author: Patryk Fijalkowski
GTA Online. 11 great games released as unplayable flops
Table of Contents
- Released in: 2013
- Who flunked it? Rockstar (yes, it apparently happens to the best of us)
- Main issue: Difficulties with logging in and a plethora of bugs
- How did it end? Tens of millions of dollars earned. Rockstar brought GTA Online to life, and the game's success was so spectacular that plans to release large expansions to GTA V were dropped. Instead, the studio focused on developing the online mode. GTA Online is still extremely popular today, and it looks like even Red Dead Online isn't going to change that.
As you can see, it happens even to champions. One of the best-selling games in history also had a rough start – at least when it comes to its still extremely popular online mode. Here, however, no one was surprised. GTA V sold so well that Rockstar announced their servers may not take all that interest even before the release of the online mode. And indeed – the early days of GTA Online were full of long queues, server errors and bugs. Many players were not even able to reach the character creation wizard.
In turn, once someone had managed to enter the game proper, their progress was oftentimes lost once they finished their sessions. At first, each week was packed with more news about what wasn't working or what had already been fixed.
Rockstar publicly apologized for the abysmal launch of the multiplayer, and offered players virtual cash as compensation. At the end of the day, it all went downhill, and GTA Online is still making the company heaps of money today. Though it's probably because of those traumatic memories that Rockstar took some preventive measures at the launch of Red Dead Online in 2018, calling the online mode a "beta." Smart.
Cyberpunk 2077
Martin Strzyzewski added this page to the text.
- Released in: 2020
- Who flunked it? CD Projekt RED
- Main issue: Poor optimization on consoles, bugs, and glitches
- How did it end? More than three months after release, patch 1.2 appeared, addressing several hundred issues, improving optimization, increasing the number of cars and pedestrians on the streets, and so on – and the game is still far from it's ambitions.
Let's be clear: Cyberpunk 2077 would be a very different game if it weren't for several delays of the release, including one after the announcement of the game's completion, and the huge expectations for this title. On the one hand, everyone was hyped after the release of The Witcher 3, and on the other hand, the developers confidently promised things that probably were never anything but concepts.
These huge expectations collided with a host of problems, mostly technical. On last-gen consoles, the game barely worked (and was actually removed from PlayStation Store), and if it did work, it brought a host of issues, bugs, and glitches. Cars appearing from thin-air, police shooting us in the back a split second after we commit a crime, levitating characters, bad objects collisions, the protagonist standing on a motorcycle instead of sitting. We could go like that for a while.
Somewhere under that layer of flaws, however, hides an excellent game. Sure, it's not perfect, it has flaws going beyond the technical condition. Still, it's an engaging story with memorable characters and beautiful, atmospheric locations (and the best city in gaming to date). There was action, exploration, a lot of interesting missions that we could usually complete in a few ways. I certainly don't regret the time spent with this game.
Its technical condition is currently improving. New patches don't appear every day, but they're being worked on daily, and the developers are promising free DLCs and paid expansions. We're also still waiting for the fully next-gen version. Cyberpunk 2077 will probably always be seen as a title that disappointed expectations. It's a shame, because it seemed easy to avoid.
