These games were so poorly received there was almost no coming back from them. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today, we’re counting down our picks for the Top 10 games that have forever stained their publishers.
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00:00 I guess, but every hero has to start somewhere, right?
00:06 Yes, yes, of course.
00:09 Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks
00:13 for the top 10 games that have forever stained their publishers.
00:16 Number 10, WWE 2K20.
00:28 [Drumming]
00:36 For a time, the WWE 2K series was the laughingstock of the entire gaming community.
00:42 Wrestlers often looked like poorly sculpted models of their real-world counterparts,
00:46 and the gameplay was constantly overcomplicating the controls.
00:50 But 2K20 was the breaking point for many, on account of its horrible state.
00:54 As if the aforementioned problems weren't enough, the game was in the buggiest,
00:58 most broken and unstable state any game in the franchise had ever been in.
01:03 "Oh no, this isn't gonna end well."
01:05 "Oh, that might have just broken something."
01:09 Publisher 2K and developer Visual Concepts have done good on recent titles.
01:13 However, 2K suffered from this stinky dud for a long while,
01:17 and many still haven't forgiven the publisher.
01:19 "Bonell's in a prime!"
01:21 "He needed to get in the ring, and the referee is going to call this off."
01:24 "These guys are just seeing red right now."
01:26 Number 9 - Resident Evil 6
01:30 "That's not good."
01:34 "We gotta put an end to this mess."
01:41 We all know Capcom today for its newfound successes across Resident Evil, Devil May Cry,
01:47 and various other collections preserving classic Street Fighter, Mega Man and Ace Attorney games.
01:52 However, there was an era where Capcom was mocked as "Crapcom".
01:57 Many would point to Street Fighter X Tekken as the start of this tumultuous era,
02:01 but RE6 was the focal point of the company's dark era.
02:05 RE6 was a sign that Capcom was simply trying to chase trends,
02:17 and pivot anything and everything to what the competitors were doing.
02:20 Why else would you turn your horror franchise into a multiplayer action shooter?
02:24 Capcom has redeemed themselves today, yes,
02:27 but the stench of RE6 still wafts around them every so often.
02:30 Number 8 - Fallout 76
02:47 "I'm not gonna let you get away with this."
02:50 Much like Capcom, Bethesda once found themselves chasing trends rather than setting standards.
02:58 Sure, the name "Bugthesda" was floating around here and there,
03:01 however, the second Fallout 76 launched, everyone was calling them that.
03:06 Not only did Fallout 76 feel like a lazy cash-in on the live service train,
03:11 it was riddled with all sorts of bugs and glitches.
03:15 "Oh, crap."
03:17 "Ugh!"
03:21 "Oh, crap."
03:23 The honour Bethesda had held thanks to their efforts with Skyrim and Fallout 3 had suddenly dissipated,
03:29 and many fans, both casual and hardcore, vowed in their refusal to purchase future products.
03:35 To this day, Bethesda hasn't been able to shake off this tumultuous moment in their history.
03:40 "Ugh!"
03:42 Number 7 - Skull Island - Rise of Kong
03:48 One could argue that Game Mule Entertainment never had the best reputation to begin with.
04:02 That was debatable at one point, as Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl and Nickelodeon Kart Racer games have been solid packages,
04:09 but Skull Island - Rise of Kong was the laziest product they have ever put out,
04:13 on account of shoddy combat design, bland environments, and piss-poor visuals.
04:18 Developer Iguanabi was quick to throw Game Mule under the bus,
04:33 revealing the quality was caused by Game Mule handing a minuscule budget to the developers,
04:38 and imposing a tight one-year turnaround, with no guidance as to what the game needed to be.
04:43 This took a mental toll on Iguanabi's staff, and even led to some of them being let go for budgetary reasons.
04:48 Game Mule's reputation worsened when they published The Walking Dead - Destinies,
04:52 which was just as atrocious as Rise of Kong.
04:55 Number 6 - No Man's Sky
05:07 [Hello Games' No Man's Sky]
05:12 Hello Games did manage to turn things around with No Man's Sky.
05:15 They deserve all the credit for righting their wrongs, and making the experience the one they promised audiences.
05:20 However, the studio still hears its echoes every now and again.
05:24 We all remember what it was like in 2015 and 2016,
05:27 the cycle of overpromising with features and mechanics that was starting to expose the weeds.
05:32 Yes, when No Man's Sky was making its marketing runs, there was an endless stream of "Yes, you can do this" and "You can do that",
05:39 such as the supposed ability to run into other players while exploring a planet.
05:43 You can do that now!
05:54 But every now and again, Hello Games does something that raises up No Man's Sky's initial launch again,
05:59 like they're doing with Light No Fire.
06:02 [Light No Fire]
06:08 Number 5 - Star Wars Battlefront
06:11 Electronic Arts has honestly been a much better publisher than it used to be.
06:24 As soon as it obtained the Star Wars license, it went full villain mode.
06:28 The 2015 reboot of Battlefront was riddled with problems.
06:31 EA had the audacity to demand players pay 60 bucks for a package that had no single player content,
06:37 required an online connection to access, and came with a small selection of maps.
06:42 Players were furious, especially when EA asked for more money for future content updates.
06:49 [Lightning]
06:52 From there, players began to grow weary of EA's plans for Star Wars games,
07:05 and 2017's Battlefront II made it substantially worse.
07:09 Like we said, EA has gotten better, but some will never forget the greed that was on full display here.
07:15 [Lightning]
07:18 Number 4 - E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
07:26 E.T. may be known as one of Spielberg's best movies, but to the gaming community,
07:39 it was the IP that led to the infamous video game crash of 1983.
07:43 Atari had flooded the market with so much garbage that eventually, no one was buying video games anymore.
07:49 Their name had become synonymous with one of the worst games ever made, and this has followed them for decades.
07:55 Sure, there was a small resurgence in the early to mid-2000s, but 2008's Alone in the Dark hit the reset button.
08:02 [Lightning]
08:05 Nowadays, the company is significantly smaller in size, and licenses out their IPs to indie studios.
08:12 Surprisingly, Pong Quest and Haunted House are excellent games,
08:16 but many still see them as "that one company that almost brought an end to video games".
08:21 [Lightning]
08:24 Number 3 - Warcraft III Reforged
08:28 Much like Hello Games, Blizzard Entertainment had marketed this remake of Warcraft III
08:41 as a means to bring the original game forward and introduce it to a new generation.
08:45 Imagine everyone's disgust when it launched and was simply the original game with new visuals.
08:51 None of the new cutscenes were present, and many features were cut completely.
08:55 What's worse is the game was a technical catastrophe.
08:59 [Game]
09:05 Fans immediately began review bombing the game, causing it to become the lowest user-rated game on Metacritic,
09:11 which Blizzard's own Diablo Immortal would later claim.
09:14 The notoriety for this would follow Blizzard for years, as they churned out Diablo Immortal and Overwatch 2 in 2022.
09:21 [Game]
09:29 Number 2 - Marvel's Avengers
09:32 [Game]
09:45 Avengers was a total disaster for Square Enix.
09:48 As its 2020 release date drew closer, players began to lose interest more and more.
09:53 With the loot-based progression and grinding system, live service elements and a sub-par story,
09:58 players just did not want Marvel's Avengers.
10:01 [Game]
10:06 Units were refusing to leave store shelves, to the point where the game was getting marked down at stupidly huge discounts.
10:13 Not even Spider-Man's arrival saved the game, as the web-zipping was wildly ridiculed and mocked on social media.
10:19 All Square Enix reaped from Avengers was poor commercial and critical performance,
10:24 years wasted on making Crystal Dynamics develop a game the studio had no experience in,
10:29 and a massive net loss of more than $63 million.
10:33 And now, with an aggressive push towards incorporating AI into their developments,
10:37 Square Enix has prompted many to walk away from their games.
10:41 [Game]
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11:04 [Game]
11:17 Say what you will about Saints Row, it isn't an awful game compared to Avengers or even RE6,
11:23 but as a long-awaited return for long-time fans, it was far from what anyone wanted.
11:28 With its mediocre gameplay and awful writing, Saints Row failed to capture any ounce of the edge, wit and spirit of the original games.
11:37 [Game]
11:45 Despite selling enough units to reach certain milestones and meet Embracer Group's expectations,
11:50 that's pretty much all it did. Since the launch of Saints Row, Embracer Group has found itself in financial turmoil,
11:56 prompting them to shut a Volition, the studio that created the IP in the first place,
12:01 as well as several other studios under its umbrella.
12:03 On top of that, Embracer has garnered a reputation to where most now view it as a total joke.
12:09 [Game]
12:16 Which game do you feel did the most damage to a publisher's reputation?
12:19 Did it make our list? Let us know in the comments, and don't forget to subscribe to WatchMojo for more great videos every day.
12:26 [Game]
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12:45 [Outro]