Introduction
Some games go out broken like Cyberpunk, and some games get fixed like Cyberpunk and No Man’s Sky. However, the majority of games that are that broken don’t get fixed, and that’s what I want to talk about today. Hi folks, it’s Zaid Ikram, and today on Aura Riot, we’ll discuss 9 games that never got fixed.
Anthem
Starting with number nine: Anthem. BioWare’s reputation for quality was already slipping by the time they finally shipped the ill-fated Anthem, but it wasn’t entirely gone. The big update to Mass Effect 3 that changed the ending was a little too late, but it was free at least, and they did try to address fan concerns. Dragon Age Inquisition was plagued with bugs when it came out, but mostly they were fixed, and they got that game in pretty good working order. The less said about Mass Effect Andromeda, the better, though. They dropped the ball on that one, especially with post-launch support. The same could be said for Anthem. The core gameplay felt good, but other than that, the game had issues.
It felt incomplete from the get-go like a tech demo stretched out as far as possible to meet the bare minimum of a game. To BioWare’s credit, they didn’t immediately give up on it. They planned for a big Anthem 2.0 relaunch similar to what CD Projekt Red did with Cyberpunk. It was meant to be an ambitious update that could have potentially fixed a lot of the most glaring issues with the game. However, it wasn’t meant to be. In a blog posted on February 24th, 2021, BioWare announced that they were canceling the big relaunch and focusing their efforts on other projects like the next Dragon Age game. They didn’t immediately pull Anthem or anything, but from that point forward, it was in service mode. They kept the servers up, but that was it.
Red Dead Online
Number eight is Red Dead Online, and this one still stings. There was so much potential with Red Dead Online, but Rockstar just never managed to capitalize on it. Their interest has always been with Grand Theft Auto Online; it’s their cash cow, and if something else isn’t making all the money, it’s no use to them. Here’s the thing: Red Dead Online was far from bad, but it could have been so much more. Did it suffer from some pretty annoying issues that Rockstar left in the game without fixing? Yes, it did. They never even finished the story mode, which feels so wrong coming from one of the biggest open-world game developers.
There’s a story that gets you into Red Dead Online, but it never finishes; it just sort of ends halfway through. Unlike BioWare, who were at least open and honest about sunsetting their game, Rockstar kind of buried the news about essentially giving up on Red Dead Online in a random update. You have to scroll down to paragraph 11 to find it. That’s where they say they’re ending major-themed content updates. Patches didn’t completely end after that, but the writing was on the wall. Red Dead Online was essentially abandoned by the developers. You can still play it at the time of this writing, but the mode still suffers from a variety of issues. It’s a buggy, incomplete mode that could have been a lot more.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (PC)
Moving on to number seven: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s PC port. The console version of this game had its issues; it doesn’t run as well on PS5 as it should, considering the developer’s pedigree. However, it runs well enough. Compared to the PC version, the PC version just consistently has terrible performance across the board, seemingly regardless of your hardware. Players with GeForce 4090s seem to struggle with stuttering and major frame drops just as much as players with 2070s. It was that way at launch, and the stability has only gotten a little better with patches. There have been a few updates to the game, but it’s not nearly good enough. Players still suffer from game-breaking bugs, and the game crashes constantly for certain players.
All this stuff could be fixed, but in typical EA fashion, they’ve pretty much given up on the game. The last patch was released in January 2024, and it’s been radio silence ever since. It sucks because the actual game is great; it’s a worthy follow-up to Fallen Order, but the performance issues and bugs are just unacceptably bad. It looks like EA and Respawn have no real interest in fixing this stuff anymore. Usually, with these kinds of high-profile releases, even if they come out buggy, they eventually get fixed to some extent, like Batman: Arkham Knight. That game had an abysmal PC port, but it eventually got in good working order. Here we have EA releasing one of its highest-profile games out there, and they just abandon it and move on to something else, even though it’s not nearly as stable as it should be.
Kerbal Space Program 2
Number six is Kerbal Space Program 2. The original Kerbal Space Program was one of those early indie game hits, and the game was supported for years and years. When they revealed they were working on a full-blown sequel, there was a lot of hype, but the Early Access release suffered a lot of problems. Little did we know this would turn out to be a troubling trend, with games like City Skylines 2 repeating the same mistakes as this one. The game suffered from troubled development in general, but there was still a chance to turn things around. The game was still being consistently updated up through April 25, 2024, less than a month ago at the time of this writing. But then it all came crashing down on May 1st.
Kerbal Space Program 2 developer Intercept was shut down along with its entire staff of 70. The game is done. Yes, Take-Two and their subsidiary Private Division say they’re going to continue to support the game, but with their entire development team laid off, excuse my skepticism about Kerbal 2’s future. The Steam page doesn’t even acknowledge that Intercept Games no longer exists. There have been no updates on what’s going on or what’s going to happen. Most likely, Take-Two will put out a few maintenance updates to try to make people think they’re still supporting the game, then quietly give up on it and hope nobody complains. Oh well, this unfinished game that will never actually leave Early Access is still up for sale for 50 bucks. Honestly, in some ways, this should be criminal; it’s kind of false advertising as is.
Wild Hearts
Number five is Wild Hearts. Another solid game getting the EA treatment. Stop me if you’ve heard this before: a good game gets a crappy PC port, gets minimal support from the developer, and updates stop less than a year after it comes out. Yep, it happened with this game too. The frustrating thing about this is that Wild Hearts had the potential to be an alternative to Monster Hunter. There are some really fun ideas here; the elemental beasts you fight are legitimately creative. This game stands out from the Monster Hunter clones out there. It’s a fun game, but it feels light on content in comparison to the juggernaut that is Monster Hunter World. Capcom has supported that game like crazy, and because of that, it still sells shockingly well years after it came out.
EA probably could have done the same thing with Wild Hearts and built up a fan base, but instead, they added all the stuff they promised and pieced out. Worse still, on PC, the game is still in rough shape. At least with Jedi Survivor, the game looks pretty good. Wild Hearts doesn’t have that excuse on a technical level, and it still struggles with performance. I don’t know what’s going on with EA’s PC ports, but they are easily some of the worst in the industry right now. To make matters worse, instead of fixing them, they just abandon them. They give up and let them stay bad forever. Wild Hearts was a fresh new IP with tons of potential that people liked. They could have had something here, but EA just had to be EA.
Resident Evil Re: Verse
Number four is Resident Evil Re: Verse. Does anyone remember the tacked-on multiplayer mode they put in Resident Evil 8? It was meant to launch at the same time as the game but got pushed back, probably for quality reasons. Maybe Capcom knew they had a stinker on their hands because it was released with as little fanfare as possible. They just sort of dumped it out to die, even though everybody who owned Resident Evil 8 had it for free. It was probably the right move, honestly. There’s not going to be a lot of these that I say that about, but I don’t know why Capcom keeps trying to do these lame multiplayer modes in Resident Evil games. Is it impossible to make a good multiplayer add-on to a game like this or even a decent one? No, it’s not at all, but they clearly don’t really know what to do with it, and this is probably the worst one yet.
It’s about as unnecessary and unfun as Umbrella Corps, but Re: Verse at least had the chance to play some memorable characters and monsters. It’s not a bad idea for a competitive multiplayer mode; the problem is pretty much everything else. The net code was abysmal, it was unbalanced, and it was full of awkward mechanics that just didn’t work. Also, nobody played it. The last time they updated it was on December 20, 2022, less than a year after it came out. This is one game that couldn’t have been fixed without a complete overhaul, but it’s a little disappointing because there is a spack of a good idea here. The game just wasn’t worth saving.
Star Trek Infinite
Number three is Star Trek Infinite. Never heard of this one? Well, it’s Stellaris but with a Star Trek reskin. For fans of Star Trek and crunchy strategy games, which is a Venn diagram that’s a circle, there was quite a bit of interest in this game. If there’s a villain in this story, it’s Paradox and their miserly philosophy on DLC. If there’s a feature they can leave out of a game and sell you later, they will do it. It’s a business model that served them well with their other series, including Stellaris, but in recent years, more and more players have started to push back against this sort of excessive DLC.
Here’s the thing: Star Trek Infinite didn’t even have DLC; it didn’t get the chance. At launch, the game was bare-bones, and the players immediately noticed major obvious features were missing. There were only four races to play, for one thing. In Star Trek, you don’t have to be a big fan to know there are a lot of different alien species. Multiple Star Trek mods for Stellaris had just as much, if not more, content in them. So, pretty much everything felt pointless. It did have some unique features like an RPG-lite system where certain choices could decide if your faction stayed canon or went in different directions, like turning the Federation into the Terran Empire.
But it was never meant to be. Players at this point had just assumed Paradox games would improve with DLCs; that’s how they’ve always done it to this point. But this time, they just up and abandoned the game entirely less than six months after it came out. Paradox’s divisive business strategies might finally be catching up to them, or maybe it’s just the general state of the industry. Nobody’s happy with this crap, but whatever it is, things aren’t looking great for Paradox right now, and the state of Star Trek Infinite is part of that.
Babylon’s Fall
Number two is Babylon’s Fall. We’re two years past Babylon’s Fall’s ill-fated 2022 launch, and it still baffles me how Square Enix could even publish this piece of crap, and more importantly, how Platinum Games, the developers, could be behind it. These guys were behind some of the all-time great action games. What would make them waste their time on this kind of garbage? The whole thing is just inexplicable. It makes BioWare’s Anthem blunder look like a sensible move in comparison. At least that game had a hook. Babylon’s Fall looks like a cheap free-to-play game with nothing noteworthy about it, and that’s exactly what it is. Still, it’s Platinum we’re talking about. They made Metal Gear Rising; maybe they could have turned this one around.
It seems like there’s no saving this stinker. It barely got any support past its disastrous launch and was closed less than a year after it debuted. The only positive thing I can say about this whole ordeal is that it did last longer than I thought it would. I assumed it would be shut down in less than six months, but it managed to last a little less than a year before closing the servers. Many games on this list could have been redeemed with the necessary support from their developers. At least I like to think that could have been possible, but with this one, I don’t think there’s a chance in hell. This game was born to fail. It’s one of those things where I wonder if Platinum didn’t want to be involved in it. Like they got themselves into some kind of a contract with Square Enix that they had to fulfill and just hated the idea of this project.
Redfal
Finally, at number one, it’s Redfall. Speaking of great studios making uncharacteristically bad games, we have Redfall, made by Arkane Austin, the same guys who made Prey. You can tell their hearts were just not into this one. The sad thing is, you can see the glimmer of a good game with Redfall: an immersive sim where you’re not confined to a single location but rather an entire island, a Dishonored meets Borderlands set in an explorable open world. But the results were not that. As bad as the game was, though, I do legitimately think it could have been fixed. Arkane was reportedly working on a major content update for the game that would have gone a long way to fixing its issues.
They were also working on a long-awaited offline patch that would have made the game playable even after servers shut down. But none of that matters now because Microsoft closed the entire studio. The offline patch was just days away from completion, but Microsoft shut it down anyway. So shortly, you won’t even be able to play Redfall, even if you paid full price for it, because without that offline patch, the game will be rendered unplayable when the servers close. The whole story of Arkane Austin and Redfall is a sad one. It’s a game they didn’t want to make, and it shows with the final product. This is their lasting legacy. There was a time when it seemed like Microsoft would let a studio take the time to fix something like Redfall, but that time has passed.
And that’s all for today. Leave us a comment and let us know what you think. As always, thank you very much for reading this blog. I’m Zaid Ikram and we’ll see you next time right here on Aura Riot.
