10 Times Publishers Sabotaged Their Own Video Games

4. Assassin's Creed Unity's Bugs Kills Syndicate - Ubisoft

It's a real shame what's happened to Ubisoft over the last decade. Once the vaunted developers behind Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon, as well as Assassin's Creed, the leap to the next gen just seemed to catch them off guard. The annualisation of Assassin's Creed in particular stood out as a real problem, as, while Black Flag had managed to reinvigorate the series, cracks were beginning to show.

Everything began to fall apart with the release of Assassin's Creed Unity, a new entry in the series set during the French Revolution. It looked genuinely great, with Ubisoft's fully realised recreation of 18th century Paris looking impressive during all the game's pre-release showings. However, come launch, everything that could go wrong basically did.

Unity was a buggy mess when it dropped November 2014. Characters lost faces and players lost progress, with the launch build being near enough unplayable for most. It forced Ubi to rethink the series altogether, dropping AC's annualised release schedule and prompting a big change in gameplay for its eventual return.

Sadly, one game was lost in Unity's controversy. Assassin's Creed Syndicate released a year after the previous game, and with annualised releases going straight out of fashion, not many gave it the time of day - which is a huge shame, given it actually turned out to be one of the best surprises of the current gen.