10 Promising Video Games That Totally Botched Their Launch

When SimCity launched in 2013, it was struck by many of the same issues that afflicted Diablo 3 and indeed, damage a lot of games these days - it was hamstrung by its own always-online system. In order to receive updates, allow for constant tweaking and connectivity, a larger number of developers are making it so the game simply cannot be played offline.

With SimCity, the game quickly became unplayable as too many people tried to log in.

The situation became so bad that EA took drastic measures to rescue the game, going so far as to disable 'non-critical' features, such as leaderboards and achievements in an attempt to stabilise the game. EA even went so far as to offer effected players a free game as a means of rebuilding bridges, but it was too late.

SimCity was eviscerated online, with poor user reviews posted on Amazon and Metacritic. It didn't help that SimCity was generally meant to be played as a single-player game either, causing a lot of the online features to look pointlessly disruptive. EA's reputation took yet another hit, even after being voted the 'Worst Company in America'.