Worst PC Game Launches of 2013

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
This list of the Worst PC Game Launches of 2013 actually lets you vote for your favorite at the end of the article.

But we know that excellence and competence are not always the norm with PC releases. Sometimes things go horribly, horribly wrong at launch. Whether a result of publisher pressure, unfulfilled ambition or, let’s face it, it’s probably publisher pressure, titles often come out as broken as the spirit of a game developer who’s just learned from upstairs that he has to put the game out in two days or else.
 
I cast my vote on SimCity, EA effectively killed off a great game series with all the bullshit and it's still a turd of a game. I can live with the always online DRM but no mods, only very small cities and still a lot of game breaking bugs.
 
I cast my vote on SimCity, EA effectively killed off a great game series with all the bullshit and it's still a turd of a game. I can live with the always online DRM but no mods, only very small cities and still a lot of game breaking bugs.

Absolutely Agree, Simcity was such a turd, and still is one. EA screwed SimCity and BF4 launches. How is it that you know a crap ton of people will play it on launch and still not have enough servers. Its like EA wants to intentionally piss off customers.
 
Sim City, hands down.
Not only did your city get cut down to blocks, but instead of actually fixing the damn thing they banned Origin accounts of the people that tried to get their money back then started pumping out DLC instead of fixing the issues.
Hell man, one of the voting options should have just been "Anything EA."
 
surprise for BF4, I just got it, and works great for me, love this game, I'd say better shooter game of 2013.
 
Would've agreed with the article on BF4 if I didn't try to run it on my Opteron ESXi server which runs it 100% stable while frequently crashes to desktop on my Xeon. Very fun except I die too much hitching a ride on the heli, boats, gunship, etc.
 
Fortunately my strategy of waiting months for games to show up for half price somewhere has saved me from all launch nightmares. :)
 
Fortunately my strategy of waiting months for games to show up for half price somewhere has saved me from all launch nightmares. :)

I do the same exact thing unless its named Borderlands or Elder Scrolls.
Sorry, but those 2 are my guilty pleasures.
 
BF4 should win this hands down. Although I've never experienced any system issues with it, I'm sure the amount of users affected by the various bugs and shitty balance of some overpowered weapons surpasses any other game's volume. Also this was the first time I ever heard of a game causing the console systems to crash. LOL epic job EA/Dice.
 
I do the same exact thing unless its named Borderlands or Elder Scrolls.
Sorry, but those 2 are my guilty pleasures.

Ironically enough, those guilty pleasures are often best enjoyed months later, after a number of patches.
 
Ironically enough, those guilty pleasures are often best enjoyed months later, after a number of patches.
Well, as far as Elder Scrolls games go, it takes about 2 weeks and the modding community has their own patches to fix everything.
Hell, you see how it is now?
The between 4k textures and and new lighting engines the game looks better than anything on market.
Xbox and PS3 players really get short changed on Elder Scrolls games.
 
SimShitty. No doubt.

Sadly that IP series is probably deader than a door nail. Further the Civitas alternative kick starter is dead before launch.
 
Well, as far as Elder Scrolls games go, it takes about 2 weeks and the modding community has their own patches to fix everything.
Hell, you see how it is now?
The between 4k textures and and new lighting engines the game looks better than anything on market.
Xbox and PS3 players really get short changed on Elder Scrolls games.

Oh, absolutely agreed. And in terms of modding, I don't think there's ever been anything quite as revolutionary as the Steam Workshop. Part of the reason I used to hate mods was figuring out the order of installs. The ability to click one button to install a mod has made me a believer.

However, the really, really good unofficial patches, in my experience, usually take months to arrive. That's why I think it's worthwhile to wait a bit.
 
Simshitty had hints of its problems before launch thanks to an unstable beta.

BF4 is a clusterfuck of epic proportions. Two of the worst launches of 2013 were EA games and this should surprise no one but BF4 was broken on multiple platforms versus just one.

Therefore BF4 wins this trophy.
 
X rebirth was a failed launch by Egosoft.

There is good hope for Star Citizen but that game is all about money Grabber as they are selling ships. It will be Pay to Win Game for sure.
 
X stillbirth got my vote. Aborted, shitty failed Xbox 360 title that was half arsed ported to pc with no industry reviews allowed.
It's so broken in design that I doubt the modders can recover it either.
 
Sad what has become of EA. Innovative publisher and developer in the old days, now a bunch of stuffed suits.

As a kid at the local yokel "computer store" I'd rush over looking for those skinny "album" style games by EA, and I owned a metric buttload of them:

Racing Destruction Set
Adventure Construction Set (holy moly I spent a ton of time with this one)
M.U.L.E.
The Seven Cities of Gold
Bard's Tale (all of em)
Mail Order Monsters
Legacy of the Ancients (beat it a couple years ago while recovering from surgery. Super hard w/o a walkthrough)
Skate or Die!
Mars Saga (never beat it, sadly. Weird game that has women and children attack men armed with fully automatic laser rifles)
Wasteland (best 1980s CRPG)
Original Sim City
 
Sad what has become of EA. Innovative publisher and developer in the old days, now a bunch of stuffed suits.

As a kid at the local yokel "computer store" I'd rush over looking for those skinny "album" style games by EA, and I owned a metric buttload of them:

Racing Destruction Set
Adventure Construction Set (holy moly I spent a ton of time with this one)
M.U.L.E.
The Seven Cities of Gold
Bard's Tale (all of em)
Mail Order Monsters
Legacy of the Ancients (beat it a couple years ago while recovering from surgery. Super hard w/o a walkthrough)
Skate or Die!
Mars Saga (never beat it, sadly. Weird game that has women and children attack men armed with fully automatic laser rifles)
Wasteland (best 1980s CRPG)
Original Sim City
I haven't checked all those games, but I didn't think EA was the developer of ANY of those games. They published yes, but that is a far cry from being the one who created the game.

The reason EA gets tons of flack now is because publishers are turning more into iron fisted tyrants and pushing the development of said games. Bards Tale? Wasteland? Fuck it they let Interplay program the game, and they basically paid the bills and slapped their logo on it at the end. Ditto with everything else. Makes me wonder how much of the newest SimCity Maxis actually worked on. Reminds me of Master's of Orion 3, same company (technically, through acquisitions) made the game but they fired just about everyone who touched the previous 2, the lead artist was promoted to game lead, it was all in all a huge cluster fuck and that's exactly what came out of it. And is the reason I refuse to buy any game on release day (or hell even within the first week)
 
I haven't checked all those games, but I didn't think EA was the developer of ANY of those games. They published yes, but that is a far cry from being the one who created the game.

The reason EA gets tons of flack now is because publishers are turning more into iron fisted tyrants and pushing the development of said games. Bards Tale? Wasteland? Fuck it they let Interplay program the game, and they basically paid the bills and slapped their logo on it at the end. Ditto with everything else. Makes me wonder how much of the newest SimCity Maxis actually worked on. Reminds me of Master's of Orion 3, same company (technically, through acquisitions) made the game but they fired just about everyone who touched the previous 2, the lead artist was promoted to game lead, it was all in all a huge cluster fuck and that's exactly what came out of it. And is the reason I refuse to buy any game on release day (or hell even within the first week)

Maxis only exists as a corporate departmental label for a division of EA. All employees of "Maxis" are EA employees, and their website and emails are all EA domain. Just like BioWare, "Maxis" ceased to exist in all but name only a long while ago.
 
SimCity followed by Battlefield 4.

I bought SimCity months after launch and its playable without issue. Battlefield was a disgusting launch and as such I will never pre-order another EA game.
 
I left EA long ago. I don't care how hyped up the game is....If the EA logo is anywhere on the product...I pass. What's the old saying?

"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

Well, something to that affect anyway ;). EA sucks, therefore they don't get any money from me.
 
surprise for BF4, I just got it, and works great for me, love this game, I'd say better shooter game of 2013.

It may be better now, but this was about the worst game LAUNCHES of the year, and BF4 had a lot of problems when it launched (crashes, server issues, lag, low performance, bad hit detection, etc)

I still think Sim City has it beat though. Both published by EA...hmmm
 
X rebirth was a failed launch by Egosoft.

There is good hope for Star Citizen but that game is all about money Grabber as they are selling ships. It will be Pay to Win Game for sure.

Same boat. I was super excited, tossed a bunch of cash at it and I regret it now. Everything seems to have a price tag on it. Roberts found an audience and is running around with a pricing gun putting a dollar value on everything he can think of. Those who think people won't be able to buy ships after launch are out of their mind. The microtransactions killed it for me.
I put down $250 and I regret it.
 
I do the same exact thing unless its named Borderlands or Elder Scrolls.
Sorry, but those 2 are my guilty pleasures.

You & me both, Brotha. Vault Hunter Master Race

To answer the topic, the correct answer for worst game launch is SimCity, simple because it wasn't even a game -- it was an interactive screensaver packaged and promoted as a game, with illusory, game-like mechanics to fool people into believing they were actually playing something.

Definitely a lowpoint in videogame history, especially when factoring the built up goodwill of the legacy that Will Wright created in its predecessors that was ultimately squandered.
 
CoD:Ghosts is a guilty pleasure. I did think the 6GB RAM requirement was out of line, however. It ran smoothly on an Xbox 360, so artificially requiring 6 gigs was silly. I know there's the folks that don't care for the franchise, but of all the fails in the list, this seems to be the lease egregious.

My mother-in-law got Sim City, and lives in the boonies with little to shitty internet, so the internet-only deal pissed her off. I'd have told her to stay away if I knew she was looking into it. Hopefully, this doesn't happen with The Sims, or my wife will be pissed too.
 
Maxis only exists as a corporate departmental label for a division of EA. All employees of "Maxis" are EA employees, and their website and emails are all EA domain. Just like BioWare, "Maxis" ceased to exist in all but name only a long while ago.

Well in that case that explains SimCity perfectly, while all those other old EA published games (but developed by other companies) were good.
 
Funny thing is.. all these games sold millions too. Expect more to come.
 
Battlefield 4 was the first Battlefield game I didn't enjoy. What a rushed piece of shit.:(
 
Hmm.... EA involved in more than one craptastic roll out?

Not surprised.

Sim City was ridiculous. BF4 was very disappointing but it feels like DICE was up against the wall.

"Release before Call Of Duty or get killed in sales" was the situation. Too bad it meant shipping a product that was months away from being solid.
 
Well X Rebirth was the only one listed that I actually bought, so that one got my vote. I was hoping that the mod community would eventually get the game up to a decent level, but it seems a lot of them are giving up and going back to X3 modding. And Egosoft is still out there trying to act like there is nothing really wrong with the game beyond a few minor bugs. Oh well, another company on my do not buy list.
 
One big one that is missing form the list: Aliens: Colonial Marines.

That turd deserves the spot COD:Ghosts is taking up in the article.Being a rubbish PC port isn't particularly worthy of "worst release" rights. There are rubbish PC ports that get a pass every day of the week from harsh press...Titles like A:CM deserve the bad press.
 
Remember, Sim City had such a terrible launch Amazon not only pulled it, but threatened to drop everything EA unless they issued refunds.
Sim City had its television advertising pulled.
Sim City was pulled from retail shelves.
EA gave away free games to placate customers to prevent a class action lawsuit.
EA had to change their rules on digital refunds, because of Sim City.
EA STILL HAS NOT fixed the game where you can build more than a few blocks instead a full city.

As bad as some of the others were, Sim City was by far the worst launch.
Part of the big numbers for SC was it was bundled with AMD APUs so those got to count as sales and the suckers that pre-ordered via Origin got stuck with it (and if they pursued a refund, their access to ALL of their Origin games got cut off), so those millions of sales were inflated.
 
One big one that is missing form the list: Aliens: Colonial Marines.

That turd deserves the spot COD:Ghosts is taking up in the article.Being a rubbish PC port isn't particularly worthy of "worst release" rights. There are rubbish PC ports that get a pass every day of the week from harsh press...Titles like A:CM deserve the bad press.

You nailed it. A:CM wasn't high profile enough to get all the bashing even though it deserved it way more than most of those other games did
 
I'll be the first one to vote for Rome 2 total war. I've played every single game in the franchise, except for the first medieval and the first shogun, and this seems like the biggest step backwards in the series for me. Shogun 2 really seemed like they learned from their past mistakes and by and large were moving forward, but them Rome 2 just shat on everything. The interface is a huge step backwards, the battle AI still does stupid things it's been doing for 10 years in total war games (stand there while you pelt it with ranged units), and they still can't seem to get castle siege mechanics to work for shit. There is really just no excuse for the total war games to continue to have these issues release after release, not to mention all the NEW issues that rome 2 brought to the table. It was really the complete package (of shit).
 
Back
Top