Shipped video games usually fail commercially. Video game failures look different depending on the game and studio being evaluated. Obvious failures stand out due to the hype, scale, and spectacle involved. Other games appear successful on the surface by coasting on the success of a franchise, despite falling far from necessary targets. A video game’s risk of failure is affected by players’ gameplay, support, and community experiences, as well as the design, monetization, and marketing decisions made by the studio and publishers.
Obvious video game failures stand out due to the failure’s scale and spectacle, disappointing players after a much-hyped campaign. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum made major losses and was branded the worst game of 2023, with the developers issuing a public apology. Kerbal Space Program 2’s failure resulted in $25M in earnings compared to a $60M loss, an incomplete and broken game abandoned in early access, and overwhelmingly negative Steam reviews. MultiVersus had significant hype but struggled with player retention due to overmonetization and poor gameplay. The game was delisted and shut down permanently a year after re-launching, losing over $100M.
Coasting on prior successes masks the failure of some games from successful franchises, with further content and reboot sequels quietly being cancelled. Mortal Kombat 1’s sales had reached just over 6 million units, which sounds impressive until the game is compared against the two predecessors. MK X and MK11 had put the Mortal Kombat franchise on an upward trend and both broken records in earnings, with MKX selling over 11 million copies and MK11 exceeding 15 million. MK1 cancelled future DLC and feature support early, barely 1 ½ years after launching, thanks to sales never picking up and as lack of interest in the game’s first expansion. Prince of Persia (2008) was an attempted reboot and new direction of the Prince of Persia series. The game appeared moderately successful in isolation, but earnings were so far below the earlier Sands games that Ubisoft abandoned its storyline to continue the earlier one.
Factors affecting a video game’s risk of failure include players’ gameplay, support and community experiences, as well as decisions by the studio and publishers around a game’s design, monetization, and marketing. Design issues, such as technical problems, poor gameplay, and narrative inconsistencies, play a role in a game’s failure. Poor interactions experienced by players, from inadequate tech support to a company’s inability to manage a game community, lead to players feeling alienated. Misalignments between the business and gameplay aspects of a game, such as infeasible monetization models, undermine players’ experiences and the business’s ability to sustain a profit. A badly-targeted marketing campaign runs the risk of games failing due to missed opportunities. Read further to learn more about why shipped video games usually fail.
1. Uninspired or repetitive gameplay
Uninspired or repetitive gameplay makes players lose interest in games or makes a game fail to stand out in the first place due to unfavorable reviews. Games that are unoriginal end up receiving negative comparisons against genre pioneers, nostalgic player favorites, or current alternatives. Boring gameplay and storylines put players off. Games that just feel repetitive, lacking variety or a sense of progression, risk losing players’ interest.
Unoriginal games play into genre tropes while adding nothing new. Games lacking originality are negatively compared against genre pioneers, nostalgic fan favorites, and more-popular competition. Games with content, gameplay, or storylines too similar to another’s, even in the same studio or franchise, risk being called shameless copies. Deltarune strikes a balance between leveraging nostalgia and maintaining originality. The game is considered Undertale’s spiritual successor, coming from the same creator and sharing Undertale’s aesthetic, underworld theme, and some gameplay, like bullet hell combat and non-violent solutions. Deltarune differs from Undertale in strongly subverting the choices-have-consequences message and having faster, party-based gameplay. Resisting being boxed in makes comparing the two difficult. Deltarune is a distinct critical and financial success in its own right. Games lacking novelty risk being boring.
Boring gameplay puts players off. Games that don’t provide players with enough engagement are able to become too boring to play even if the storyline is interesting. When all of the interesting action – such as fighting the villain to save the kingdom – happens within cutscenes while the actual gameplay is just busywork, the story and gameplay feel disconnected. Gameplay that’s irrelevant to the main story risks becoming boring. If a game is about training to become a knight but involves running mundane errands rather than adventure and discovery, players feel as if they’re never going to reach the goal.
Repetitive games are able to lose players’ interest through a lack of variety. Being repetitive due to a lack of variety isn’t the same as using repetitive elements in gameplay – not all types of repetition are bad. There must be a sense of reward, novelty, and progression in the gameplay to keep players engaged. Circa Infinity became a critical and financial success thanks to its addictive recursive circle levels that continuously zoom in. Circa Infinity’s repetition is paired with mesmerizing and engaging music and increasing levels of challenge, where players need to execute more complex movements with faster timing. The effect is a hypnotic flow state, skill-based progression, and satisfying gameplay.
2. Technical issues
Technical issues make games feel unfinished and are able to become unsustainable if not resolved. Technical issues were the primary reason for video games like Kerbal Space Program 2 and MultiVersus failing, with the games’ studios even closing down as direct consequences. Unresolved server issues result in unreliable gameplay and an unsustainable game ecosystem. Bugs diminish players’ experience and even break core gameplay. Performance issues are frustrating enough to ruin the experience for players.
Unresolved server issues are a critical reason for games failing, undermining reliable gameplay and making a game ecosystem unsustainable. Players encountered connection issues in Mortal Kombat 1 (MK1) which affected even the single-player Invasions mode, due to a connection being required. MK1’s PVP modes had numerous lag and connectivity-related issues affecting matches, such as rubberbanding. MultiVersus similarly experienced severe lag and desync issues that disrupted online matches. Developers weren’t able to resolve all of the game’s connectivity issues, particularly on the Nintendo Switch, which contributed to its failure along with game crashes and bugs.
Bugs diminish players’ experience. Severe bugs that break core gameplay are able to lead to a game’s failure. Evolve had UI elements like health bars disappearing. Kerbal Space Program 2 had game-breaking bugs like physics problems that threw rockets off course or broke them apart. The inability to resolve the early access game’s bugs played a significant role in its failure to complete its feature updates. Mortal Kombat 1 included a match-breaking bug on launch called Player 1 Advantage, which resulted in certain hits and blocks not registering for Player 2. The bug plagued players for several weeks after launch. The game additionally suffered from performance issues such as freezes and glitches.
Performance issues make gameplay laborious and frustrating, ruining the experience for players. Kerbal Space Program 2 had severe performance issues that made the game barely playable, with players dropping below 15 FPS, disastrous crashes, and other issues. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was considered one of the worst games of 2023 thanks to performance issues like heavy stuttering, FPS drops, and crashing that made the game barely playable.
3. Poor gameplay
Poor gameplay makes the player experience negative or mediocre, and is often due to bad design decisions. Gameplay affected by inadequate technical design disrupts the player experience and communicates that the players aren’t prioritized. Problems with a game’s balance undermine gameplay and cause players to lose faith in the game. Poor user experience design based on inadequate research and testing causes frustration and accessibility issues. Unsatisfying gameplay that lacks novelty or proper gameplay incentives puts players off.
Issues from poor technical design disrupt the player experience. Issues that are considered avoidable and unnecessary send a message that the player’s experience is secondary. Mortal Kombat forcing players to maintain an online connection even for single-player modes like Invasions was considered a needless prioritization of live services over the player experience. Requiring live syncs for single-player modes meant disconnected players lost progress if connection issues required a restart. MK1’s netcode issues on launch included preventable PVP struggles. The game didn’t allow P2P, meaning some players had pings as large as 200 to 400ms. Lag worsened in areas far from a local server, making online gameplay unbalanced.
Balance issues undermine gameplay and make players lose faith in a game. Single-player games that feel too easy or too difficult, or where gameplay falls disproportionately out of the difficulty curve, push players away. Multiplayer games that don’t properly balance character abilities or account for different player skill levels lead to skewed gameplay. Evolve’s matchmaking system placed experienced veteran players against beginners, resulting in unfair play. XDefiant initially allowed all games to start even if teams had an uneven number of players. While this provided flexibility in casual play, it failed to consider the strict need for balance in ranked games as a different user experience.
Poor user experience design frustrates players and makes games inaccessible. Lack of usability occurs due to insufficient user experience research and testing. Cross-platform porting issues are a common area for usability disruptions to occur, when a game designed around certain controls is poorly optimized and insufficiently tested on a new platform. Users end up with strange, unintuitive or inaccessible controls or performance issues and feel as if their platform was treated as an afterthought. Mortal Kombat 1’s gameplay had particularly poor performance on the Switch, such as characters not rendering on screen and most areas in Invasions mode not being available for several weeks after launch. Switch players never received crossplay support, unlike the game’s other platforms, due to the Switch’s worse performance causing a disadvantage for competitive play.
Unsatisfying gameplay puts players off. Games that lack novelty or have insufficient incentive for playing, such as an unengaging story or mediocre in-game rewards, become boring and grindy. The design gives the impression of trying to keep players busy for longer rather than providing a fun experience. Content that lacks polish or doesn’t feel that special makes a game less appealing. Mortal Kombat 1 had players complaining about skins not feeling distinct enough, and disliking having to pay for simple recolors, or palettes.
4. Monetization problems
Monetization problems make a game unprofitable and create a negative relationship between players and the studio. In-game marketplace issues are able to ruin the game experience for players. Pay-to-win models don’t go down well and undermine a game’s legitimacy for competitive play. Excessive monetization causes players to feel exploited and give a negative impression of the studio or publisher. Monetization models that aren’t well designed for the game being sold lead to lost revenue or putting players off. Misleading practices around monetization make players mistrust the game’s creators.
In-game marketplace issues are able to ruin gameplay for players. Scams and bots undermine a marketplace’s legitimacy. Marketplaces that incentivize unfair price-hikes give players the impression that gameplay is secondary to the company making money through seller fees. Building a game around a marketplace to the detriment of balanced gameplay affects a game’s viability when players become discouraged. Diablo III launched with both a regular Auction House, which accepted in-game gold, and the Real Money Auction House (RMAH). High item prices made players less willing to spend money at the auction houses than Blizzard expected. Players complained that item drops seemed to be nerfed to build reliance on auction houses. Blizzard removed the auction houses and boosted item drops, and were able to improve players’ experience and restore confidence that gameplay wasn’t pay-to-win.
Models deemed pay-to-win, where meaningful progress or competitive advantage requires real-money purchases, don’t go down well with players. Pay-to-win models undermine attempts at becoming a legitimate competitive game and discourage players’ investment in continued gameplay. MultiVersus added multiple currencies to unlock different types of content, such as fighters, battle pass features, and perks, meaning that progress required significant grind if players weren’t willing to pay money. Games that don’t charge money for features that grant an advantage are still able to be guilty of excessive monetization.
Excessive monetization makes players feel exploited. Players perceive a lack of delivered value for too high a price and feel disrespected, while the studio or publisher looks greedy and unprofessional. Excessive monetization erodes the core experience of gameplay that players expect. Mortal Kombat 1’s already-expensive base game and expansions made the microtransactions for characters and customizations feel unreasonable. MK1 went against established norms of the franchise by charging for custom fatalities, a feature that had been free and a basic part of gameplay since the second Mortal Kombat game in 1993. Delivering player value involves research into not only what players consider fair pricing (and are able to afford), but what to monetize in the first place.
A poor monetization model leads to even popular games failing. Monetizing effectively requires market research into the type of game being created to understand what features players value paying for, vs what is unreasonable or infeasible. Market and genre trends, player-desired content, and a game’s individual appeal all factor into players’ support of a monetization model. Games requiring ongoing support, like live services, must factor in costs, projected sales, and how to sustain profitability when initial adoption dies down. Players were willing to pay World of Warcraft’s (WOW’s) subscription fee for support as Blizzard was well-established, the Warcraft franchise was already popular, and WOW was first-to-market in bringing an MMORPG into the mainstream. WOW’s model is infeasible for most MMORPGs, which rely on microtransaction content and expansions for ongoing revenue.
Misleading or deceptive monetization practices make players hesitant to trust the company with their money. Mortal Kombat 1 marketed DLC characters as bound to larger content bundles, such as Kombat Packs, and bundled with premium and collector’s editions. Players who bought characters on the understanding that bundles were the only way to obtain the characters felt misled when the characters became separately available soon afterwards. The game ambiguously marketed Shang Tsung as a pre-order incentive, interpreted as an exclusive, and then made the character available from day 1 of launch.
5. Narrative and writing issues
Narrative and writing issues ruin immersion in a game. Story elements in video games that come across as unnatural break players’ suspension of disbelief. Narrative inconsistencies read as a lack of care, undermine a game’s believability, and receive harsh criticism from players. A lack of narrative supporting gameplay fails to capture or hold players’ attention if the game is meant to be story-based.
Unnatural-feeling story elements break players’ suspension of disbelief. Conflicting messages between graphics, dialogue, and audio effects, such as inappropriate facial expressions, are jarring and take players out of the narrative experience. Dialogue and cutscenes where characters speak like a quest info-dump or use too much slang don’t feel real. Stories that don’t fit the gameplay feel disconnected. Interactions and storylines that feel forced put players off.
Narrative inconsistencies in a video game read as a lack of care by the creators, undermine a game’s believability and incur harsh criticism online. Players have high standards for sequels, in particular with long-established franchises that hold heavy nostalgia. Players were unsatisfied when Mortal Kombat 1 changed core details about the series and characters, such as making Scorpion’s true identity different from previous games. Mortal Kombat 1 received criticism as the story moved away from the traditionally more serious martial arts tournament style and atmosphere to follow superhero trends. The game’s multiverse storyline was compared to the experience of watching an Avengers movie—it didn’t hold true to the franchise.
Frustrating narratives are able to put players off, due to plot details, disappointing endings, or even an unpopular premise. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s financial failure was in part due to its storyline. The game’s central premise of killing off beloved DC superheroes en masse was disliked. Plot details were further criticized, with superhero deaths like shooting Batman in the face being viewed as disrespectful and a waste of potential. The ending of the 2008 reboot of Prince of Persia’s storyline similarly felt like a letdown. The player’s final move, restoring the world to its original, corrupted state, was disappointing as it reset all progress, undermining the gameplay objective and all of the player’s efforts. Narratives that are underwhelming and unengaging additionally lose players.
A lack of narrative to support gameplay is demotivating to players if a game is meant to be story-based. Story goals that players aren’t invested in or that fail to hold attention reduce the incentive to keep playing. Mass Effect: Andromeda’s storyline was considered bland, lacking the epic and intense feeling of the earlier trilogy. This was due to Andromeda’s lower stakes, reduced sense of urgency, and fewer decisions that held long-term consequences. Consequences themselves had a smaller scale of impact on the game.
6. Pacing and flow problems
Pacing and flow problems prevent gameplay from feeling smooth and even. The pacing of a game is how fast the gameplay and story progress from the player’s perspective, and requires balance between more and less-intense moments. Flow is the feeling players have of being in the moment, and relies on the gameplay and narrative experience being smooth.
A game’s pacing is how fast a game and narrative progresses from the player’s point of view. Pacing requires balance. Game pacing is sped up by high-intensity moments in gameplay, such as real-time combat, time-pressured events, and reducing the duration between moments of action. Gameplay is slowed by events with less real-time pressure, such as exploration and problem-solving, longer dialogue and cutscenes, and removing timers. Complex challenges that take time to overcome slow the pacing. Varying harder and easier challenges lets players savor achievements, while preventing gameplay from becoming boring. Challenges must maintain the game’s difficulty curve. Difficulty fluctuations that feel arbitrary or disproportionate, or excessive early on, risk frustrating players. Gameplay that’s too easy near the end, once players have mastered the skills, feels anticlimactic and disrupts the game’s flow.
Game flow is the feeling of a player being in the moment, which includes a smooth gameplay and narrative experience. Games with poor pacing and badly designed interactions pull players out of the flow state. Duke Nukem Forever’s simplistic combat mechanics and slow puzzle-solving disrupted its action-oriented play as a first-person shooter, contributing to the game’s failure. Maintaining flow involves matching the story’s level of stakes with the level of challenge players face. Threats like bosses must be harder to kill and take more time than killing insignificant minions.
7. Lack of support
Lack of support dissuades both disappointed existing players and potential players wary of a game or studio’s negative reputation. Unresolved issues lead to players losing faith in a studio. The absence of transparent communication from a game’s creators, or a lack of communication, period, leads to broken trust, particularly if players are experiencing gameplay issues.
A lack of resolved issues leads to players losing faith in games and studios. MultiVersus failed to fix connection and desync issues. The loss of players and revenue led to the game being delisted and servers shutting down a year after relaunching. Kerbal Space Program 2 was never completed. The game’s release was retroactively declared to start as early access, promising the remaining features as updates. KSP2’s quality was poor even for early access, with players experiencing game-breaking bugs like rockets exploding unexpectedly, performance issues, and frequent crashes. Many issues were never resolved, and development was abandoned. The studio and publisher further alienated players by failing to communicate transparently about development issues or the game and company’s future.
Misleading or inadequate communication leads to broken trust in a game’s creators. Players require more communication when facing issues that affect gameplay, as with Kerbal Space Program 2’s broken and unfinished early access. Intercept Games, KSP2’s studio, increasingly delayed progress updates before stopping communication. Players learned via an April 2024 WARN notice of parent company Take Two Interactive’s plans to lay off the same number of employees Intercept Games had, at the office housing the studio. Take Two gave no response besides two statements denying Intercept’s closure and reaffirming KSP2’s continued development, while Intercept gave a statement of being hard at work. The entire studio was laid off in June, but players only received confirmation in November, when Take Two confirmed Intercept’s sale. The lack of transparency and never-finished game led to poor Steam reviews.
8. Player retention
Player retention is necessary to sustain games over time. Games that rely on continuous play need to maintain sufficient draw factors to counter losing players gradually or during off-seasons. Games that lack either short-term or long-term goals run the risk of either overwhelming players or becoming boring as gameplay stagnates.
Failure to maintain draw factors results in games losing players over time or during off-seasons. Seasonal events, such as Guild Wars 2’s Halloween (Mad King) festival and League of Legends’ Ultra Rapid Fire (URF) mode are ways to incentivize players to join or return. Daily and weekly incentives, such as Guild Wars 2’s daily and weekly quest rewards, establish routines of players logging on frequently.
A lack of combined short-term and long-term goals makes players either overwhelmed by early challenges or bored as gameplay stagnates. XDefiant’s progression system became too slow, with players grinding for weeks or longer to unlock factions or achieve the hundreds of weapon levels needed for mastery camos. Guild Wars 2 has short-term goals to incentivize players still levelling up, like individual story campaigns, new abilities, and gear and achievement rewards. Unlocking dungeons and new storylines every few levels is a medium-term goal as players’ levels increase. Crafting is a long-term goal, as it’s slow at low levels, involving exploration for resource-gathering. Crafting becomes a satisfying incentive for high-level players who are able to buy resources with gold achieved from dungeons and raids.
9. Community issues
Community issues are able to drive players away as well as posing risks to players and the company if not dealt with. Negative behavior such as hostility within a game community makes players reluctant to participate. Safety and security issues put players and the game’s ecosystem at risk and are even able to have legal consequences if inadequate measures are taken to protect players.
Experiencing negative behavior within a game’s community, such as hostility towards new players, risks causing players to abandon the game and community. Community managers must respond promptly and appropriately to player concerns, or risk being perceived as apathetic toward or even encouraging destructive behavior. Severe, frequent, or unresolved issues are able to tarnish a community’s reputation and dissuade players from buying the game or joining a community in the first place. Cheating and griefing frustrate players and diminish gameplay to the point where the game isn’t considered worth it. Having adequate prevention mechanisms, such as effective detection and reporting mechanisms, is essential for multiplayer games. Reporting systems must be well-designed to ensure they’re secure and minimize their likelihood of abuse. Harassment and abuse risk players’ mental health and safety.
Safety and security issues put individuals or a game’s entire community at risk. Games that take inadequate measures to protect players additionally risk legal consequences. Marketplace scams, account hacks, and threats to physical safety are serious concerns to safeguard against. Games marketed towards a young player base are expected and often legally required to take higher levels of precaution to protect minors.
10. Poor marketing
Poor marketing is a prominent cause of shipped video games failing, through the wrong messaging or a lack of visibility. Marketing that’s overhyped risks disappointing players and leaving them feeling ripped off when the delivered game doesn’t match expectations. Game marketing that’s delayed, insufficient, or poorly targeted leads to missed opportunities.
Overhyped marketing risks players feeling disappointed if the launched game doesn’t live up to their expectations. Misleading players deliberately, or overcommitting and failing to deliver, makes players feel ripped off, damages a game and studio’s reputation, and puts the studio at financial and legal risk. Kerbal Space Program 2 promised players many new features, such as the ability to build colonies and have multiplayer modes. The game failed to deliver all but 1 of its planned 5 feature updates. Splitting the development focus between unrealistic feature goals and core gameplay resulted in the base game never being completed beyond early access. KSP2 suffered game-breaking bugs and performance issues that were never resolved, leading to its overwhelmingly negative recent Steam reviews.
Inadequate marketing of a video game, such as advertising that comes too early or too late, targets the wrong audience, or lacks the quality or quantity to capture players’ attention, leads to missed opportunities. Among Us lacked a dedicated marketing strategy or budget. The game was released in 2018 and had been out for over 2 years before managing to gain attention.
