10 Times The Games Industry Had No Idea WTF It Was Doing

4. Thinking Nobody Buys Single-Player Games Anymore

Witcher 3
CD Projekt RED

Just like it did with horror games, at some point the video game industry decided that single-player games were dead. Perhaps down to the massive success of certain multiplayer releases, publishers scrambled to get their own piece of the pie, jamming online suites into story-driven games like Bioshock 2 and Dead Space 2 that didn't need them.

However this idea quickly evolved into something more insidious after the release of the Xbox One and PS4, with some of the biggest releases for the consoles like Titanfall and Star Wars: Battlefront shipping without a single-player campaign at all.

The companies defended the decision by saying that only a fraction of the fanbase actually ever played these campaigns to begin with, and it wasn't worth the effort to continue to implement them. The problem was however, that not only did people love the stories of these first-person shooters, but cutting off support for the single-player didn't result in more content for the multiplayer side of things.

Thanks to the backlash these games received and the likes of The Witcher 3 and Doom being smash-hit single player-only titles, the industry has shifted its thinking a little, and more and more multiplayer-only games have received sequels that put the focus back onto story campaigns.

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Josh has over 11 years of experience as a published writer, having worked nine of those years as a full-time content producer at WhatCulture. In that period he has created hundreds of articles, videos and podcast episodes for multiple WhatCulture channels, specialising in gaming, horror and film & TV. He now primarily works as a senior content producer and presenter on WhatCulture Gaming where he co-hosts the WhatCulture Gaming Podcast, a top 3 UK most listened to gaming podcast that he co-created in 2018. Over the years he has reviewed several high-profile gaming releases, covered industry events with on-site reporting, opined on breaking news, and even kicked off his interviewing career by chatting to childhood hero, Tommy Wiseau.