6 Video Game "Fixes" (That Actually Broke Everything)

6. The Culling – Streamlining

The Culling was a 16 player battle royale which did its best to go up against the likes of PUBG and Fornite. Many have done the same and with this space now boiling down to huge triple-A developers such as Treyarch, it’s no wonder that independent studio Xaviant felt the struggle.

Initially in early access, The Culling charmed players with its inclusion of crafting and trap-making, on top of the overall loop of randomised items in a free-for-all setting. However, as the numbers dwindled, Xaviant did everything they could to patch in fixes for the game that would unintentionally lower the already low player count.

Finally, they released an update that was too much for fans, streamlining the experience so that randomness, the main drawing point of battle royale games, had been swapped for player choice. In theory this sounds fine, you don’t have to worry about that drop being a garbage special weapon or fiddle around with boring, badly designed perks.

In practice, this was not the case. Random drops were swapped for weapon stores. Lesser perks were completely changed or removed.

On top of this, the devs took up a big obsession with cosmetics, rather than tending to core gameplay mechanics and making sure that the endgame portion of the game was as exciting as possible.