10 Ridiculous Reasons Video Games Were Blamed For Failing

10. World War II Fatigue - Call Of Duty: Vanguard

The latest Call of Duty received some of the weakest reviews in the series' history and failed to meet Activision's sales expectations, prompting them to blame the commercial underperformance on the game's World War II time period.

In their recent annual investors report, Activision said the 1940s setting "didn't resonate with some of our community," yet with the WWII shooter becoming an increasingly crowded space, it really felt like a convenient place to plant the blame.

After all, the primary criticisms of Vanguard had nothing to do with the time period it takes place in, but rather the short and unremarkable campaign, embarrassingly lackluster zombies mode, and standard fare multiplayer suite.

Simply, there wasn't much of an incentive to pay top dollar for another garden variety Call of Duty game that didn't present a unique experience when they could just play Warzone for free instead.

WWII-themed games are still performing well outside of Vanguard, so it's clearly more a problem with this specific game than the setting. Oversaturating the audience while failing to offer majorly compelling content is the real issue.