Making a game is like a gamble, when it is almost impossible to know in advance whether your game will become successful or not. Even famous and famous names like Ubisoft and Valve have had many times to receive bitter fruits with memorable failures. However, at least after the failures, the studios will also have valuable lessons for themselves. However, sometimes, there are games that still flop, fail so badly that it makes publishers go bankrupt like the names below.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (38 Studios)
The fantasy MMO Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is the first and last game of the ill-fated 38 Studio. During development, the studio secured funding through an investment from the state of Rhode Island. But while the game is gaining popularity and has good sales, the economic situation is very unstable when the money earned is not enough to cover the costs.
38 Studio announced bankruptcy shortly after and laid off all employees as soon as the game was released not long after. As if that wasn’t messed up enough, an investigation followed and allegations of fraud. Then when everything became a mess, no one cared about Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning anymore.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines (Troika Games)
The mistake of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines was released when it was not completed, even though the ambition of the developer Troika Games was extremely ambitious. Worse still, due to a lack of funding, the studio was forced to cut staff, resulting in not having enough people to fix the game’s performance problems. Not to mention, to increase competitiveness, Vampire: The Masquerade is so confident that it chooses to release the same date as Half Life 2. And this is clearly a wrong decision.
After the massive defeat of Bloodlines, Troika Games was unable to secure funding for any further projects. Although this game was later highly appreciated for its motif, but, in the end, it all returned to a round zero.
Epic Mickey 2 (Junction Point Studios)
The Epic Mickey franchise is interesting in that it portrays a world much darker than the Disney universe that many people imagine. In the first version, Epic Mickey attracted a large number of buyers. However, the interest seems to have completely disappeared in part 2, when not only could not reproduce the good things of part one, it was also judged as pathetic and bad.
In the face of Epic Mickey 2’s poor performance, Disney is said to have laid off employees of developer Junction Point for two months. Soon after, it was confirmed that Disney had decided to shut down Junction Point Studios entirely.
