10 Times WWE Stopped Promoting Its Own Products

Along with successes like SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain that make wrestling fans fall in love with WWE-licensed games also come drastic failures that stigmatized future releases. Such inconsistency has created a wavering relationship between players and WWE games, something on full display when WWE 2K20 rolled out in 2019.

Upon the game's release, WWE promoted 2K20 as heavily as any other of its games. Only, there was one discernible difference: the commercials didn't feature much actual gameplay.

There was a reason WWE and 2K veered away from showcasing the game itself. In the midst of creating the installment, Yuke's backed away and left Visual Concepts to finish the game on its own. Former programmers went to social media outlets to explain what a dumpster fire 2K20 was behind the scenes and how difficult it was to build while grappling with leftover coding.

As a result, 2K20 was released as an unfinished product and received harsh reviews across the board due to its numerous design flaws. Whereas WWE would normally keep pushing its latest in-ring game for most of the calendar year, once 2K20 was considered one of the worst games to come out in 2019, ads vanished from programming, and the company moved on to its next project. It probably didn't help matters that 2K discussed stepping away from the franchise, and Sony offered refunds to PS4 users.