List of commercial failures in video and arcade games

As a hit-driven business, the great majority of the video game industry's software releases have been commercial disappointments. In the early 21st century, industry commentators made these general estimates: 10% of published games generated 90% of revenue;Mapping the Canadian Video and Computer Game Industry from The Canadian Video Game Industry with data from the (PDF) that around 3% of PC games and 15% of console games have global sales of more than 100,000 units per year, with even this level insufficient to make high-budget games profitable; and that about 20% of games make any profit.Video Game Makers Go Hollywood. Uh-Oh. from The New York Times Within years after Steam relaxed limits on which games could be digitally distributed on its service, they reported that around 80% of games failed to reach $5000 in revenue in their first two weeks of sales.

Some of these failure events have drastically changed the video game market since its origin in the late 1970s. For example, the failure of E.T. contributed to the video game crash of 1983. Some games, though commercial failures, are well received by certain groups of gamers and are considered cult games.

The following list includes any video game software on any platform where the commercial failure has been documented as such by the manufacture or published, or affirmed through industry sales trackers (in alphabetical order).

Video game software failures

The following is an incomplete list of software that have been deemed commercial failures by industry sources.

Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma

Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma is a third-person action-adventure video game published by Versus Evil and developed by Redacted Studios. The game was released for PlayStation 4 via PlayStation Network and Windows in September 2015, with an Xbox One version planned for October. The sequel to 2009's Afro Samurai, originally a manga series by Takashi Okazaki, the player controls Kuma, a swordsman who seeks revenge on Afro.

The game received widely negative reviews from critics. Originally planned to be released in three volumes, Versus Evil pulled Revenge of Kuma from all platforms, issued refunds, and canceled the other two volumes. The Xbox One version was also never released, while the PlayStation 4 version is one of the few titles from that platform to not be backward compatible with the PlayStation 5.

Polygon called it one of the worst games of 2015. Giant Bomb called it the worst game of the year. It was the second worst-reviewed game of 2015 according to aggregate review website Metacritic. In November 2015, Afro Samurai 2 was pulled from the PSN and Steam. In an interview with CGMagazine on the game's withdrawal, Versus Evil's Steve Escalante called the game "a failure" and announced the cancellation of the other two volumes and refunds for customers. Escalante later expanded on the decision in an interview with Gamasutra, saying, "Given the game quality was not what people were expecting, it didn't sell like hot cakes, let's just put it like that."

Anthem

Anthem was an action role-playing game developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts in 2019. Its seven-year-long development period started after release of Mass Effect 3, and was envisioned by BioWare to move away from the typical role-playing formats of Mass Effect and Dragon Age, and become a type of live-service game. The game had a difficult development cycle due to shifting staff, technological difficulties in switching to the Frostbite Engine, and demands from EA's management on the direction of the game. Other BioWare projects from its other studios were put on hold to complete Anthem for release, and according to one BioWare developer, it was only the work of the last fifteen months of development that made it into the game. Due to this rush near the end of the development cycle, the game was considered to be lacking content at release, contained numerous software bugs that plagued gameplay, and was found too similar to other live-service games like Destiny and World of Warcraft. BioWare and EA had stated their intent to revamp the game to meet expectations, but the game struggled to maintain a playbase. Though the game ultimately sold over 5 million copies in its lifetime, EA had anticipated sales to be much higher and comparable to the Battlefield series, and in 2021, EA opted to terminate further development work on Anthem, with the game's servers closed on January 12, 2026.

APB: All Points Bulletin

APB: All Points Bulletin was a multiplayer online game developed by Realtime Worlds in 2010. The game, incorporating concepts from their previous game Crackdown and past work by its lead developer David Jones, who had helped create the Grand Theft Auto series, was set around the idea of a large-scale urban battle between Enforcers and Criminals; players would be able to partake in large-scale on-going missions between the two sides. The game was originally set as both a Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 title and as Realtime Worlds' flagship title for release in 2008, but instead the company set about developing Crackdown first, and later focused APB as a Windows-only title, potentially porting the game to the Xbox 360 later. Upon launch in June 2010, the game received lukewarm reviews, hampered by the existence of a week-long review embargo, and did not attract the expected number of subscribers to maintain its business model. Realtime Worlds, suffering from the commercial failure of the game, sold off a second project, Project MyWorld, and subsequently reduced its operations to administration and a skeleton crew to manage the APB servers while they attempted to find a buyer, including possibly Epic Games who had expressed interest in the title. However, without any acceptable offers, the company was forced to shut down APB in September 2010. Eventually, the game was sold to K2 Network, a company that has brought other Asian massive-multiplayer online games to the Western markets as free-to-play titles, and similar changes occurred to APB when it was relaunched by K2.

Artifact

Artifact is a 2018 digital collectible card game (CCG), designed by Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic: The Gathering, and developed by Valve Corporation. It was designed as a spinoff from Dota 2, and while playing out encounters with cards worked similar to other CCGs like Hearthstone, the game used the concept of multiple lanes from Dota 2, with three different playfields involved at all times. Instead of a free to play model, Artifact was released at a premium cost, and encouraged players to buy new booster packs and trade and sell individual cards on the Steam Marketplace. Valve envisioned Artifact to draw competitive players and lead to esports tournaments. At launch, the game was found to be overly complex and relied too much on random number generation mechanics in gameplay, and the monetization approach was considered as "pay to win", requiring players to invest in new cards as to be able to compete. Within half a year from release, its player base has significantly dropped; some users on Twitch began using channels labeled for Artifact to stream inappropriate content on the basis of such streams having low viewerships by that point, forcing Twitch to take moderation actions. Valve stated in around this time that they were planned to reevaluate and redesign the game to meet complaints from players. Artifact 2.0 was put into beta testing in March 2020, with one of the largest changes being the removal of the monetization options for obtaining cards. By March 2021, Valve decided to end development of Artifact, and released two free versions of the game in its current state, Artifact Classic, which incorporated the gameplay of the original release, and Artifact Foundry, which included the changes envisioned for the v2.0 release. Both versions completely removed monetization options. Valve's CEO Gabe Newell called Artifact a "giant disappointment" though considered its failure a learning experience.

Babylon's Fall

Babylon's Fall was an online action role-playing game developed by PlatinumGames and published by Square Enix for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and PC. The game was PlatinumGames' first attempt at a live service game, and was described as an attempt to combine the combat system featured on Nier: Automata with multiplayer, although the game could also be played solo. Originally teased at E3 2018, Babylon's Fall would suffer a multitude of delays away from its initial planned 2019 release date, with the game being further delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Upon its eventual release on March 3, 2022, Babylon's Fall was met with little fanfare and received generally negative reviews from critics and players, many who criticised the game's lackluster mechanics and combat, with several critics calling the game overpriced. The concurrent player count for Babylon's Fall only peaked at 1,179 on release day, and player numbers declined rapidly afterwards; by April 13, 2022, it was reported that the game's player count had fallen to below 10 concurrent players, and on May 4, 2022, the player count reportedly dropped to a single player. On September 13, 2022, Square Enix announced that they would be ending support for Babylon's Fall on February 27, 2023, and suspended digital sales of the game and in-game currency, despite initially promising that they were intending to support the game in the long-term. Babylon's Fall's commercial failure was described by Forbes as "one of the biggest mainstream misses we’ve seen in recent memories", with TechRadar also naming the game biggest disaster of the year". Despite this, PlatinumGames CEO Atsushi Inaba later said that the failure of Babylon's Fall did not affect any of the company's plans to continue expanding into live service games, and also attributed some of Babylon's Fall's faults to the separate developments of the core game and the live service elements between PlatinumGames and Square Enix, respectively.

Battlecruiser 3000AD

One of the most notorious PC video game failures, Battlecruiser 3000AD (shortened BC3K) was hyped for almost a decade before its disastrous release in the U.S. and Europe. The game was the brainchild of Derek Smart, an independent game developer renowned for lengthy and aggressive online responses to perceived criticism. The concept behind BC3K was ambitious, giving the player the command of a large starship with all the requisite duties, including navigation, combat, resource management, and commanding crew members. Advertisements appeared in the video game press in the mid-1990s hyping the game as, "The Last Thing You'll Ever Desire." Computer bulletin boards and Usenet groups were abuzz with discussion about the game. As time wore on and numerous delays were announced, excitement turned to frustration in the online community. Smart exacerbated the negative air by posting liberally on Usenet. The posts ignited one of the largest flame wars in Usenet history. During the development cycle, Smart refused to let other programmers have full access to his code and continued to change directions as new technology became available, causing the game to be in development for over seven years.

In November 1996, Take-Two Interactive finally released the game, reportedly over protests from Smart. The game was buggy and only partially finished, with outdated graphics, MIDI music, a cryptic interface, and almost no documentation. Critics and the video game community reacted poorly to the release. Eventually, a stable, playable version of the game was released as Battlecruiser 3000AD v2.0. Smart eventually released BC3K as freeware and went on to create several sequels under the Battlecruiser and Universal Combat titles.

Beyond Good & Evil