10 Video Games That Killed Companies

Trilobyte were a PC development company best known for developing cult classic PC games The 7th Guest and its sequel, The 11th Hour. Whilst these games weren’t critically acclaimed or incredibly popular, they sold enough copies worldwide – 3.7 million in fact - to make them successful in the industry.

However, it seems that Trilobyte didn’t know what to do with this success. Whilst the obvious idea would have been to keep making games in the horror genre, in a bizarre twist they ditched horror adventure games and made Clandestiny, a child-friendly puzzle game that sold only 2500 copies worldwide.

It seemed that Trilobyte needed a killer app to save itself from failure before they became bankrupt. Instead, they made Uncle Henry’s Playhouse; a game that recycled existing puzzles from their three previous games.

This shell of a game erased them from the market. It sold 27 copies in the United States, and 127 copies elsewhere in the world, thus cementing Uncle Henry’s Playhouse as one of the least selling games ever made, and its death absolutely ruined them.

Trilobyte’s members split in 1996 and the companies they went on to work for were bought and liquidated in 1999.