10 Beloved Video Game Studios That Publishers RUINED

8. Rare

Rare's fall from grace will always remain one of the industry's biggest tragedies.

Back in the 1990s, the British studio was seen as a scrappy upstart, a cutting-edge team of people looking to deliver iconic characters, worlds and experiences on consoles. The relationship they struck up with Nintendo was endlessly fascinating, as they twisted the platforming genre on its head by delivering the foul-mouthed Conker's Bad Fur Day on the family-friendly Nintendo 64.

Between colourful platforming titles like that, Donkey Kong Country and Banjo-Kazooie, as well as first-person shooters like Perfect Dark and Goldeneye 007, Rare were seemingly unstoppable, and their impending purchase from Microsoft, a company which at the time shared a similar roguish charm, led many to believe they'd be set for life.

And in a way, they were right. Rare have never gone away, and continue to produce games for Microsoft, but shortly after their acquisition, the charm and spark of creativity quickly faded. The first warning sign came when Bad Fur Day was ported over to the original Xbox and was censored, but that was just the tip of the iceberg to come. Perfect Dark Zero was a mess of an Xbox 360 exclusive, Viva Piñata left a lot to be desired, and most recently Sea of Thieves ended up disappointing Xbox One players.

The decline happened pretty much overnight, and fans have spent a decade trying to figure out why.

[JB]