10 Reasons Behind Why Your Favourite Video Game Franchises Died

9. Duke Nukem Forever Couldn't Live Up To 14 Years Of Hype

Announced in 1997, Duke Nukem Forever wanted to be the cutting-edge of first-person shooters rather than just another goofy pastiche. Adopting the best tech of the time, developers at 3D Realms were committed to making Forever the best Duke game yet. However after a constant string of missed deadlines and pushed release dates in the late nineties the game vanished completely in 2001, going off the grid for the next eight years.

During this period Forever was rebooted several times as the studio constantly switched up the title's engine to keep up with developments in technology, rather than just using this new tech for the games that would come after Duke.

Allegedly nearly complete, 3D Realms suffered huge financial troubles going into 2009, hit with a lawsuit by Take Two over their inability to finish the game after over a decade of development.

With production taken away from the original studio, Gearbox Software took the reigns shortly after to polish up the final release, with the game eventually hitting shelves in 2011, 14 years after it was originally announced.

Of course by then gamers had moved on, and didn't warm to a shoddy title that should have been cancelled years ago.