20 Recent Video Games That Were Sent Out To Die

Gaming is perhaps the most unforgiving of all the art forms where business is concerned, because developers can spend years and years on a game, receive great reviews for it, and still fail to make money because of something entirely outside their control.

All the same, sometimes the writing is very obviously on the wall that a game is being sent out to die. 

Perhaps the developer or publisher knows they've got a big, fat dud on their hands and does only the bare minimum to promote it, or maybe the entire project has fundamentally misjudged the gaming market from the jump.

Whatever the reason, these 20 recent video games all ended up flopping and it was an outcome which many, many observers saw coming.

Even though a good number of these games had clear potential, from the concept to the marketing and everything else in-between, the stars unfortunately aligned for them to falter commercially.

In some cases it's simply a regrettable bust for a studio that could stomach the loss, though in many instances it unfortunately led to major layoffs...

Let's kick this list off with gaming's most recent high-profile flop - Highguard.

Wildlight Entertainment's free-to-play hero shooter turned a lot of heads when it was unexpectedly announced at the very end of last year's Game Awards. 

With such a slot typically being reserved for megaton reveals in name franchises, it caught many by surprise, with Game Awards founder Geoff Keighley later revealing that Wildlight didn't pay for the slot, but rather he chose to showcase the game out of his own desire to support it.

Even with the game set to release just six weeks after the Game Awards, Wildlight stayed radio silent until three days before launch, when they announced a gameplay showcase to release on launch day.

It was a bizarre marketing strategy which puzzled many, with increasing speculation that Wildlight simply bit off more than they could chew with the project.

Highguard ultimately achieved almost 100,000 concurrent Steam players on launch day, though within a week it shed 90% of that figure amid wildly mixed reviews from critics and players alike.

Within a month, Highguard had lost 99% of its launch player count, but by this point the game's backer Tencent had already withdrawn funding, resulting in the majority of the studio's staff being laid off.

This was the final nail in the coffin, as Highguard was shut down on March 12th, a mere 45 days after launch. 

And like that, it joined the pile of short-lived live-service games many predicted would flop the moment they were revealed.