10 Beloved Video Game Studios That Publishers RUINED

8. Rare

Banjo Kazooie
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]

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.

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Josh has over 11 years of experience as a published writer, having worked full time as a content producer at WhatCulture for nine years. In that time he has created hundreds of articles, videos and podcast episodes for multiple channels, specialising in subjects such as gaming, horror and film & TV. He now primarily works as a senior content producer and presenter on WhatCulture Gaming where he co-hosts the WhatCulture Gaming Podcast, a top 3 most listened to gaming podcast in the UK that he co-created in 2018. Over the years he has reviewed several high-profile gaming releases, covered industry events with on-site reporting, covered breaking news, and even kicked off his interviewing career by chatting to childhood hero, Tommy Wiseau.