Korean Nexon.
And THQ Nordic, which ultimately acquired the rights to the game, even re-released it in 2020 as Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning. The remake received mostly positive reviews and sold over 1 million copies on Steam alone.
MadWorld
Platforms Nintendo Wii
Genre Slasher
Year 2009
Another game from PlatinumGames, but for SEGA and really high quality. MadWorld came out during the popularity of the Wii and actively used its nunchuck in the slasher combat system. The color palette of black, white and red, as well as an extremely high level of brutality allowed MadWorld to stand out from the background of more "family" projects of the console.
The game even sparked another wave of the eternal debate "do video games lead to real-life violence?", and some parent groups protested. This affected sales, and new IPs are always difficult to promote. So 123,000 copies sold in half a year in North America "disappointed" SEGA.
But critics really, really liked MadWorld. Thanks to that, we got the game's spiritual successor, Anarchy Reigns. And MadWorld still plays well today, so be sure to try it if you get the chance.
Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr.'s Journey
Platforms Nintendo 3DS
Genre: action/RPG
Year 2018
It's hard to imagine a Mario game being a financial failure, but no one is immune to failure, not even Nintendo. This is despite the fact that the Mario & Luigi adventure sub-series has always been quite popular. But Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr.'s Journey was unlucky with its platform and release time.
This game is actually a remake of 2009's Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story. Nintendo was inspired by the success of the remake of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, so the management decided to return to the series. So players got Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr.'s Journey for Nintendo 3DS in 2018. Or even in 2019, if we talk about the release outside of Japan.
The problem is clear at this point. In 2019, the Nintendo Switch had been successfully operating for two years, so Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr.'s Journey was one of the last games for the portable console to reach the end of its life cycle. This resulted in the game selling approximately 34,000 copies in total, making it one of the worst releases in the Mario series in its entire history. And the development studio AlphaDream filed for bankruptcy as a result.
Okami
Platforms Windows, PlayStation 2/3/4/5, Xbox One/Series X|S, Wii, Nintendo Switch
Genre: action/adventure
Year 2006
Ōkami was developed by Clover Studio under the direction of Hideki Kamiya, who previously worked on the Resident Evil and Devil May Cry series. The game is often compared to adventure games such as The Legend of Zelda. It follows the journey of the wolf goddess Amaterasu, who uses a "sky brush" to paint magical effects on the screen and restore the cursed land of ancient Japan. Although the game received positive reviews from critics and was recognized as one of the best games of 2006, it sold fewer than 600,000 copies by 2009. As a result, Capcom closed Clover Studio.
One of the reasons for Ōkami's failure was its unusual mechanics and slow pace, which failed to appeal to a wide audience. Although the game received high critical acclaim, many players found it difficult and too demanding. In addition, the marketing failed to attract enough attention to the release, as "organic advertising" through player reviews did not yet work in 2006. Therefore, despite the large number of awards received, such as the best game of the year, Ōkami did not become a commercial success.
Despite its rocky start, Ōkami has gained cult status thanks to fan support and numerous re-releases on various platforms. Later, a spiritual successor to the game appeared - Ōkamiden for the Nintendo DS. And now players are waiting for a sequel, so the story of Ōkami is rather positive.
Overkill's The Walking Dead
Platforms Windows
Genre shooter
Year 2018
In 2014, Starbreeze Studio received a license to develop a game based on The Walking Dead universe from Skybound Entertainment. It was supposed to be a cooperative shooter, the main ideas of which were borrowed from the game Payday: The Heist, developed by Starbreeze's subsidiary studio – Overkill Software. However, the development fell into "production hell" due to numerous changes in the game engine. Initially, it was planned to use the in-house Diesel Engine, which runs Payday, but it was replaced with the new Valhalla Engine, which turned out to be too complicated to work with. Later, it was decided to switch to the Unreal Engine altogether. Nothing good usually comes of this.
Overkill's The Walking Dead received lukewarm reviews, with only 100,000 copies sold in its first month. Starbreeze had high hopes for the game, but the Walking Dead franchise was still very popular, but due to poor sales, the company decided to cancel plans to release the game on consoles. In December 2018, it was announced that the company would restructure due to a lack of liquid assets, with the main reason for this being the failure of Overkill's The Walking Dead. The financial report for the fourth quarter of 2018 stated that the game only brought in 34.1 million Swedish kronor (about 3.7 million US dollars), while Payday 2, released in 2013, brought in 20.4 million kronor in the same period.
By the end of February 2019, Skybound had terminated its licensing agreement with Starbreeze, stating that Overkill's The Walking Dead did not meet the promised standards and terms of the agreement. This failure led to a corporate restructuring at Starbreeze, and Payday 2 had to add free content again, although the developers promised not to do this anymore. Payday 3, by the way, failed to replicate the success of its predecessor, so things at the studio are pretty bad.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
Platforms PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S
Genre shooter, action/adventure
Year 2024
Another recent example of failure, when the publisher's ambitions are put first, and the creative ideas and technical capabilities of the developers are relegated to the background. Warner Bros. Games has been wanting to turn everything into services for many years - and not to forget about microtransactions. Another victim of this approach was Rocksteady Games.
The studio became famous thanks to the Batman: Arkham series. These are standard action/adventure games that are extremely interesting to play even without knowledge of Batman's lore. And if you do have knowledge, then the attention to detail will pleasantly surprise the fan. But the developers were sent to make a game-service about the Suicide Squad. And although in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League you can trace the studio's scriptwriting and design talents, the format of a shooter game-service is completely unbecoming of people who are famous for their thoughtful gameplay moments and attention to detail.
Of course, Rocksteady Games was expected to deliver a completely different game, so Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was met with lukewarm reception. In May 2024, Warner Bros. Games reported losses of $200 million, blaming the poor performance of the Suicide Squad game. However, the company still plans to make game services, even despite the success of the completely single-player Hogwarts Legacy. Life seems to teach some people nothing.
System Shock 2
Platforms Windows, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One/ Series X|S, Linux, OS X
Genre action/RPG, immersive sim
Year 1999
System Shock 2 is a cult game today, the forerunner of the immersive sim genre, and a masterpiece that cannot be criticized enough. System Shock 2 in 1999 was a financial failure. As we can see, creating video games has always been difficult and unreliable.
The first installment, System Shock, received critical acclaim, but sales were poor. After a group of former Looking Glass employees founded Irrational Games in 1997, the studio decided to collaborate with Looking Glass on a sequel. The result was System Shock 2, which was again praised for its innovation and deep gameplay. However, despite the positive reviews, sales of the game were modest, selling only 58,000 copies in the first eight months after release.
The reason System Shock 2 didn't become a commercial success was its complexity and specific approach to gameplay. In the 1990s, the immersive sim genre was almost completely unknown. Electronic Arts, which owned the rights to the series, felt that sales were not meeting expectations, so they weren't ready to invest in a sequel. But Irrational Games itself took the best elements of the game and created BioShock.
Just before this article was published, Nightdive and Sony released a trailer for System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster. The remaster of the iconic game will be released on June 26, 2025 for PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin
Platforms PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox Series X/S
Genre real-time strategy
Year 2023
Warhammer, both fantasy and science fiction, is an extremely popular franchise that has had little luck with game adaptations. Perhaps this is due to the chaotic sale of licenses to everyone. And while there are good examples, Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin is not one of them.
This is a real-time strategy that failed to attract the attention of players, even with all the richness of the Age of Sigmar setting at its disposal. After the failed release, the studio Frontier Developments faced a loss of $ 11.6 million. And Frontier Developments' shares sank by 20%.
However, Total War: Warhammer still exists. It may not be a real-time strategy, but it still has its charm.
What are some of the most famous game flops you can think of? Or what flop games do you still genuinely love? Share your thoughts and games in the comments!