Months or even years of pushbacks build sky-high hopes, and some games couldn’t live up to the wait. Here are 15 big game delays that ended in disappointment.
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15. APB: All Points Bulletin (2010)
A multiplayer crime sandbox should not collapse within months of launch, yet that is exactly what happened to APB: All Points Bulletin. Years of hype built around customization and GTA-style chaos ran into servers that buckled and a subscription model nobody wanted. The studio behind it went bankrupt within weeks of release. Delays are supposed to buy polish, not a funeral. | © Electronic Arts
14. Too Human (2008)
Nine years. That is how long Too Human sat in development before players got their hands on it, and the wait produced a camera system that fought you in every fight. Silicon Knights had promised a trilogy and an epic Norse sci-fi saga. What arrived instead was clunky combat wrapped around a story that never got to finish itself. The sequels never happened, and nobody was surprised. | © Microsoft Game Studios
13. Daikatana (2000)
John Romero wanted you to be his bitch, or so the ad campaign for Daikatana famously promised. The game slipped past its original release for years, rebuilt engines mid-development, and burned through the goodwill Romero had earned on Doom. Escort missions with suicidal AI allies turned every level into a chore. Few launches have ever closed a reputation this fast. | © Eidos Interactive
12. Redfall (2023)
Vampires taking over a quarantined city sounds like a pitch worth waiting for. Redfall pushed its release back to smooth out the rough edges, then shipped with enemies that stood still mid-combat and frame rates that dipped on consoles that were supposed to handle it easily. Arkane had built a name on immersive design with Dishonored and Prey, which made the flatness here sting more. Extra time in the oven does not fix a recipe that was never finished. | © Xbox Game Studios
11. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum (2023)
Nobody asked for a stealth game about Gollum, and the final product did not make a convincing case for itself. Delayed out of its original window to address technical issues, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum still launched with animations that looked a decade old. Jumps misfired, voice acting clashed with the tone of Tolkien's world, and stealth sections dragged on without tension. Sometimes the extra development time just means more hours spent polishing something broken underneath. | © Nacon
10. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (2024)
Four supervillains shooting bullet-sponge enemies was not what anyone expected from the studio behind Batman: Arkham Asylum. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League got pushed back a full year, then launched as a live-service loot grinder nobody asked for. Killing Superman should have felt like an event, but it played out between menus and seasonal battle passes. The genre pivot alone explains most of the backlash. | © Warner Bros. Games
9. Crackdown 3 (2019)
Cloud-powered destruction was the pitch that made Crackdown 3 sound like a leap forward. That promise got delayed for years, and what shipped barely resembled the tech demos shown on stage. Terry Crews brought energy the open world never matched, with environments that felt stuck in the previous console generation. The gap between the trailer and the final product became the whole story. | © Microsoft Studios
8. Diablo III (2012)
Twelve years sat between the second and third entries in the Diablo franchise. When Diablo III finally launched, players spent opening night staring at Error 37 instead of killing demons. The always-online requirement turned a single-player-friendly series into a server-dependent mess on day one. Blizzard eventually fixed most of it, but the auction house controversy and launch chaos defined the rollout. | © Blizzard Entertainment
7. No Man's Sky (2016)
Picture a universe with billions of planets, each one promised as genuinely unique. No Man's Sky spent extra months in development before launch, yet multiplayer, base building, and basic content were missing entirely. Sean Murray had talked up features in interviews that simply weren't there at release. Hello Games spent years patching the game into something closer to the original pitch, but that first week damage never fully went away. | © Hello Games
6. Spore (2008)
An evolution simulator that let you build a creature from a single cell to a spacefaring civilization sounded like nothing else on shelves. Spore carried years of hype from Will Wright, the mind behind The Sims, and expectations climbed accordingly. What shipped simplified almost every system that fans had been excited about, especially the late-game space exploration. DRM restrictions on the PC release added another layer of frustration on top of a game that already felt smaller than advertised. | © Electronic Arts
5. Mighty No. 9 (2016)
Crowdfunding backers handed over four million dollars for Mighty No. 9 based on nostalgia for Mega Man. What they got looked and played like a budget flash game from a decade earlier, with stiff animations and a dash mechanic that made the whole thing feel unfinished. Delays pushed the release back repeatedly while the team released odd promotional videos instead of fixing the actual game. People who backed it early still bring it up as the moment crowdfunding trust took a real hit. | © Deep Silver
4. Aliens: Colonial Marines (2013)
That E3 demo for Aliens: Colonial Marines promised smart enemy AI and tense corridor firefights straight out of the movie. Three years later the shipped version had xenomorphs walking into walls and standing still while getting shot. Gearbox and Sega both took heat once modders discovered the demo footage was running on code that never made it to the final build. Few games have ever made the gap between pitch and product this obvious. | © Sega
3. Skull and Bones (2024)
Ten years is a long time to build a pirate game, and Skull and Bones used every bit of it. Ubisoft reworked the concept so many times that it drifted from swashbuckling adventure to repetitive ship combat with a live-service shell bolted on. Players expecting something close to the naval sections of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag got grindy fetch quests instead. A decade of reworking produced a game that still felt like a rough draft. | © Ubisoft
2. Duke Nukem Forever (2011)
Fans waited so long for Duke Nukem Forever that entire console generations rose and fell in the meantime. When it finally landed, the jokes felt dated and the shooting mechanics played like something ported from 1999. Regenerating health and modern shooter staples had passed Duke by while he sat in development purgatory. Fifteen years of anticipation collapsed within the first few hours of actually playing it. | © 2K Games
1. Cyberpunk 2077 (2020)
Night City looked incredible in every trailer CD Projekt Red put out before launch. Then the game arrived on base PS4 and Xbox One consoles running like a tech demo nobody finished debugging. Sony pulled Cyberpunk 2077 from its store entirely, a move that had never happened to a game this size before. Multiple delays were supposed to prevent exactly this outcome, and somehow it happened anyway. | © CD Projekt RedMonths or even years of pushbacks build sky-high hopes, and some games couldn’t live up to the wait. Here are 15 big game delays that ended in disappointment.
