3 Games So Bad They Killed the Companies That Made Them

Video games are expensive undertakings that can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to develop. They also rely on hundreds of people to create them, especially for big-budget AAA titles, so when they fail, the results can be disastrous. Granted, a game has to be pretty bad to take down the company that made it, but it’s not unheard of. These three games performed so poorly that the studios that developed them had to close their doors, and the financial losses are staggering, given how much was spent on development, advertising, and more.

1) The Lord of the Rings: Gollum

Surprisingly, a AAA game based on The Lord of the Rings killed a studio, which is what happened with The Lord of the Rings: Gollum. In the game, the player controls Gollum as he searches for Bilbo Baggins and his Birthday Present across several well-known locations from the franchise. All the while, he’s pursued by the forces of Sauron and the ever-watchful eye atop Barad-dûr. The game was released in 2023 across various systems and ranked so poorly that it holds the record for the lowest Metacritic score for 2023. Daedalic Entertainment canceled plans for a sequel, then laid off its development team, and is now a publishing-only operation.

2)  APB: All Points Bulletin

APB: All Points Bulletin is a 2010 open-world online game set in urban sprawls, where factions, the Enforcers and Criminals, fight it out. Players could create sub-groups in either faction and play the game from there. It was not successful upon launch, and its servers were shut down the same year of its release. That’s not a good sign for any online game, and it sealed the fate of Realtime Worlds. Despite the death of its developer, another company purchased the IP, and the game was re-released as APB: Reloaded as a free-to-play game. It found some success in this new model, but Realtime Worlds couldn’t survive the first iteration.

Read Next

5 Characters Who Ruined Your Favorite Game

3) Medal of Honor: Warfighter

The Medal of Honor franchise was once a major player in the FPS genre, but it was quickly overshadowed by Call of Duty. Regardless, it continued, and in 2012, Medal of Honor: Warfighter was released as a sequel to 2010’s Medal of Honor, which rebooted the franchise. The game flopped hard commercially and was torn apart by critics over several bugs, crummy AI, and a confusing plot. As a result, Electronic Arts, which published the Medal of Honor franchise, shelved the IP. That decision led to the death of Danger Close Games, which shut down less than a year after the release of Medal of Honor: Warfighter.

Do you remember any of these company-killing games? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!