Broken Games That Were Never Fixed, Despite Promises
Do developers always keep their word? Of course not! Sometimes they promise long-term support and fixes for release bugs, but eventually abandon their flawed creations.
Table of Contents
Games don't live forever. Some of them end up in the graveyard – abandoned, neglected, unsupported. Eventually they're buried by shutting down servers or stopping further support. However, there are some titles whose fate was supposed to be quite different. There was a bright future ahead of them, and their creators promised us virtual mountains of gold. The reality, however, can be disappointing, and despite the promises and assurances of improvement, there's no shortage of games whose authors –sometimes through their own fault, sometimes as a result of force majeure – ultimately deceived players and didn't fulfill their word.
In this article, we will take a look at just such games – games that were declared to be completed and polished, will receive updates and news, and in the end ended up only in empty words. Great promises were made, and almost none of them were delivered. Here are the games that were promised to be fixed and these were the empty promises.
Godus is a true divine comedy
Peter Molyneux needs no introduction. However, if for some reason you do not recognize this persona, then we'll throw some titles at you – Dungeon Keeper, Black & White, or Fable. If even these names don't mean anything to you, what can we add? The man has certainly had a great impact on the current shape of video games! Mr. Molyneux enjoys a huge portfolio, including a game we wanted to talk about, namely Godus.
Godus may resemble Black & White, as here, too, we play as a god. The title raised over $700,000 on Kickstarter back in December 2012. Peter Molyneux described the project at the time as a spiritual successor to another of his works, Populous. The situation around this project is quite interesting, as its mobile version is being updated all the time. But what about the PC version?
Well, things are not so colorful here. The Godus beta launched in 2013 and after three years, its development came to a halt. The contract with the lead developer expired in 2016 and it was revealed that no one else was working on the PC version. Although it's been a while, the title is still available on Steam's Early Access. In reality, however, we're dealing with a product that has been abandoned – and that's that. The backlash was huge, and players absolutely levelled Godus on Steam, but that didn't change anything.
A sad situation, but it seems that's the inherent risk of Kickstarter projects. Godus was supposed to get a lot of new features, like more single player modes plus co-op. Since the beginning, no one has given an official release date for the game. Its first publicly playable version appeared on Steam in 2013.
However, this is not the end of the controversy surrounding this title. Simultaneously with Godus, Molyneux promoted a social experiment in the form of a game called Curiosity – What's Inside the Cube? Essentially, you had to get to the center of a large cube made up of thousands of smaller squares. In order to achieve the goal, we used different types of chisels. The more expensive, the more effective it was, but you also had to remember that other players were in on the fun. Up to one million people could be having fun at the same time!
The reward for getting inside was supposed to be a big surprise, but it turned out a little disappointing. The player who got inside the cube first was to become the god of all gods in Godus. Additionally, they would receive a percentage of the profits from the sales of the game. The problem is that the game didn't really sell, so our winner, Bryan Henderson, didn't receive his award.
Do you think that's it? In 2016, when the issue of Godus was still fresh, a new game called Godus Wars was released, which was an RTS with divine mechanics, focused on conquering territories. Apart from being sad, it's also amusing that this game shared the fate of it's elder sibling, and also was abandoned. Apparently, games about gods lack devoted followers. Or just luck.
Warcraft 3 Reforged was an empty bag of promises
How Warcraft 3 Reforged ended we all know too well. Theoretically, this title should be included in this list, but it's a bit more complicated. We were promised miracles, but delivered something quite different. Nevertheless, the product was not entirely left to its fate. Granted, Blizzard isn't bragging about it left and right, but Warcraft 3 Reforged is receiving regular updates and patches. So, it's hard to consider it an abandoned game, although it's definitely a title that would need a fair amount of visual upgrades.
Anthem is an anthem that will no longer be heard
Anthem is the latest game from BioWare, the former RPG wizards – and it saddens us greatly to have to put it like that. Maybe this phoenix will eventually rise from the ashes, but it certainly won't have it easy when it comes to player confidence. There have been many changes in the studio's ranks recently, and hopefully in time, we will see positive effects of these reshuffles. At this point, however, let's focus on their last release, which was supposed to be saved. Unfortunately, it wasn't.
A great many bad things can be written about Anthem, but you can't say that it lacked potential. Maybe if BioWare hadn't insisted on online gameplay, instead focusing on the single player experience, the future of this game would look different? The fact is, something didn't click with the community from the very beginning. There was a lack of novelty, not enough content and overall, this production needed much more love.
We wrote about how Anthem was doing two years after its failed release in a separate article, back in March.
And BioWare promised to bestow warm feelings on its game. Anthem Next was announced, which was supposed to be a big revitalization of the flunked project. Everything was supposed to be reworked and refined! It is worth mentioning that the game launched in 2019, and a major overhaul was promised only a year later. We had to wait a long time for any specifics, and when they appeared, they seemingly pleased no one – eventually, the whole Anthem Next project was binned. In early 2021, it was announced that the game would not be further developed. However, it's worth noting that the servers continue to be available and at this point, EA has no plans to shut them down.
The problem with Anthem is that the entire project was questionable from the beginning. It turns out that there were many concerns about the product inside BioWare and EA. The idea was modified and changed many times before its general shape was finally determined. In the meantime, they also launched Mass Effect Andromeda which turned out to be, to put it mildly, a dud. This, in turn, required some of the crew to be delegated to patch that production, and the team working on Anthem was thus depleted.
All this, combined with delays and considerable expectations for the final product, led to the ultimate failure of this IP. Already after the release, it was revealed that most of the game was created only a year before premiere, on extremely short notice, just to get everything done in time. With time, the team crumbled, and an increasing number of people left the sinking ship that Anthem turned out to be. You probably know the rest of the story.
Spacebase DF-9? Finish the game yourself, don't count on the developers!
Spacebase DF-9 is a space simulator developed by Double Fine Productions. Initially, this title was available as a prototype, but in 2013 it was released as a paid open beta in Steam's Early Access. A year later, in 2014, the production officially launched. However, this was not a cause for rejoicing for anyone.
Although Spacebase DF-9 came out of Early Access, in reality it was still far from complete. Shortly after the release, some employees were laid off, and in time, it was communicated that there were no further plans to develop the game. In fact, there isn't even a team dedicated to this project. Official support for the game ended in May 2015. This is because Double Fine Productions decided that finishing the game would simply not be profitable.
And there's irony to that – because the game was originally created only with the help of fans and consumers. They were the ones who, by casting their votes during Amnesia Fortnight 2012, decided that this was one of the games they wanted to see in flesh. Double Fine Productions thus undertook to deliver the production, and later abandoned it. The reason was insufficient sales of the title in Early Access. It was decided that no new features would be added after release – only patches would be provided, along with some support. Even that proved untrue.
However, the players were not left out in the cold, because at the same time, part of the source code of Spacebase DF-9 was made open-source. Why? So that people interested in this game could complete it for themselves. And so they did. Within a few months the first unofficial patch was created, fixing many of the game's problems, but after that, its further development slowed down considerably. Today, only a handful of people are still interested in this production. It's worth noting that Spacebase DF-9 itself is still available for purchase on Steam.
