The worst launches in PC gaming history

Gregster

Gregster

Gregster

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Some interesting titles on this list over at PCgamer and some of them I can't argue with. Batman Arkham Knight capped at 30 fps, HL2 needing Steam to authenticate but Steam was a mess and rarely worked, No Man's Sky and many others.

One that sticks right into my head was GTA IV and needed to run FRAPS recording at 30 fps to be able to complete the last mission (a button smasher one) and even years after launch, it still isn't fixed and no matter how fast you tap tap tappppppy, mission fail lol.

So, what has been your worst launched games in memory?
 
For me (and ill probably get knifed in my sleep for saying this) its SQUAD.

Its the only game ive ever refunded, even games ive not played 2 hours still have my money.... but SQUAD a game I was looking forward too, came in as a slideshow, crashing, mess of a game (yes I had the spec to run it).

I know it was Alpha and maybe still is, but its a game I was looking forward to and a game that left me feeling a little burnt. So for me, thats my worst ever PC release experience.

/willsleepwithoneeyeopen
 
The original Black Ops is one that sticks out for me - the developers released it and the immediately pretty much the entire studio went on holiday, leaving a game that had significant launch issues - crashing, stuck/broken profiles, weapons that wouldn't fire or intermittently didn't fire, significant rubber banding and stutter plus other performance issues and so on in the hands of customers for a whole 19 days before anyone from the publisher/developer made a statement let alone was around to fix it.

Glad BF4 was on that list - what a disaster and even now I'd be well embarrassed if I'd worked on that game and it was my legacy with all the glitches and stuff that "mostly" works i.e. if its fine for 80+% of the playerbase that is good enough blow the other 10-20% that have significant problems with it. If Dice had any self respect (though I suspect some of it is due to EA and/or the limitations placed on Dice by EA) they'd have released their next game for free to make up for it and show they'd learnt from it instead they release BF1 which has many of the same issue and while it wouldn't be a bad effort for a new studio but is quite frankly tripe, even if it looks good, for a studio with the supposed pedigree of Dice.

EDIT: "There was even one sniper rifle silencer that, ironically, muted the sound on the entire server." lol I'd forgotten how ridiculous some of the bugs in the game were on launch - someone really didn't give a **** about their work in the programming department.
 
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Ark was atrocious for my pc and my gfs, medium spec'd machines and got 10fps on the beach. I guess you could argue it was EA but it physically hurt my eyes trying to play it.
 
Rise of the tomb raider by far the worse for me

- constant crashes
- abysmal performance regardless of settings (DX 12 with the async patch is better but still **** poor)

Mafia 3, awful performance and the graphics + the repetitive boring ass gameplay.

Batman AK ran superb for me after using Kaiden's tool on steam and I had only a couple of crashes.
 
I always kept meaning to get around to trying out Vanguard but ultimately I was too late. Probably not that great a loss that I missed out, though.
 
BF4 was attrocious, golmud and lancang dam were both literally unplayable and the game constantly crashed. Does DayZ standalone count? It's been years and it is still ****.

Gregster said:
One that sticks right into my head was GTA IV and needed to run FRAPS recording at 30 fps to be able to complete the last mission (a button smasher one) and even years after launch, it still isn't fixed and no matter how fast you tap tap tappppppy, mission fail lol.
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They've actually fixed that bug now, patched it a couple months ago for some reason.
 
The worst launch I have ever witnessed was the NGE for Star Wars Galaxies. Ok, so not exactly a game launch as such, but given how much it monumentally changed (screwed up) things, it might as well have been.
 
Karathez said:
I cant believe age of conan didnt make that list....
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To be fair I didn't have any issues with Age of Conan, remember it like it was yesterday as I was level 40 by the time public release came and I had my mammoth.. Which is large enough to block the gate at Tortage and stop people getting in :D
I got a nice temp ban and the ability to crouch-walk through mammoths was swift implemented.

Lord of the Rings Online was awful, 12 hour wait after release before any of my group back then could even get in.

ArcheAge initial release wasn't too bad and then it ballooned and the queues were absolutely ridiculous. Average of 3 hours on some servers. Then if you were super unlucky they'd go down for maintenance 2 minutes after you log in!
Everybody that had played was rushing for land to claim houses before even bothering to do quests, was ages before my group found some and then discovered it was just outside the enemy factions area!

Mafia 3 and Deus Ex Human Revolution, both poor performance so I've not played them since release, probably should now as I expect they've been further optimised and I have a 1080 rather than a 980 back then.
 
Some millienial must have wrote that there's no game on that list older then Half Life 2 (they mentioned Rome TW2 but not the first game which was every bit as bad).

He should play the original release of Battlecrusier 3000AD that was so bad it makes Batman Arkham Knight look like an award winning masterpiece.
 
Age of Conan is definitely up there. Never had a problem with Lord of the Rings though. Worst of the lot that I remember was Anarchy 'Offline'. That was pure awfulness.

Dark Age of Camelot wasn't great either - it had a fantastic table cloth effect on some screens rendering you unable to see anything so then you'd run into a mob, get killed (it was a rarity you could run off) then loose most of your XP.


M.
 
tek81 said:
The worst launch I have ever witnessed was the NGE for Star Wars Galaxies. Ok, so not exactly a game launch as such, but given how much it monumentally changed (screwed up) things, it might as well have been.
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A million times this. Technically I'd say it was the Trials of Obi Wan expansion that was the bad launch, as the NGE that immediately followed it destroyed a lot of what was promised in that (as well as the rest of the game, if course).
 
m4cc45 said:
Age of Conan is definitely up there. Never had a problem with Lord of the Rings though. Worst of the lot that I remember was Anarchy 'Offline'. That was pure awfulness.

Dark Age of Camelot wasn't great either - it had a fantastic table cloth effect on some screens rendering you unable to see anything so then you'd run into a mob, get killed (it was a rarity you could run off) then loose most of your XP.


M.
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Wasn't that just the EU DAOC? I played beta in the US servers months before it came to the EU and it was fine, but then when it launched here it had all sorts of weird bugs due to the work the EU company had done to it - which then cause more problems in patching as they couldn't just take the patches from the US servers directly.

GTA IV is probably the worst launch I can think of, MMORPGs tended to be more reliably terrible though.
 
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