5 Games That Failed So Hard, Players Got Their Money Back

When developers sit down to create the next great thing in gaming, they don’t always deliver on their promises. This can be due to a variety of factors, including an overzealous marketing campaign, a team that is smaller than needed, programming and hardware limitations, or other issues that arise during the process. In most cases, a game comes out and doesn’t meet expectations, leaving gamers upset and frustrated for spending their hard-earned money on a dud. In rarer examples, a game fails so hard that publishers have little choice but to refund millions of dollars to fans. These five games are examples of that happening, and they’re arranged in no particular order.

1) Warcraft 3: Reforged

Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos was a great game, so a remaster by Blizzard Entertainment should have been an easy win for the company. Instead, Warcraft 3: Reforged, which included the OG expansion, The Frozen Throne, received widespread condemnation upon release. This was largely due to the overwhelming number of changes made to the original, the omission of previously announced features such as cinematic cutscenes, and various issues that should have been fixed before release. It was a mess, forcing Blizzard to issue refunds to players regardless of how much time they had spent playing the game. It’s unclear how much this cost Blizzard, but the company lost money and took some brand damage from the release.

2) Cyberpunk 2077

A game that was highly anticipated, but had one of the worst launches ever, is Cyberpunk 2077. The cyberpunk action role-playing game had a lot going for it, enticing players with Keanu Reeves’ involvement, great graphics, and an immersive world. Unfortunately, the game was released with widespread glitches and some pretty obvious bugs. This was especially true for the PlayStation 4 port, which forced Sony to remove Cyberpunk 2077 from its online store. Class-action lawsuits followed, resulting in a $1.85 million settlement. CD Projekt was forced to issue refunds, likely costing the company tens of millions of dollars. Fortunately, the devs got to work on it, and now, Cyberpunk 2077 is the game it was always intended to be.

3) Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma Volume One

Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma Volume One is so named because it was meant to be the first in a trilogy of action-adventure games starring Afro Samurai. That never manifested, thanks to the widespread negative reception the first entry received upon release. The game was so bad that it received the lowest scores possible on various review websites. Versus Evil canceled the planned sequels, and Afro Samurai 2, as it’s now called, was pulled from every online store as refunds were issued to anyone who bought the game. On top of that, it’s one of the few titles that’s not backward compatible on the PlayStation 5.

4) No Man’s Sky

If there was ever a cautionary tale on how not to release a game, it’s No Man’s Sky. The game was touted as the next big thing in procedurally-generated open-world gaming, and the developers at Hello Games certainly had lofty ambitions for the project. Unfortunately, when they partnered with Sony to release it on the PlayStation 4, development was rushed, and the game that came out was barely a shadow of what was promised. Most gamers were furious at being duped, forcing the company to issue widespread refunds that cost many millions of dollars. Fortunately, like Cyberpunk 2077, the devs didn’t abandon No Man’s Sky. After numerous updates, the game has finally met and surpassed its 2016 goals, becoming an excellent game everyone should play.

5) The Day Before

In most cases, games fail to meet expectations and issue refunds, but there aren’t accusations of foul play. That’s not the case with The Day Before, an extraction shooter with a protracted development that ultimately earned the label of a bait-and-switch scam filled with plagiarism. The game was finally released to widespread condemnation, as it failed to live up to the hype in Early Access, and was pulled down after only four days due to overwhelming critical derision over its many technical failures. Steam proactively refunded every player who spent money on the game.

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