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Many video games come out to critical success, amazing sales, and the love of the gaming public. Unfortunately, this is not the case with all the games. However, that doesn't mean such titles can't become successes. In fact, there are many products that were released to poor reception and went on to become titles that are held in high regard by the gaming community today.
The games listed below managed to recover in one fashion or another following a disastrous launch.
Note: This article represents the opinion of one writer, and other people may not like these video games, even if they did recover from their lackluster launches.
Not all successful video games see amazing launches, and here are 10 examples
Honorable mention
A fantastic but divisive title would have been Cyberpunk 2077. A game that had perhaps one of the worst launches of all time that did not go down well at all. Despite both crunch and multiple delays, Cyberpunk 2077 left fans furious at its wealth of bugs, crashes, and poor gameplay.
The title did receive a major fix that made it playable on console and PC, but whether it’s actually a success is up for debate. It certainly saw a devastating launch, and it certainly has recovered. This warrants the title a mention on this list of video games.
Which other video games recovered from terrible launches?
- Skyrim
- Batman: Arkham Knight
- Destiny
- Rainbow Six: Siege
- GTA Online
- Fortnite
- Street Fighter V
- Diablo 3
- No Man's Sky
- Final Fantasy XIV
10) Skyrim
Skyrim is in the running for one of the most-ported video games of all time, but its launch was far from a pleasant one. The title was released with crippling, game-breaking bugs, particularly on the PlayStation 3. PS3 definitely fans did not enjoy the Skyrim crashing after a few hours because of the title's cache filling up.
Even though Bethesda fixed many of the bugs that plagued the title, there were still other problems that were never addressed. These include in-game systems like Magic just feeling weak or mediocre. Despite Skyrim still being broken in many ways, fans overlook the flaws and love the game anyway.
9) Batman: Arkham Knight
Not all of these video games began as financial failures. Batman: Arkham Knight was quickly picked up by thousands of gamers. Fans of the previous Arkham video titles wanted to see what happened next in the story, but this one let so many people down.
The PC version simply didn’t perform well and was so bad that Warner Bros. stopped selling it and had to issue refunds to many players. Primarily due to texture and performance problems, the game would either not launch or crash.
Years later, the title is playable; at least it still worked on consoles during its early days. It was just the PC version that was tainted with one of the worst launches in recent memory.
8) Destiny
The Destiny series is still going strong, with Destiny 2 being free-to-play; however, the first title isn't a stranger to controversy or disappointment. When the second game was announced, fans were overcome with excitement for Bungie continuing in the futuristic sci-fi shooter genre, but Destiny's launch was more than upsetting.
The gameplay was fine, but the title was just so empty. Its mechanics were confusing and frustrating, and overall, the world just didn’t have any life to it. Moreover, as it turned out, there was content on the game disc that couldn't be accessed. To get this content, players would have to download more files, which would require money.
When people pay for a game, the content on the disc is generally accessible. The unavailability of this content and the implication that it was deliberately removed to be presented in the form of a DLC later didn't make Bungie look good.
A year or so after launch, the developers would start to turn things around, with The Taken King. Its sequel has its own problems, but Destiny ended on a high note, at least.
7) Rainbow Six: Siege
If there’s anything Ubisoft knows how to build, it’s tactical shooter video games. Rainbow Six: Siege was a sharp strategy-based title at launch. It looked and played well, with critics and fans enjoying it at first. However, it had very little actual gameplay to it. Fortunately, the developers would turn things around.
Ubisoft put a great deal of work into the game, offering awesome cosmetics and free updates to keep people coming back again and again. It now has a thriving esports scene, and the title is much more alive than it initially was.
6) GTA Online
When it comes to video games, few have made quite as much money as GTA 5. It was a critical darling and masterpiece, but GTA Online was absolute rubbish at launch. It was just an extension of the in-game world, only with more bugs and glitches.
Servers often crashed, and it had nothing of substance to it. The title wound up receiving tons of updates and changes, thanks to Rockstar Games, and the developers turned what was a pile of disappointment into a much bigger pile of money.
It retains a huge community to this day, with millions of players logging in every day.
5) Fortnite
One of the most popular Battle Royale video games out there right now, Fortnite certainly did not start out that way. The original launch design of the co-op survival title was ultimately not very popular. It wasn’t a bad mode and still exists, but it didn’t draw a crowd.
When the 2017 Battle Royale was launched, people accused it of being a PUBG clone. It would take a significant amount of time, but the game managed to come into its own and began filling Epic Games’ coffers with millions of dollars in microtransactions.
It might be divisive, but nobody can argue how successful Fortnite is today or how many amazing, money-making collaborations it has seen.
4) Street Fighter V
Street Fighter titles will always be compared to the previous video games in the series, no matter what happens. Though the FGC (fighting game community) is often a fickle place, many were in agreement that Street Fighter V was a weak entry to the franchise.
Upon launch, many of its modes weren’t in the title or didn’t work, and its roster was abysmal. This would be fixed over the course of months and years, with Capcom supporting the game with many balance-focused updates and additional characters.
Fans won’t forget how mad they were about the company delivering a title that wasn’t complete, but it turned out to be an enjoyable experience eventually. Hopefully, the developers will learn from this when it comes to Street Fighter VI.
3) Diablo 3
The Diablo video games will never be far from controversy, that’s for sure. Diablo 3 was released as a gorgeous sequel to the previous title in the series. Diablo 2 was one of the greatest offerings of all time, but Diablo 3’s developers continually dropped the ball with awful decisions and updates.
The always-online DRM (digital rights management) was infuriating, and even worse was the real-money Auction House. This turned the game into a for-profit experience, where people would grind powerful gear and sell it for real money. Around the Reaper of Souls expansion, things would level out, and fans would start to enjoy the game again.
The expansion was a huge breath of fresh air for the title. While Diablo Immortal may anger fans, Diablo 3 still delights with constant updates.
2) No Man’s Sky
Few video games flopped and then recovered in quite the same way as No Man’s Sky did. So many promises had been made by the title's developer, Hello Games. With a generated universe filled with life and planets to explore, it sounded like a dream game to many.
Instead, players got a tedious, annoying survival title with some spaceship mechanics. On top of that, it was a solo experience, making the experience feel emptier. Between these things and communication problems, it felt dead on arrival. The developers promised multiplayer, but it took a very long time to ultimately get it.
However, while fans raged and complained, the developers were working on fixes. They should have perhaps made a point of informing fans, but it all worked out in the end. The lack of communication was done to not set expectations, but it still frustrated the playerbase.
The game currently has multiple ways to travel and allows players to become space pirates and live their best sci-fi lives.
It has also seen some fantastic free updates and has not tried to milk its populous with constant microtransactions or re-releases for no reason. Hello Games ultimately did right by their fans.
1) Final Fantasy XIV
No Man’s Sky did a great deal to make it actually fun for fans, but nobody has done more to fix a game’s flagging reputation than Yoshi-P. Final Fantasy XIV was just a slightly prettier Final Fantasy XI at launch. Its quests were terrible, the dual-leveling system was confusing, and the zones all kind of looked like bad copy-and-paste jobs.
Square Enix went on to make the game free to play while the development team worked on fixing the problems.
Naoki Yoshida (Yoshi-P) took the helm, corrected the course of the title, and learned from the fans where the problems were. The 1.0 version of FFXIV would be destroyed in a catastrophic event, dropping a meteor on the planet. Many players, this writer included, remember the final days.
Then came FFXIV: A Realm Reborn, and it was indeed reborn. Players could easily play the title now with fewer game-breaking bugs and could play it any way they wanted; it was easy to focus on PVP, crafting, dungeon crawling, and more.
It’s now one of the biggest MMOs in the world. Among MMOs, few can top its beautiful graphics and top-tier storytelling. It is the best story of a failure that turned into success in the world of video games.
There are other video games that have turned the ship around, and there will no doubt be more in the future. But for now, these are some of the most prominent gaming titles that went from being a laughingstock to being beloved by their fans.
