These games have made a comeback after an initially disastrous launch
24.1.2023
Translation: Veronica Bielawski
When a game doesn’t totally win over its audience at launch, it quickly sinks into insignificance. But some titles have managed to regain their players’ favour after an initial flop.
Many developer studios publish their games according to the banana principle: they’ll release an unfinished game which only matures into a finished product with customer feedback. This doesn’t always work out as planned. Content-poor shooters like «Anthem» or «Evolve» and buggy disasters like «WWE 2K20» and the «GTA» remakes are examples of green bananas that never managed to turn yellow.
But there are some games that have actually fought their way back into fans’ hearts after a disastrous launch. Here are five of the most spectacular comeback stories.
«Cyberpunk 2077» – a comeback thanks to Netflix
After «The Witcher III: Wild Hunt», which was acclaimed by critics and fans alike, expectations for the next game from Polish developer studio CD Projekt Red were quite high. And after the extensive «Cyberpunk 2077» gameplay demo at E3 2018 and Keanu Reeves’ legendary «You’re breathtaking» appearance at E3 2019, these expectations shot way through the roof.
CD Projekt Red promised fans a unique role-playing experience in a huge, vibrant, open world that would eclipse anything ever seen before. Even the numerous postponements didn’t dampen the hype – quite the opposite, in fact. The postponements were interpreted as a further indication of the game’s massive scope and the studio’s high quality standards.
And so, the disappointment was all the greater when «Cyberpunk 2077» was finally released in December 2020 after a total of four postponements. Instead of a revolutionary open-world RPG, fans were served an unfinished game with countless bugs that was barely playable, especially on last-gen consoles. Sony even banned the game completely from the Playstation Store about a week after launch. This 40-minute video by YouTuber Crowbcat gives a good insight into the state of the game shortly after launch:
Apart from the technical flaws, «Cyberpunk 2077» was also disappointing from a gameplay perspective. Many promised features were only partially implemented or not implemented at all. According to industry insider Jason Schreier, this was mainly due to the game’s turbulent development process.
After the disastrous launch, CD Projekt Red scaled back public communication to a minimum and focused on fixing the most urgent bugs. By now, the game is, technically speaking, in an acceptable, though still not perfect, state.
But «Cyberpunk» doesn’t owe its big comeback to bug fixes; it’s mainly thanks to the launch of the Netflix anime series «Cyberpunk: Edgerunners».
«Cyberpunk: Edgerunners» is not only a smash hit in terms of viewership, but is also among the top-rated Netflix series ever on review portals like Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb.
The positive response to the series has also had an impact on the game. After the anime aired, «Cyberpunk 2077» broke CD Projekt Red’s record for «The Witcher III: Wild Hunt» with over 130,000 Steam users simultaneously playing the game. In addition, the game surpassed the 20-million mark in sales figures.
Despite the recent success and the fixed bugs, a bad aftertaste remains. The hugely ambitious and revolutionary concepts that CD Projekt Red had presented during the development phase haven’t been put into practice – not even after numerous updates. This Reddit thread gives a good overview of all the announced but missing features. Maybe it’ll all work out with the first big story expansion for «Cyberpunk 2077», «Phantom Liberty» or the successor with the mysterious codename «Orion».
«GTA Online» – from technical flop to commercial top
It’s hard to imagine a gaming world without «Grand Theft Auto V». The fifth part of Rockstar’s gangster epic has sold over 170 (!) million copies since its launch in 2013, making «GTA V» one of the best-selling games of all time, right behind «Minecraft».
The game owes its long-lasting success primarily to the online multiplayer mode «GTA Online». Even ten years after its release, Rockstar continues to thrill its fans with new updates to the chaotic open world.
At the launch of «GTA Online», however, not all was rosy in the gangster world. The multiplayer mode was delivered in a free update about two weeks after the release of «GTA 5». In the initial days and weeks after the release, multiplayer mode was almost unplayable.
Due to the huge onslaught of players, Rockstar’s servers were massively overloaded. The result? Infinitely long waiting times in the game lobby and game crashes. Those who actually managed to get into the game had to deal with a bugged alpha version that not only featured annoying glitches, but could also destroy entire saves.
Many players reported a game character being permanently deleted for unknown reasons. Others «only» lost their vehicles and in-game savings. Because these were items that had been purchased with real money, Rockstar Games went so far as to temporarily suspend all microtransactions.
Rockstar was pretty open about the whole debacle on its blog and on Twitter. Thanks to transparent communication and regular bug fixes as well as great content updates, Rockstar was able to gradually win back the favour of its online audience. By the «Heists» update at the beginning of 2015, even the biggest sceptics were won over.
Source: Rockstar
The comeback of «GTA Online» was more than a comeback. Over time, the online mode carved out an existence of its own. It became so popular that Rockstar outright cancelled the planned single-player DLC. Work on «Grand Theft Auto VI» has also been deprioritised. After all, why work on a completely new game when the online mode of an existing game rakes in so much revenue? According to estimates, Rockstar Games makes nearly one billion a year in revenue from «GTA Online». I’m curious to see how long they can keep milking their cash cow and hope that we won’t have to wait too much longer for the sixth game.
«Final Fantasy XIV» – a complete reset
«Final Fantasy XIV» is currently one of the most played MMOs, breaking new records with every update. Millions of Final Fantasy fans log in daily to go on new adventures in Eorzea. It’s easy to forget that the game existing at all is almost a small miracle.
The original version of the online RPG was released in 2010, first for Windows and shortly after for Playstation 3. The game was seriously torn apart on both platforms by critics and Final Fantasy fans alike. The response to the game was so bad that the servers were completely shut down after only two years.
A year later, the fantasy epic was reborn as «Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn» – complete with a new engine, development team and game director, Naoki Yoshida.
In addition to the unstable servers (at peak times, up to 400 server crashes were reported per day), Yoshida stated that the original game suffered primarily from the development team’s overly large graphical ambitions. Unimportant things, like the infamous flower pots, were modelled in such detail that other aspects of the game suffered. For example, the number of objects in the game world had to be greatly reduced and a maximum of only 20 game characters could be displayed at once – definitely too few for an MMO.
Source: Channel Speakers (Youtube)
In terms of gameplay, the game was also one big disappointment. Really exciting stories, quests and a world that invites you to explore it? None of that was to be found in version 1.0 of «Final Fantasy XVI». The battle system was also an unfinished mess, seemingly designed by people who’d never played an MMO before.
When Yoshida was tasked with saving the game in December 2010, he saw only one solution: redesigning the game from the ground up. By prioritising important aspects of the game, communicating openly with the target audience and implementing player feedback, Yoshida’s team accomplished this feat in just under three years. That’s a very short time for such an ambitious MMO – especially when you take into account that the original version was simultaneously kept going with updates until the servers were shut down.
The YouTube channel Speakers Network perfectly recounts the incredible story of the death and rebirth of «Final Fantasy XIV» in a ten-part video series:
«No Man’s Sky» – hard work pays off
Like «Cyberpunk 2077», «No Man’s Sky» also fell victim to its own hype. Here, too, overly ambitious features and concepts were announced in advance that couldn’t be implemented at launch. In contrast to «Cyberpunk 2077», the blame for the launch debacle can’t be placed exclusively on the developer studio;
before «No Man’s Sky», the small indie studio Hello Games was best known for the 2.5D arcade racing game series «Joe Danger». I played the first of those on the PS3 back in 2010. A fun little game to pass the time, but nothing to write home about. So, I was all the more surprised when Hello Games presented the first trailer for «No Man’s Sky» at the VGX Awards 2013.
The trailer promised a quasi-infinite, procedurally generated game world with over 18 trillion (!) planets to discover. Sony was also impressed by this ambitious vision. Shortly after the announcement, it secured exclusive publishing rights for consoles. After that, the small indie game was treated by Sony like a AAA game from one of its own first-party studios.
At major press conferences, such as E3 2014 and E3 2015, «No Man’s Sky» had a correspondingly large presence in Sony’s slots. The founder of Hello Games, Sean Murray, was often in the spotlight, constantly announcing new features and impressive facts about the game.
The launch of the game was, similar to «Cyberpunk 2077», a complete disaster. Those who were able to fight through the annoying bugs and complete crashes quickly noticed that the game frankly wasn’t ready. Widely announced features, such as the possibility to play and interact with other people, were completely missing at launch. Sean Murray especially felt the anger and disappointment of the audience. He was labelled a notorious liar and fraud.
YouTuber Crowbcat sums up the state of the game shortly after launch very aptly:
After the launch, Hello Games remained silent for a long time – no official statements, apologies or public appearances from Sean Murray. In the background, the development team was gathering its forces to work on a number of substantial updates to the game. And they had it in them.
As of January 2023, Hello Games has released a whopping 23 (!) completely free, sizeable updates for its space epic. And there’s no end in sight. Unlike CD Projekt Red, Hello Games didn’t limit itself to bug fixes; it invested a lot of time and money into turning Sean Murray’s original vision into reality. And this proved successful – «No Man’s Sky» has now sold over ten million copies.
Source: Hello Games
The best part of the story? «No Man's Sky» is now available everywhere and can even be played in VR or on the go on the Nintendo Switch.
Hello Games, and in particular Sean Murray, are still keeping a very low profile about their next game. They didn’t want to announce the game too early to avoid repeating the mistakes of «No Man’s Sky».
«Destiny» – boredom turned sequel
«Destiny» was developer studio Bungie’s first project after it broke away from Microsoft in 2007. The expectations for this shared world game were major. After all, this is the studio that had produced the perhaps most legendary shooter trilogy of all time: «Halo».
«Destiny» broke records – no game in a completely new franchise was pre-ordered as often as Bungie’s shooter. However, the pre-launch hype was quickly followed by a post-launch down.
Neither fans nor critics were fully convinced by the online shooter. The game earned only mediocre reviews on review aggregator sites like metacritic.com. «Destiny» wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t the next «Halo», either.
Source: Bungie
The most criticised aspects were the boring story and repetitive gameplay loop. And so, despite updates that brought new weapons, raids and stories, «Destiny» basked in mediocrity for months. The first hardcore gamers had slowly started giving up on the game.
Bungie was able to turn things around about a year after the initial launch of «Destiny» and deliver on its original promises with the release of the third major expansion, «The Taken King». The developer studio listened to its community’s feedback and finally gave fans a more in-depth story and implemented fundamental changes to the gameplay loop. The cutscenes and voiceovers were overhauled. Even Peter Dinklage, known from «Game of Thrones», was completely dropped from the game due to his lacklustre performance and scheduling conflicts.
«The Taken King» managed to break some records and reignited many fans’ passion for the unique sci-fi world. The expansion breathed new life into the game. I’d even go so far as to say that without the immense success of this expansion, there’d be no «Destiny 2». The sequel was released in 2017 and still enjoys great popularity.
The franchise’s future looks pretty bright, too. There’s no end in sight to the updates for «Destiny 2». What’s more, Bungie was acquired by Sony last year. With this, the studio is expected to expand with the goal of putting even more financial and human resources into the continuing development of «Destiny 2» and other new games.
Header image: CD Projekt Red
Domagoj Belancic
Senior Editor
Domagoj.Belancic@digitecgalaxus.chMy love of video games was unleashed at the tender age of five by the original Gameboy. Over the years, it's grown in leaps and bounds.
