10 Video Games You Regretted Pre-Ordering

For many of us, No Man’s Sky is immortalised as the first modern example of the ‘overhype plus false promises equals disastrous launch’ pipeline. Coming from a small studio with big ideas and a Sony-backed budget, it quickly became clear that developer Hello Games had bitten off way more than they could chew.

During promotions the team fell prey to promising many features that they hoped to include in the game, but had as yet not actually implemented. This precarious stack of cards fell apart shortly before release, when a fan managed to acquire a review copy on Ebay, only to discover the game’s world, which had been described as entirely procedurally generated and populated with planets to explore, was actually a barren wasteland.

Many further inaccuracies in promotion were unearthed upon release, along with frequent bugs and crashes. The response from fans and critics seemed fatal, and many felt that the false advertising might actually warrant a lawsuit. No Man’s Sky was dead. Or was it?

Like many developers since, Hello Games immediately committed themselves to fixing and improving the game. Founder Sean Murray even routed all complaints to himself to allow the team to focus exclusively on the updates and, eventually, they began to roll out. Technical fixes first, but soon came content expansions, DLCs, and the promised multiplayer. As of July 2022, No Man’s Sky has received 20 free post-launch updates, and its review aggregate on Steam has flipped from Overwhelmingly Negative to Mostly Positive.

No Man’s Sky is famously a game that almost everyone who pre-ordered it regretted at launch.

However, it deserves commendation as rare proof that when a studio makes a mistake and truly commits to fixing it, regret can turn into a reward — as long as you didn’t already get your money back.