10 Beloved Video Game Studios That Publishers RUINED

10. Visceral Games

All the developers on this list were short changed in one way or another, but Visceral got shafted hard. The studio never seemed like a good fit for EA, who actively didn’t want the kind of single-player, slightly-out-the-mainstream games the team were so good at delivering.

The first two Dead Space releases were home runs, but then the publisher decided to stick their neck in. Wanting to transform the property into the next Call of Duty, the third game was mandated to be more action focused, to include co-op (never a good look for a survival-horror title) and be stuffed with microtransactions.

When that sequel failed to sell (a frankly ridiculous) 5 million copies, EA put it on ice, and drafted Visceral in to make a Battlefield spin-off, the cops-and-robbers themed Hardline. It was a fine game in and of itself, but you could tell the studio didn’t have much experience creating a first-person shooter before.

Things looked up after that though, with Amy Hennig joining the studio to begin work on a story-driven Star Wars game. Everything sounded promising, but EA cancelled the title as they moved towards live-service experiences instead, killing the studio along with the game.

[Josh Brown]