20 Ridiculous Reasons Video Games Were Cancelled

After the release of TimeSplitters: Future Perfect in 2005, it was simply assumed that the fourth entry into the hugely acclaimed FPS franchise would come along within a few short years.

However, TimeSplitters 4 was put on hold after developer Free Radical Design was bought out by Crytek in 2009, and the dire response to the developer's previous game, Haze, was also said to have dented publisher interest in a new TimeSplitters.

In the years that followed the game was considered shelved, and in July 2013 franchise co-creator Steve Ellis revealed that a big sticking point was the lack of a single marketable protagonist, given the series' focus on more than 100 playable characters.

Free Radical's marketing partners simply didn't know how to sell a new TimeSplitters without an iconic hero to put on the box.

But this really feels like less an indictment of the game itself than the marketing team's patent lack of imagination. 

Is it really that hard to sell a long-awaited entry into one of the most beloved multiplayer shooter series of all time? In the age of the hero shooter no less?

Though an attempt to resurrect TimeSplitters 4 was made in 2018, this imploded in 2023 when Free Radical was shut down by its parent company, Embracer Group.