10 "Next Big Thing" Video Games That Disappeared Overnight

Ubisoft painted a hell of a picture with the pre-release excitement for Tom Clancy’s The Division before its release in 2016. Imagine, if you will, a post-apocalyptic Manhattan that has become a hotbed for competing factions. Teaming with your online allies, you might come across other groups of NPCs or other players in your struggles to survive the warzone of what once was New York City.

The Division’s hype was palpable. According to Ubisoft, the game brought in at least 1.2 million players across its launch weekend. However, a few months later it would see huge drops with over 90% of its players tuning out very, very fast.

Not only did players find The Division to be lacklustre in terms of actual gameplay, it also wasn’t what they had necessarily been sold on. Instead of a revelation or a shake-up to the open world genre, The Division was really just a fairly standard feeling looter-shooter. Beyond that, others critiqued it for simply being bland and unengaging, with an empty world and fairly banal designs.

Thankfully, the game’s sequel had a far better time being complimented as an improvement over the original in practically every way. Whilst it never quite managed to get the same level of excitement as the first, it also didn’t have the same almost instantaneous drop-off of interest either.