15 Video Games That Lost Half Their Players in the First Two Hours

15. Back 4 Blood (2021)

Eight dollars a month on Game Pass was supposed to be a safety net, and for Back 4 Blood it became the exit door. The card system got praised in previews, then felt like a chore the moment people actually had to grind it match after match. Special infection spawns in the full release ramped up so hard that squads without voice chat just stopped bothering. A co-op shooter built on repetition needs players to want a second run, and too many didn't. | © Warner Bros. Games

14. Battlefield 2042 (2021)

Ten minutes into a match of Battlefield 2042, you'd be lucky to tell one soldier apart from another. The specialists replaced the classic class system with generic operators who all sounded like they wandered in from a different game. Conquest maps felt empty despite 128 players, because so much of that space was dead ground nobody fought over. Launch week reviews weren't cruel, they were just accurate, and that honesty is what emptied servers fast. | © Electronic Arts

13. Fallout 76 (2018)

No human NPCs. That was the pitch nobody asked for, and Fallout 76 shipped it anyway, dropping players into a West Virginia wasteland populated by nothing but robots and corpses holding holotapes. Bethesda built a franchise on companions with opinions and towns worth defending, then removed exactly that from its first online entry. Bugs got the headlines, but the quiet was what actually drove people off. A Fallout game with nobody to talk to isn't really Fallout. | © Bethesda Softworks

12. MultiVersus (2022)

Free to play usually means low risk, which is exactly why the collapse of MultiVersus stung so much. Warner Bros. had Batman, Shaggy, and Bugs Bunny all swinging in the same arena, and for a few months in 2022 that novelty carried the whole game. Then the servers went quiet for an extended beta break, and the audience that showed up never fully came back. Momentum in free games is borrowed, not earned, and this one never paid it off. | © Warner Bros. Games

11. Marvel's Avengers (2020)

Square Enix spent years building toward Marvel's Avengers, and the loot numbers floating off every punch gave away the problem immediately. This was a single-player story dressed up as a live-service grind, forcing Iron Man and Thor through gear menus better suited to a looter shooter. Missions repeated the same warehouse layouts so often that the Avengers started to feel like temp workers. People bought in for the heroes and left once the spreadsheet underneath became impossible to ignore. | © Square Enix

10. Battleborn (2016)

Timing killed Battleborn before most people even opened the box. 2K released it two weeks ahead of Overwatch, which is a bit like opening a lemonade stand across the street from a water park. The hero shooter had more characters and sharper writing than it got credit for. None of that mattered once the entire audience walked next door and never came back. | © 2K

9. LawBreakers (2017)

Picture a shooter built entirely around flashy movement, wall-running and sliding through arenas like a cereal commercial come to life. That was the pitch behind LawBreakers, a game from a well-known shooter veteran that critics genuinely liked. Liking something and playing it on a Tuesday night turned out to be very different things, and population numbers proved it fast. Nakatomi Games' own team eventually admitted the gravity gimmick was a tougher sell than they expected. | © Nexon

8. PAYDAY 3 (2023)

Heists need chaos to feel good, and chaos needs servers that actually function. PAYDAY 3 launched with connectivity problems so persistent that even players desperate to commit crimes together couldn't log in to do it. Starbreeze built an always-online requirement into a genre that never needed one, then watched that decision backfire in real time. Trust doesn't come back quickly after a launch that broken. | © Deep Silver / Starbreeze

7. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (2024)

Four of DC's most beloved villains, reduced to loot-shooter characters grinding damage numbers against bullet-sponge enemies. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League spent years in development only to land in a genre already crowded by better options. Rocksteady built its name on Batman: Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, two games defined by precision and style. Watching that same studio ship a season-pass shooter felt like a punchline nobody asked for. | © Warner Bros. Games

6. Redfall (2023)

Vampires took over a small town, and somehow nobody noticed how empty the game felt around them. Redfall arrived with Arkane's name attached, a studio known for Dishonored and Prey, which made the drop in quality sting even more. AI companions wandered into walls, framerates struggled on consoles that were supposed to handle it easily, and the open world sat mostly lifeless between missions. A horror game this bloodless was never going to hold anyone's attention for long. | © Bethesda Softworks

5. Anthem (2019)

Flying was the one thing Anthem got right, and somehow that wasn't enough. Javelins rocketed through canyons and waterfalls like a tech demo come to life, then dumped players into loading screens that broke the spell every few minutes. Loot felt thin, missions repeated fast, and the story behind it all never found a reason to exist. A game can nail its best feature and still lose people once everything surrounding it falls apart. | © EA

4. Babylon's Fall (2022)

Combat in Babylon's Fall asked players to manage a gear system so dense it needed its own spreadsheet. The visuals looked washed out and grainy, like the color had been drained on purpose, which became an instant punchline online. Platinum Games built its name on fast, readable action, and this was neither. Subscription fees on top of a full price tag didn't help the sales pitch at all. | © Square Enix

3. The Culling 2 (2018)

Battle royale got crowded fast in 2018, and The Culling 2 walked straight into the traffic. The original had a scrappy charm built on melee combat and crafted weapons, but the sequel ditched that identity for a generic gunfight clone. Xbox Games Studios Publishing pulled support within two weeks of launch, an almost unheard of retreat. Chasing a trend works a lot better when you still remember what made people like you in the first place. | © Xbox Games Studios Publishing

2. The Day Before (2023)

Years of teaser trailers turned The Day Before into a mystery box the internet couldn't stop poking at. Promises piled up: open world survival, MMO-scale cities, zombies roaming a collapsed America. What shipped was a buggy extraction shooter with barely any of that, servers struggling before most players even got through the tutorial. Mystic Heroes pulled it from sale within two weeks and the studio shut down soon after. | © PlayStation PC / Steam

1. Concord (2024)

Eight characters got cut from the Concord roster before launch, and nobody outside the studio understood why the remaining ones still felt so forgettable. Sony spent years and a reported two hundred million dollars on a hero shooter nobody was asking for. Steam concurrent player counts dipped into the dozens within days, a number usually reserved for games nobody's heard of. Ten days later it was pulled entirely, refunds issued, servers dark for good. | © Firewalk Studios