10 Recent Video Games That Were Too Big To Fail (That Did Anyway)

Why It Was "Too Big"

By the end of last year, Amazon was worth $438 billion. That is the definition of "too big to fail," and so it'd certainly be a relief for any video game developer to be partnering with such a financially flush publisher.

2020's free-to-play third-person shooter Crucible was developed by Relentless Studios under the Amazon Game Studios publishing label, and was the commercial goliath's first big swing at making a Fortnite-level global gaming phenomenon.

Given that Amazon owns Twitch, it truly seemed like they had a perfectly fertile environment to make Crucible a mammoth success.

Why It Failed Anyway

After six years in development, Crucible launched in open beta in May 2020 and was immediately dogpiled by critics and players alike for its lack of launch content, generic hero shooter gameplay, poor matchmaking, frustrating design decisions, and excess of glitches.

In a multiplayer space that's notoriously difficult to crack, this just wasn't going to cut it.

The Damage

Crucible went back into closed beta barely a month after launch, and within days its concurrent player count dipped below 200 from which it never recovered.

In October 2020, less than five months after its original release, Relentless Studios announced that Crucible would be imminently shutting down, with Amazon pulling the plug on the costly endeavour.

Let Crucible's death be an important lesson - you can be backed by more money than God and still not make a game that people actually want to play.