10 More Video Games Cancelled For Ridiculous Reasons

hello all of you beautiful people jules here for whatculture.com and this is the thing video games sometimes just will get cancelled be they because of budgetary constraints all because of publishers asking too much of the dev teams and them just collapsing under the pressure but sometimes they get a little bit sillier so let's take a look at them as i'm jules this is what culture.com and these are ten more video games that were cancelled for ridiculous reasons number ten lucasarts and free radical design couldn't agree on anything star wars battlefront 3. after the first two star wars battlefront games were released in 2004 and 2005 respectively it was reasonable to assume that a trilogy capping entry to the franchise would be released in 2006 or 2007. lucasarts ultimately hired free radical design of the time splitters fame to replace the developer of the first two games pandemic studios yet in 2008 after battlefront 3 had been in development for about two years free radical announced that they had lost the rights to finish the game according to the company's co-founder steve ellis battlefront 3 was mostly finished but lucas hart didn't want to commit to the marketing spend necessary to promote a star wars game while an anonymous lucas arts employee claimed that free radical weren't devoting adequate resources to development and missed deadlines as a result gameplay footage from various leaked sources at least confirmed the game to have been in an advanced state of development and in 2016 a leaked build was even posted online which was playable with a modded xbox 360. ultimately the blame can't squarely be aimed at either free radical or lucasarts it's clear that their visions for the project weren't at all aligned and each side had major problems with the way that the other conducted business the result was just fans missing out on a hugely anticipated sequel and the franchise sitting dormant for almost an entire decade what a waste 9. the budget was spent on booze restaurants and strippers ant simulator though it wasn't nearly as hyped as battlefront 3 obviously ant simulator did nevertheless capture the internet's imagination with its novel what you see is what you definitely get concept and simulator was a project spearheaded by eric tereshinki who acquired 4 400 in development funds by creating a series of game creation youtube tutorials via kickstarter however in early 2016 the developer posted a video announcing that his two business partners tyler montz and devin staley had spent both the initial funding and also some additional development money on hitting the town he said they had secretly spent the overwhelming majority of both our kickstarter money and the ant simulator investment money on liquor restaurants bars and even strippers for their part monster and staley refuted these claims and even considered legal action but all the same production on ant simulator was shuttered without sufficient funding to complete it and has scarcely been spoken about since number eight the publisher pursued another fallout game instead which also got cancelled fallout van buren van buren was the original version of what would eventually become fallout 3 as developed by the series is is his original black isle studios outfit in the early 2000s however publisher interplay entertainment were decidedly more interested in bolstering their console division developing their ps2 xbox fallout game brotherhood of steel at the same time in fact interplay was so high on the idea of brotherhood of steel that they even had commissioned a sequel before the original had even been released worse still they pulled black isle team members off of development of van buren which was very nearly complete so that many of them could work on brotherhood of steel 2 instead ironically brotherhood of steel 2 never came to fruition after the critical and commercial failure of the original back in 2004 amid major financial issues interplay ended up laying off the entire black oil team in late 2003 effectively killing any prospect of van buren's completion fallout 3 was of course eventually made by bethesda and released in 2008 while numerous former black isle staff members went on to work for fallout new vegas developers obsidian entertainment allowing them to incorporate some of their ideas from van buren in the process number seven because of covert 19 anthem next bioware's anthem was wildly expected to be the next big thing for live service aaa shooters so the world was pretty shocked when it released two aggressively mediocre reviews decrying its blindly formulaic story and gameplay generic open world format and a myriad of technical issues in february 2020 a year after the game's initial release bioware announced that they were planning to give anthem the final fantasy 14 s soft reboot treatment with a team of 30 employees committed to figuring out how to reshape the game but another year on bioware confirmed that their anthem next revision had been cancelled citing the challenges caused by covert 19. now while there's no denying that the pandemic has severely hampered game development around the world and bioware's stance is a pretty sympathetic one to an extent it's also not a particularly convincing excuse for shuttering a game that most had actually already given up on with so many aaa video games still making it to release it's far more likely that bioware and ea basically used covert 19 and a desire to avoid crunch as a scapegoat for discontinuing support in reality they probably crunched the numbers and just realized that it just wasn't financially viable to try and reboot a project that interest had already waned in number six konami didn't believe in the dreamcast castlevania resurrection castlevania resurrection was originally intended to be released in march 2000 and in addition to being a more action-centric castlevania game was also supposed to be the series this is his first foray onto the sega dreamcast the resurrection was actually quietly cancelled and according to the game's art director greg audian this was at least in part due to a general lack of faith about the dreamcast's ability to perform in the crowded video game market sega's console had admittedly gotten off to a slow start but the irony is is that this precise mindset and unwillingness to roll the dice on such an ambitious piece of hardware is precisely why the dreamcast failed somewhat ironically resurrection was cancelled the very same day that sony announced the ps2 seemingly hammering two nails into the dreamcast coffin all at once while being wary of new tech is one thing getting a game into a clear deep stage of development only to shelve it all together is something very different number five it was too linear project ragtag you won't find many cancelled games more often lamented than project ragtag the third-person single-player star wars game that began development at visceral games who were famous for the dead space series in 2013 with uncharted creator amy hennig directing the game which would revolve around a heist set in the wake of a new hope expectations were high for star wars to basically get the glossy high octane uncharted makeover treatment however the mammoth commercial success of star wars battlefront in 2015 caused ea to lose interest in ragtag diverting resources to the development of battlefront 2 whilst preventing visceral from hiring more team members throughout 2016 many visceral employees were either laid off or quit and though the remaining team worked hard to hammer the game into shape in october 2017 visceral was closed with development being handed over to ea vancouver ea cited the personnel change as a result of the original game's linear story heavy style hoping to reboot it as a broader experience that allowed for more variety and player agency despite this reports emerged by early 2019 that the new version of ragtag had also been cancelled on top of all of this the original ragtag's cancellation seem to be all the more baffling given that ea went on to release the entirely single player jedi fallen order in november 2019. number four nazi iconography prevented its selling in germany indiana jones and the iron phoenix right i know that you might be listening to the title that i've just read out and think well obviously it's got swastikas in it it's not gonna sell well but just bear with me as i tell you a tale because it's pretty important for producers and publishers to do their damn bloody homework which they evidently didn't do on indiana jones and the iron phoenix the planned sequel to the 1992 point-and-click adventure game indiana jones and the fate of atlantis now the story was to be set after world war ii with the nazis attempting to retrieve the philosopher's stone to resurrect hitler which forces indy to spring into action now this sounds pretty neat right but developers were met with numerous obstacles including an inability to set on a consistent aesthetic and even the departure of their main programmer early in production but the final straw for lucasarts was the realization that the game wouldn't be releasable in germany due to censorship laws preventing the use of nazi imagery such as swastikas which everyone around the world know so i don't know why they slipped their memory given that hitler was the primary antagonist and the game was to be awash in nazi iconography the decision was made to discontinue development after a year of work at which point it was adapted into a dark horse comics series instead but here's the reason why it's so strange that it was cancelled was germany really that big of a gaming market that it seemed to be the right decision to cancel the game and also couldn't have just used common sense and maybe altered the iconography a bit so it didn't have to be that it boggles the mind number three sony made the developers finish lair instead animal wars animal wars was an action rpg from factor five who are famous for the star wars rogue squadron series that began development in 2004 as a ps3 exclusive as per its title the game would focus on anthropomorphic animals battling one another during the great war despite the extensive concept art that was leaked for this game development was basically undertaken by a skeleton crew and before much of the game could actually be assembled factor five's relationship with sony began to curdle as the studio's bigger ps3 exclusive lair was struggling through development as a result sony cut off funding intended for animal wars and funneled it instead into lair forcing them to complete that game while leaving no money behind for animal wars causing its de facto cancellation the tragic irony is that lair went on to receive wildly well mixed reviews and tanked commercially while those who worked on animal wars insist that it was an extremely promising project far more so than lair ever could have been number two microsoft felt expectations were too high scale-bound platinum games is is action rpg scalebound was first announced at e3 2014 to a rapturous response seeming to basically deliver devil may cry but with dragons though word on the game was suspiciously quiet in the years that followed scale band's cancellation in early 2017 still came as a huge shock to the industry considering that the game seemed to be relatively far along in development in the few gameplay snippets released to the public it was tough to imagine how things could have gone so wrong that the game was cancelled entirely some months later xbox head phil spencer suggested that the game had been cancelled because microsoft came to realise that it couldn't even begin to live up to fan expectations he freely admitted that scalebound was revealed too soon and platinumgamestudio even said that they felt that the cancellation was a result of both sides failing to deliver on their promises scalebound's cancellation was baffling to players and many remain convinced that the game could one day be reintroduced especially seeing as platinum games themselves have confirmed that they'd love to return to it and number one two team members were almost crunched to death sonic xtreme sonic xtreme began development in 1994 and was intended to be both the first ever 3d sonic the hedgehog game and the first original sonic game on the sega saturn despite the obvious appeal of such an ambitious project setbacks were numerous from political divisions within sega technical institute to the challenges of developing for 3d to the saturn being a difficult platform to program for to meet the intense deadline imposed upon the team by sega of japan programmer chris coffin cancelled his apartment lease and moved into the office working 16 to 20 hours per day in order to finish the game four months before sonic xtreme's december 1996 deadline coffin contracted severe pneumonia and designer chris cen became so ill with exhaustion having lost considerable weight that he was told by a doctor that he could be dead within six months and so two months before the deadline producer mike wallace pulled the plug on the entire game citing the inability to get it finished with two of the most pivotal talents out of commission now of course no video game is worth the health or worse the lives of the people creating it though this really just speaks to how absurd crunch culture truly was back in the 90s let alone today it's only ridiculous because it clearly didn't have to be this way but sega was so desperate for a lucrative christmas 1996 release that they encouraged their employees to damn near kill themselves had a realistic release target been set perhaps mid-1997 for example then coffin and sen would have had a much better time and fans would have actually gotten their damn game and all it would have taken was sega executives making slightly less that quarter and there we go my friends those were 10 more video games cancelled for ridiculous reasons i hope that you enjoyed that and please let me know what you thought about it down in the comments section below as always i've been jewels you can go follow me over on twitter at retroj with a zero or you can swing by live and let's dice that's dice with a c where i do all of my streaming outside of work and it'll be great to see you over there but before i go i just want to say one thing i hope that you are treating yourself well both mentally and physically because you deserve love happiness and success my friend we all do as human beings and do not let anything or anyone else tell you otherwise all right you're a massive ledge now go out there and absolutely smash it as always i've been jules you have been awesome never forget that and i'll speak to you soon bye

Channel: WhatCulture Gaming

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Length: 13min 21sec (801 seconds)

Published: Thu May 13 2021