7 Video Games That Survived Development Hell (And How)

Developed by Check Six Games for a 2001 release on the PlayStation 2, Aliens: Colonial Marines was cancelled before it ever saw the light of day.

In late 2006, though, Sega revived hopes that fans would get their hands on a new Alien game when they acquired the rights to the franchise and announced, just days later, that Gearbox would be working on a brand new title in the universe. The name of that game? Aliens: Colonial Marines.

In 2009, Gearbox released the massively successful Borderlands and immediately went to work on its sequel, deciding to outsource the bulk of Colonial Marines’ development to a company called TimeGate. Problem was, TimeGate were already working on the sequel to their first-person shooter Section 8, so didn’t actually get around to working on Aliens until late 2010.

When they received the game materials, Timegate were shocked at how little progress had been made on the game in the four years prior. On top of that, the game’s script hadn’t been finalised and they were being fed different directions from both Sega and Gearbox.

Then sometime in mid-2012, once they were winding down development on Borderlands 2, Gearbox took development back. With such a fractured development, it would have been a miracle if Colonial Marines was good – and it wasn’t.

It finally released in February 2013, Gearbox and Sega were then (successfully) sued for false advertising when the game was of notably lower quality than demos shown in the lead up to its release.