Screwed by the Network/Video Games

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Video Games that were Screwed by the Network include:

  • When presented with a completely reworked Conker's Quest, now titled Conker's Bad Fur Day, Nintendo of America was reportedly horrified to discover that the formerly aggressively-cute, child-aimed Banjo-Kazooie clone had been replaced by something inspired by South Park, R-rated movies, and the Itchy and Scratchy cartoons from The Simpsons. In response, they gave the game very little advertising (sticking mostly to men's magazines, whose target demographic probably wasn't interested in cartoon talking squirrels), an ugly box with a giant M rating plus a warning stating that it was very clearly "not for anyone under 17", and had Nintendo Power refuse to acknowledge its existence, only doing a story on it two consoles later in July 2008. Rare was understandably upset with this treatment, likely softening the company up for a buyout by Microsoft.
    • The back of the game box actually tries to persuade the reader not to buy it, and not in the cutesy sarcastic "This is the game Mom and Dad don't want you to see!" way you'd expect. [dead link] The copy's lack of enthusiasm for the product is very apparent.
    • The game got somewhat better treatment in British video game publications, most probably because Rare is a British company and, at the time, most British Nintendo magazines practically worshiped the ground they walked on. The UK magazines seemed more interested in getting Nintendo into the mature gamers spotlight.
    • Its Xbox remake, Live and Reloaded, not only has a (smaller) warning label, but was also (and ironically) heavily censored, thereby losing much of its appeal. And the shutdown of Xbox Live for Xbox 1 screws the "Live" part of the game over.
  • Fallout may just be the ultimate example of this trope, though screwed by incompetence and not malice. With "Van Buren" (the reputed Fallout 3) nearly completed, Interplay pulled the plug on Black Isle Studios when going bankrupt—but kept the Fallout IP. Two games were released without the input of Black Isle: Fallout Tactics, which was a respectable tactical strategy game but lacked the freedom the series was renowned for, and Brotherhood of Steel, which is probably the source of a significant part of the resentment of Fallout fans. There was... more than a little trepidation on the part of many fans now[when?] that Bethesda is releasing Fallout 3. (Of course, giving New Vegas to Obsidian was pretty much a cause for squee, so perhaps this no longer applies.)
  • Arguably, after EA bought them, every Origin franchise that wasn't Ultima, and every Ultima game that wasn't Ultima Online.
    • The Ultima games may be more than just arguable: According to Richard Garriott, the many bugs and plot holes in Ultima VIII and IX were due to EA insisting the games be released at the scheduled date. IX was the most egregious because by then EA dropped support for everything but Online, drove out many of the game's developers and still demanded the game be released on time. When IX bombed EA threw Origin under the bus - they canceled all further projects including Ultima Online II, drove out Garriott and laid the groundwork for shutting down Origin in 2004.
  • Arguably, after EA bought them, every BioWare franchise that hadn't already ended. Not a little of the Internet Backdraft over Mass Effect 3 is due to a perception that EA's business model requires regular releases of easy-to-sell games from franchises such as Bill Madden NFL and FIFA, and therefore that there simply wasn't sufficient time given to BioWare to properly write and develop the storyline for Mass Effect 3.
  • Similar to the story of Lorraine Williams in the tabletop games listing, Jack Tramiel's takeover of Atari was seen by many as the beginning of the end for the company. Since he was the creator of and had a controlling stake in Commodore, he pretty much tried to kill off the gaming side of Atari and turn them into a budget computer outfit to complement his maiden company (which explains most of the aborted and/or half-assed attempts at making Commodore 64 clones in the late 1980s). He would sue lesser companies into oblivion, employee turnover became insane because the millions wasted on computer development meant they couldn't keep anyone around, and nepotism was rampant within the company.
  • Tim Schafer and Double Fine thought Brütal Legend had a safe haven under EA... until they completely and intentionally advertised the game as a single player adventure game, rather than a multiplayer Real Time Strategy game, and forced Double Fine to keep quiet about it against their wishes. Tim Schafer did his best to get the word out on his own, but was essentially drowned out by EA's hype machine. Making it worse was the single player demo. When the true gameplay got out, players were divided between those who got the game fully informed by Tim Schafer, and those undergoing a massive Hype Backlash. EA was so unhappy with the game's sales (regardless of high reviews,) they refused to release a highly requested patch for the Play Station 3 that Double Fine created, canceled the sequel, and let Tim Schafer take all the blame for the Misaimed Marketing. The move almost caused Double Fine to go out of business.
  • After Humongous Entertainment went independent again (after going through Infogrames and Atari ownership), it sold off four of its best-selling franchises and ruined the fifth one forever.
    • And two more. Both had only one game too, before people started hating them. However, a poll in mid-2011 indicated that most fans wish Atari would bring back Humongous's old series.
  • The Sith Lords, the highly-awaited sequel to the critically acclaimed Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, was completely screwed over courtesy of LucasArts pushing its release date to Christmas, giving Obsidian barely a single year to develop the game after BioWare handed it to them. As a result, the game was heavily unfinished, suffering from unresolved plotlines to noticeable chunks of the game missing outright. While this may be chalked up to standard Executive Meddling, what happened next was what shot this into here: When Obsidian desired to release a whole patch that would, essentially, finish the game and fill in everything that was missing, LucasArts promptly denied that notion and, therefore, only fan efforts have been able to attempt to fill in the blanks. In defense of LucasArts, since the original release wasn't Xbox Live-enabled, any patch would have been PC-only.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog fans will defend this to great lengths. Right before the Sonic 2006 release, SEGA had undergone a major corporate retool. SEGA’s plan was to disband the Sonic Team all together, and release Sonic games every so often with no running plot or continuity. While Sonic Team didn’t disband, the games continued to go downhill (until November 2010), they have only very subtle continuity, are nowhere near as promoted as they once were, and characters have been forgotten (Rouge, Omega, Jet, Big, Espio, Charmy) or just plain cut (Wave, Storm, Eggman Nega, Chaos, Tikal) from games. Also, the Sonic Central website was not updated for over 4 years until it was gotten rid of.
    • Yes and no. Sonic Central has been ignored and demolished in 2011, but there are numerous other official websites to promote the games, usually now with each new game getting its own site. Furthermore Sega have been utilising its fanbase to promote the games, with some Big Name Fans now actively working for Sega to promote the games usually in the places most Sonic fans are likely to find out about the new games. The franchise as a whole is still constantly promoted, but not in the same places it used to be. Nowadays ads are more likely to be found in magazines read by 6-10 year olds, not the 15-30's who read more mature video game magazines. Furthermore, while the consistency and lack of overarching plots has lead to several standalone games, with missing characters and less intricate (and thus debatably worse plots), the quality of the gameplay itself has improved, something most the fanbase, and critics alike have been crying out for. Sega have been promoting Sonic, just in a different way, to try and appease some of there Unpleasable Fanbase.
      • Sega's non Sonic IPs have it even worse. See Golden Axe for example. Beast Rider was the last straw: poorly coded and poorly marketed.
  • EverQuest. Oh man. They took the profits from it and created something like seven different games...which all failed. They refuse to spend any money improving EverQuest itself or advertising it. The graphics are ancient and the server and client software is a mess of code. Apparently the idea of investing in a winner to make it even better is beyond them. They are currently[when?] spending more money on a new game EverQuest Next (working title) instead of fixing EverQuest.
  • Lego Island 2 was going to be far more than what it turned out to be. However, anybody who actually wanted quality left the game, and everybody else said "Hurry up and finish the game so we can make money." We ended up with a Contested Sequel.
  • Activision screwed over True Crime: Hong Kong by cancelling it right when it was nearly complete because in their words, "it just wouldn't sell enough copies"... which might have been something to do with previous installment True Crime: New York City being Christmas Rushed at their insistence, the result being buggy and unpolished and subsequently flopping. True Crime: HK was eventually picked up by SquareEnix and released as Sleeping Dogs, since Activision retained the rights to the franchise, and might have sold better for no longer being associated with the previous installment in a now-dead franchise.
  • Capcom almost seems to be trying to kill Mega Man:
    • The Mega Man ZX and Mega Man Star Force series sold fairly poorly, and as a result ended up with very few entries.
    • Universe was announced as a celebration of all things Mega Man...then unceremoniously cancelled about a year later.
    • Mega Man Legends 3 was announced in a blaze of publicity with lots of hype about how fans would be able to participate in its development. Then it got cancelled about a year later when someone remembered that the Legends series had been killed because it never had good sales and that the people who were interested in it were a Vocal Minority.
      • However, it didn't really help that Capcom's method of gauging fan interest was to release a demo of the game and charge money for it. When fans didn't take the bait Capcom had an excuse to cancel the game and blame it on them.
    • Mega Man X had been implemented for Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, but was removed because they didn't think fans were interested.
    • Mega Man finally made it into a Mascot Fighter, Street Fighter X Tekken... as the overweight loser version from the first game's horrible box art. Under the circumstances, not many people are finding the joke funny.
      • Funny thing about that; The guy who originally made Mega Man pushed for this version in the game before he left Capcom. He thought it would be a funny homage. The fans did not get the message due to Fandumb.
  • Square Enix's American branch seems content with giving the Dragon Quest series the shaft, with Nintendo ultimately stepping in to localize the ninth and sixth installments, not to mention DQ Monsters: Joker 2.
  • Though companies such as XSEED have offered to translate some of the Tales games left in Japan, Namco-Bandai (Bandai-Namco in Japan), adamantly refuses, wishing to be the only company to release games in the franchise. Seriously, it's not gonna break our hearts if another company's name appears on and in the game. And even if the games do see foreign releases, they tend not to get very good advertisement, and consequentially sell poorly.
  • Rayman Origins, a critically-acclaimed game that marks Rayman's return to the platforming genre, Ubisoft chose to release in the U.S. the same day as two of their more anticipated products, Assassin's Creed: Revelations and... The Black Eyed Peas Experience. Guess which ones got the higher sales and larger amounts of advertising. Said Black Eyed Peas game faded into obscurity in almost an instant.
  • Gears of War 3 was ready for an early summer release, but was forced by Microsoft into a September holiday release, putting it into direct competition with blockbuster releases in the Battlefield series and Modern Warfare 3. While the sales were still strong, the online multiplayer quickly dropped in population due to the competition and hasn't recovered.
  • So have you guys heard about that Konami? They've been on a downward spiral in recent[when?] years due to some of the worst marketing imaginable. Jim Sterling has been on about this already, but the basic just is that they seem to actively be trying to make sure people don't know their products exists or group the release schedule so close together that sales suffer because most fans can't buy all of the games at initial release because they all came out at about the same time. They won't even give information on delays.
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