Slashdot Mirror
Failed Games That Damaged Or Killed Their Companies
An anonymous reader writes "Develop has an excellent piece up profiling a bunch of average to awful titles that flopped so hard they harmed or sunk their studio or publisher. The list includes Haze, Enter The Matrix, Hellgate: London, Daikatana, Tabula Rasa, and — of course — Duke Nukem Forever. 'Daikatana was finally released in June 2000, over two and a half years late. Gamers weren't convinced the wait was worth it. A buggy game with sidekicks (touted as an innovation) who more often caused you hindrance than helped ... achieved an average rating of 53. By this time, Eidos is believed to have invested over $25 million in the studio. And they called it a day. Eidos closed the Dallas Ion Storm office in 2001.'"
If you consider crashing every 20 minutes, losing any save data you had, and having some video sequences prevent any further progress due to crashing.
...and that was on a console!
Something witty.
once EA buys them it's game over.
Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines was another game that killed the company. There's even an interview about it somewhere here on Slashdot.
Apparently it went way over budget, was laden with game breaking bugs, and had copy protection problems.
It's a shame, really, because the last 5 years of fan patching have made it kind of enjoyable.