10 Video Games That Wasted Your Money

For the most part, video games have always been expensive. In fact, the current industry standard of $60 (or even $70) per title seems like a bargain considering that NES cartridges used to cost around $50 (which would be $140 today).

As such, it’s crucial to feel like you’re getting your money’s worth with each purchase.

Certain developers – such as LJN and Aqua Pacific – are known for their downright awful final products (so buyer beware). Likewise, Bethesda fans frequently forgive the company’s trademark “jank” and consumers know to expect paid DLC, microtransactions, and the like from Capcom, Activision Blizzard, EA, and Ubisoft.

Nevertheless, there are far too many examples of players putting down their hard-earned money on a promising release, only to feel like they were cheated due to the game’s poor quality, missing features, and/or misleading marketing.

To be fair, a few obvious examples – No Man’s Sky, Cyberpunk 2077, Street Fighter V, Final Fantasy XIV, etc. – eventually became worthy of their price of admission.

As of this writing, however, the 10 titles on this list never fully delivered what their players paid for.

Naughty Dog’s masterful tale of survival and sacrifice has long been championed as one of the medium’s truest masterpieces.

Naturally, PlayStation owners have had plenty of chances to experience The Last of Us via the 2013 PS3 original, the 2014 PS4 remaster, and the 2022 PS5 remake. All the while, PC players have been waiting patiently – or not so patiently – for their chance to see Joel and Ellie’s deeply affecting adventure.

Earlier this year, their wish was finally granted, as a port of the PS5 remake (The Last of Us Part I) came to Windows two months after the lauded HBO TV adaptation premiered. Thus, the hype was bigger than ever, which exacerbated PC players’ regret when they realized that they’d purchased a poor imitation.

Simply put, The Last of Us Part I on PC was astonishingly broken and unoptimized upon arrival. Aside from its hilariously bizarre graphical hiccups (including muddy hair, bushy eyebrows, and wet everything), characters and objects would appear and disappear at random. Plus, there were numerous performance problems (such as frame rate issues and even crashes).

Almost immediately, Steam offered refunds, and although the port has gotten a lot better since then, it’s arguably too little too late.