10 Exact Moments That Made Fans Hate Gaming Franchises

8. The Release Of Fallout 76 - Fallout

Fans have cut Bethesda a hell of a lot of slack over the years, because despite how janky and mechanically rough their games tend to be, they also bring a ton of charm and depth to the table.

But with the release of last year's rancid Fallout 76, fans had finally had enough.

Though the developer promised a richly-realised online multiplayer Fallout experience, 76 launched in a blatantly unfinished, rushed-out state, touting horrendous performance issues, a bafflingly barren open-world (without any NPCs!), a misguided online-only approach and infuriatingly fiddly matchmaking.

Fans and critics registered their dissatisfaction vocally, resulting in Bethesda's worst-reviewed game in over a decade, and prompting it to be heavily discounted after just a week on sale.

If the game being a disaster wasn't bad enough, Bethesda initially buried their head in the sand amid the criticism, and further irked players by screwing up the collector’s edition bonuses.

Though Bethesda eventually apologised for the poor communication, promised to fix the collector's edition issues and is adding both NPCs and a Battle Royale mode to the game, it's all proved too little, too late for most fans.

For many it was a wake-up call that Bethesda has been massively over-indulged over the years, with some feeling so burned that they vowed to boycott the next Fallout game and any other Bethesda title such as Starfield or The Elder Scrolls VI.

Though Fallout 5 is certainly still a long way off, if gamers actually manage to hold a grudge over this, don't be surprised if the next game's sales are massively down on the blockbuster success the publisher saw with Fallout 4.

The spell is finally broken, and if Bethesda wants to win fan favour back, they'll need to fix their janky-ass engine and actually treat paying customers like they're not going to gladly lap up whatever scraps they're fed.