Online Video Games That Completely Failed
Yes, online games are a goldmine for developers. Imagine releasing a game once, only to keep making money off it for years, or even decades? It sounds like a great deal. The only problem is that making an online game players will keep wanting to come back to isn’t easy. In fact, it’s very difficult, so much so that failure is more likely than success.
This gamble doesn’t stop big studios from trying, though, often resulting in enormous flops. These are online games that big studios attempted to make, only to produce a failure that shook the entire industry.
Marvel’s Avengers
Marvel’s Avengers is perhaps the biggest, most resounding corporate failure on this list. The game came out at a time when the Avengers franchise was at its hottest, seeming to suggest that a game version of the popular characters would be a guaranteed hit. It wasn’t.
From the lacklustre action to the grind-infested levelling up system, there was little that any gamer was looking for. If you even bothered to check it out, you’ll already know that every battle boiled down to multiple players all piling onto the same damage sponge boss at once. Only for everyone to simply have to keep hitting a single button until victory. You’d be far better off simply hitting the real money online pokies Australia loves, which is dramatically more satisfying.
Star Wars: Battlefront 2
If you’ve played Star Wars: Battlefront 2 you’ll probably have thought it was a pretty okay game. Though, chances are you played the version that had already been stripped of its pay-to-win mechanics. Yes, this is where gamers really got fed up with mega-corporations like EA trying to wring every cent out of a player base.
To be fair, Battlefront 2 did look great, and it was even reasonably fun to play. Only the constant need to have to keep paying to stay ahead of the rival team made the experience miserable. Once EA was forced to strip out the pay-to-win mechanics the studio quickly jumped ship and let the game sink into oblivion.
Fallout 76
The worst for last, what can be said about Fallout 76 that hasn’t already? You’ve probably already heard about everything that went wrong with this catastrophe, but it doesn’t hurt to go over it again. Fan favourite studio Bethesda put the hype train into 6th gear, only to then reveal that Fallout 76 was an online-only experience. This already deflated the excitement, more so when the game launched as a buggy disaster.
Fallout 76, still playable today, has little to none of the charm of Bethesda’s other popular titles. There are no engaging storylines, battles boil down to putting out more numbers than enemies, and chances are good you’re going to spend most of your time scrounging for garbage to keep your base running.
The damage this game did to Bethesda’s reputation is enormous, with many saying that the studio will never return to its former glory. Whatever game the studio announces next it had better be a masterpiece.