7 Hyped Games That Flopped at Launch, From Cyberpunk 2077 to Anthem

When are game developers and publishers going to stop releasing unfinished games that are broken? Here are 7 games that were hyped up enormously but ultimately did not live up to expectations at launch, starting with Cyberpunk 2077 and ending with Anthem.

Cyberpunk 2077 launched broken after eight years of development and multiple delays

Cyberpunk 2077 was announced in 2012, nearly eight years before it came out, and a small trailer followed in 2013. The game was in the works across three generations of consoles before it released in December 2020, and it basically just did not work as intended. The developers had already delayed it multiple times, which left people agitated and impatient, but there was still hope because we knew CD Projekt Red wanted to release a working game.

None of that stopped the hype, because the gameplay and trailers looked so good. And of course, the ultimate hype came from Keanu Reeves being in the game. Yet even after eight years of development and all those delays, it still released with major game breaking glitches and bugs that made it unbearable for most people to play.

On top of that, if it had been delayed again, most fans and investors would have been at their literal breaking point. We are talking cancelled preorders, investments pulled out of CD Projekt Red and more, so people were going to be angry whether it released perfectly polished or not. After being out for almost two weeks, with a ton of negative feedback from players, Cyberpunk 2077 made gaming history by being pulled from the PlayStation Store, and pretty much every major retailer, including CD Projekt Red, was offering refunds. It is safe to say this game was most definitely a flop at launch.

No Man's Sky flopped in 2016, then Hello Games turned it into an award winner

No Man's Sky released back in 2016 and seemed like it was going to be a very interesting and fun game. It was advertised as being built around space exploration, trading, survival and combat in an infinite world. With a science fiction setting and the ability to travel around space, it was really looking like an awesome game.

After launch, though, the reviews that came in were not good at all. Players and critics marked the game down for being extremely repetitive and for releasing without promised features, including certain multiplayer aspects. As it turned out, "no man's sky ended up being one man's sky full of glitches and crashes." When a game launches as badly as this one did, one thing consumers and players want is some communication from the studio explaining things, and developer Hello Games, led by Sean Murray, did the exact opposite. There was already backlash over the launch, and the studio not communicating at all left a sour taste in people's mouths.

Fortunately, Hello Games did not let that backlash discourage them. Instead it pushed them to work even harder. Despite No Man's Sky being a major flop at launch, they kept releasing major content updates that improved the experience, making it not only playable but, most importantly, enjoyable. That is why they received the award for best ongoing game at the 2020 Game Awards.

Days Gone flopped because of its timing, not because it was a bad game

Days Gone was a PlayStation exclusive that released in early 2019. I would say it was hyped because of the epic trailers at E3, and because everyone loves a good zombie game; just look at the success of The Last of Us Part One. After the 2018 E3 gameplay, which showed hundreds of zombies resembling World War Z chasing a guy who was mowing them down, it seemed to have the potential to be a fun zombie game. At heart, that is exactly what it was: simply a decent survival zombie game.

What made Days Gone flop was not that it was a bad game, because it really was not that bad at all. It flopped because of when it came out. Standards for games were at an all time high with the release of big hits like Spider-Man on PS4 and God of War. With Days Gone thrown into the mix and not really being anything special beyond a simple zombie game, of course it did not do well compared to the other AAA games released around it. It did do well in its own right, though, being one of the best selling digital games of the year on PSN.

I think if this game had been released in the early 2010s, it would have done outstandingly, but the time in which it released caused it to flop. At the end of 2020, I was hoping Sony would give Bend Studio another shot and let it release its next title at a more optimal time, when it would not have to compete with other massive PlayStation properties.

Fallout 76 shocked a hugely successful franchise with bugs, exploits and missing NPCs

The flop of Fallout 76 was a surprise because of the extreme success of the Fallout franchise. The launch immediately had problems with the basic performance and utility of its servers. As people continued to play, tons of bugs turned up, such as progression rollbacks, invisible enemies, and nukes crashing entire servers.

One game breaking exploit that, by the end of 2020, had never been addressed by the devs was a duplication glitch that let players duplicate the most powerful items in the game. If you talked to the right people, you could have those items pretty early on. Lack of content was also a huge turn off. The devs ditched NPCs, and the gameplay could honestly be considered the most basic in the series.

The Fallout franchise has always thrived on its story building, so removing the NPCs took that aspect away almost completely, because of how important they were in carrying the story. Bethesda was aware of the negative response, and the only thing it did was give players five dollars of free currency. That was not good enough for most players, and it made Fallout 76 one of the biggest blunders in all of gaming.

Evolve's four versus one design caused more problems than its developers imagined

Evolve is a first person shooter in which you and three other players are placed in a restricted area and tasked with strategically fighting a monster. At first, the game received great feedback. It was a cool idea, and it worked well in the demo and beta.

Upon release, however, the unbalanced nature of the game led one of the developers to write a Reddit post explaining why, from his point of view, it flopped. He said part of the reason the gameplay did not work well was the balance of four people fighting one monster, writing that "it causes more problems than we ever imagined and we didn't really have a team to make a competitive shooter."

There was also no story and a very short play time. After killing a couple of monsters, and with that being the whole game, it is not very replayable. Backlash also came over prices and microtransactions, so I would say it is understandable why this game was not received well by the community.

Watch Dogs was overhyped, with poor driving, repetitive missions and a visual downgrade

Watch Dogs was hyped for all the right reasons. It was advertised as an open world game in which you play as a hacker protagonist completing missions using gadgets, stealth and puzzle elements, and that alone already sounds like it would be extremely fun. But, surprise surprise, it was overhyped and flopped at launch.

For an open world game, transportation is an important aspect, but the driving mechanics did not make sense and were not good at all. Knowing your goals is also important, and with a poor checkpoint system that did not really work, you could end up repeating things you had already done over and over again. Most people found the missions irritating and repetitive. They normally involved only hacking things or stealthily taking people out, which could only be fun for so long, and it did not help that the story was already clichéd.

Overall, the game felt scripted. It lacked realistic or interesting hacking physics, had bad AI, and lacked the ability to give you a truly open world feeling. Not to mention how big a downgrade Watch Dogs had in its visuals compared with the original E3 trailer.

Anthem's repetitive core gameplay and story made it a major flop

Last but not least is Anthem. This looter shooter was announced at E3 2017 and gained tons of hype in a short time, advertised as a game in which you play as a heroic adventurer who wears exo suits to defend humanity from threats. Then, on release, the game "gave us another reason to not get over hyped about games."

One of its major flaws is something developers need to start paying more attention to: repetition in the core gameplay and story. Many players reviewed it as a shallow experience, with many complaints about technical aspects. Along with that, it had a messy loot system, hard to use combat, and clunky menus and UI. You could argue that Anthem's biggest problem may have been caused by developer BioWare losing a lot of its staff. Overall, with so many issues in the core gameplay and story, it is really no surprise that Anthem was a major flop.

As 2020 came to a close, the one thing we could all hope for was that publishers would learn their lesson and stop releasing unfinished games, despite the hard work and crunch from developers. That is why you should never preorder games. But hey, what are you going to do?

Do you still preorder games, or have launches like these convinced you to wait?