Top 5 Botched PC Game Launches
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When Hellgate opened on Halloween, 2007, s*** hit the fan. Never mind the ongoing demonic invasion and dimensional gash in no-longer-jolly-old England; players paid up to fight it off. But persistent crash bugs were a bad start. And while lost progress in an action-RPG is always painful, double and triple billings chafe in any context. Many subscribers to Hellgate: London's optional membership program, who exchanged $9.99 a month or a flat lifetime fee of $149 for priority server access, easier in-game transportation, and other perks, reported massive problems and mistaken charges. According to popular gaming site Shacknews, one user claimed that he was "charged two times on November 3, one time on November 4, and one time on November 5" and summarized the situation as "the worst online gaming experience I have ever had." On developer Flagship Studios' support forum, others claimed to have proof of payment with no subscription to show for it.
Asian gamers encountered another crisis altogether. In November 2007, Infocomm Asia Holdings (IAH), which operates Hellgate's Southeast Asia server, apologetically announced that a forthcoming patch would entirely erase all progress players had made over the previous two weeks. The proposed compensation -- a 30-day free subscription -- couldn't cut it with an increasingly irate audience. According to Singapore-based paper The Straits Times, "the resulting uproar...sent IAH back to the drawing board" in search of a less drastic solution. In the end, and with Flagship's intervention, IAH avoided the reset switch. By then, however, it was Hellgate's reputation that needed a reboot -- and perhaps someone, somewhere learned that any PR points gained by launching a demonic-themed game on Halloween aren't always worth the hassle.
While Ultima IX comes in at #1:
All hail the king of gaffed game launches: Though Ultima IX hit store shelves in 1999 (following a troubled development cycle that saw at least four different versions of the game and its engine), the box may as well have been empty. Eager RPG fans booted the game up on their fancy Voodoo3-equipped Pentium II rigs, only to run headlong into myriad 3D engine bugs and crash after game-halting crash. Eventually (after several half-assed attempts on publisher EA's part to fix U9's flubs), an unofficial patch was released anonymously by one of the game's developers, which at least made U9 playable. Given how much dirty laundry's come out in the years following U9's release (the usual corporate drama, repeated design reboots, and "creative differences"), we can't say we're surprised at how terrible it turned out -- and despite several sequel attempts, Ultima's never regained the ground it lost thanks to this dud. Such an unfitting end for such a magnificent series.
