Top Five: Games Cancelled After Release

Cancelled games are an unfortunately common occurrence in our industry. The reasons given for their premature demises can be any one of many: A developer might either run out of money or decide to re-focus on some other project in the works, where publishers have been known to pivot on dimes and give up on games the moment the going gets rough. In other cases, a game simply can’t come together in time for a deadline, or otherwise lingers so long in development hell as to see no way forward. In any case, the consensus ultimately reached in all these verdicts is that it is better for these games to not see the light of day, rather than to de-value the companies involved — to see them fail to turn a profit, or turn dissatisfied consumers against them. Frankly speaking, the fact that video games ever actually manage to get released at all is something of a miracle, considering the staggering odds stacked against them.

Sometimes, though, something particularly odd happens: A game can be completely finished, make its way onto shelves and digital storefronts, and only later be discovered to be “cancelled” after the fact — leaving consumers and distributors alike to collectively scratch their heads while staring at the apocryphal product already in their hands. We’re not talking about games that simply sell through their allotted copies, disappear digitally due to expiring license agreements, or otherwise get delisted due to changing distribution or publishers going out of business: We’re talking about games that are put up for sale on a given day, before being promptly pulled from circulation on the next — issuing refunds to their small handfuls of purchasers, and seeing publishers apologize for ever having sold them in the first place. It’s not every day that you see game companies voluntarily turn down the opportunity to try and turn at least some sort of profit where they can, even off of knowingly sub-par products. As such, the small number of known instances where they have are all fairly noteworthy.

Needless to say, we’ll be going over several examples of this rare phenomena today — covering the subject of games “cancelled” after already being released. In order to qualify for this list, a game must have been available for purchase for at least a brief moment in time (whether appearing at physical retailers or as an online offering) and unexpectedly pulled from circulation shortly thereafter, with no plans for the game to be re-released in the future. This discounts cases like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas being temporarily pulled in the wake of the “Hot Coffee” controversy; where after having their ESRB rating changed to an ‘AO’ and seeing the title briefly pulled off shelves, Rockstar Games quickly worked to “fix” the game before just as promptly re-issuing it. Similarly, we won’t be counting cases where the games have been pulled due to unforeseen legal troubles (such as The Guy Game and X-Men Destiny), since that warrants something like its own list. Seeing publishers offer refunds is to be expected – as a gesture of goodwill and humility – but not a requisite in my books. Same goes for apologies being issued by developers / publishers in the wake of cancellation. With those ground rules laid, let’s get to listing.

Dishonorable Mention: Cyberpunk 2077 on PlayStation 4 (CD Projekt RED)

Released: December 10th, 2020 | “Cancelled:” December 17th, 2020

European cover art for Cyberpunk 2077 on PS4.

The development and release of CD Projekt’s Cyberpunk 2077 is nothing short of a historic debacle. After so much time spent generating hype, followed by an equally long cycle of seemingly perpetual delays, the reward consumers finally received for their collective patience was… well, pretty much destined to be a let-down, given how unreasonably large their expectations had been allowed to balloon. At best, the game is an underwhelming open world FPS with a minimum in meaningful choices, and which unfortunately fails to embody much in the way of the theming implied by the use of the term “cyberpunk” in its title — to the point where fighting against corruptible law enforcement is somehow an offense to be frowned upon? At worst, it’s a game which barely even manages to run in the first place, between a litany of bugs and a plague of performance issues. Of the consoles it saw release across though, none performed quite as poorly as the port produced for Sony’s PlayStation 4: The most popular and readily-available console of its generation, and ostensibly the version of the game that most consumers would be opting / able to purchase. It’s unfortunate then that Cyberpunk 2077‘s PS4 version bordered on unplayable; between dismal framerates, genuinely hard to parse visuals, and crashes so constant and consistent as to prevent progression entirely.

CD Projekt Red had preemptively laid the blame for their having had to repeatedly delay Cyberpunk‘s launch on the production of this “last-gen” PS4 version (and to a lesser extent, the Xbox One release), noting the challenge of scaling a game intended to run on new ninth-generation hardware down to run on aging eighth-generation machines.^[1] At the same time, of course, company CEO Adam Kiciński would be seen bragging during pre-release promotion about how performance on the PS4 and Xbox One versions was shaping up to be “surprisingly good […] for such an open world.”^[2] He would truly come to regret those words with the eventual launch of the game, as those last-gen versions soon gave way to riotous negative reaction from critics and consumers alike. Ultimately, it fell on Sony to render an unprecedented verdict: To offer no less than full refunds to players who purchased the game via the PlayStation Store marketplace, and to further remove the game from said digital storefront until such a time as CD Projekt could sufficiently fix it up.^[3]

… Of course, this isn’t exactly what I’d refer to as the game being outright cancelled, as I’m defining it in the context / spirit of this article. For one thing, we’re talking about a singular version of the game here, rather than releases across the board. Secondly, there’s the fact that CD Projekt have continued to support the PS4 release – striving to shape it up into something functional – and eventually managed to convince Sony to allow the game to be sold through the PlayStation Store again some six months later.^[4] Still, I have to mention the whole fiasco here for posterity’s sake, as well as to get ahead of folk unaware of the game’s return asking why it wouldn’t have been on this list. And yes, to pre-empt the next question on everybody’s minds: Cyberpunk 2077 will eventually take its rightful place in the Bad Game Hall of Fame, as soon as I can upgrade my rig and can mentally steel myself to endure it. All things in due time, and all due apologies to Keanu Reeves.

#5. Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma – Volume One (Versus Evil / Redacted Studios)

Released: September 22, 2015 | Cancelled: November 9th, 2015

PlayStation Store key art for Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma on PS4.

Before we say anything else: Yes, ‘Redacted Studios’ is just about the most ironic name I can possibly imagine for the developer of a game that would effectively wind up being erased from history — short of something like “Blink and You’ll Miss It Ltd.” In any case, Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma serves as the sequel to Namco Bandai’s 2009 release of Afro Samurai — the video game adaptation of the 2007 anime adaptation of a 1998 manga. Without delving too deep into plot synopsis, the series centers around a titular Afro Samurai, and his mission to avenge his father’s death at the hands of the gunslinger Justice; whose motivation for the killing was to obtain the coveted ‘No. 1 Headband,’ and claim its apparent mystic power for his own. Along the way, Afro Samurai has to strike down all those who dare oppose him; including his own best friend Jinno, who seeks his own vengeance for Afro’s prior killing of their shared mentor. At some point, Jinno appears to die and return from the dead as an android with a head fashioned after a teddy bear, thereby earning him the alias of Kuma (Japanese for “bear”). Naturally, I’m not doing the series any favors by running through these plot beats so sloppily and haphazardly, but trust me when I say that Afro Samurai is worth a watch or read.

A couple of years after the release of Namco Bandai’s Afro Samurai game in 2009, the game’s senior producer David Robinson left the employ of the company, in order to form Redacted Studios as an independent venture.^[5] With him, he took the rights to produce further Afro Samurai games, as well as a small handful of other developers associated with the previous installment. That being said, the bulk of the new team would be seemingly composed of industry newbies, which is perhaps where the problems began for their debut title to-be. All I can say for sure is, the assembled team clearly weren’t cut out for the task at hand, and that Revenge of Kuma is nothing short of an unmitigated disaster: Between clumsy story-telling, mind-numbingly dull gameplay, an all-too-easily exploitable progression system, and what I can only honestly describe as the absolute worst audio mixing I have ever suffered in retail software;** it’s clear that while the game may have been a labor of love, that love is matched only by how utterly laborious the game is to actually play. I hate to be so negative about it, but the state the game released in is downright negligent — straight-up unfit for consumption, given the very real potential to damage a player’s hearing.

The immediate critical consensus reached was that the game was launched in a borderline unfinished state, and that the upcoming episodes / “Volumes” were going to have to put in some serious work to make up for the damage done by this initial outing. Unfortunately, Redacted Studios would never get the chance to redeem themselves: The game’s publisher Versus Evil would pull the game from distribution across PlayStation Network and Steam on November 9th, 2015 — just forty-eight days after its launch. It took another week before Versus Evil GM Steve Escalante would issue a statement to Comics Gaming Magazine, providing the reasoning for their decision: “The game was a failure. We could not do, in good conscience, Volume 2 and Volume 3. So we’ve begun the process, it’s been a long process to figure it out because Sony has never really had to do this in this way, but we’re returning all the money. So across the board we’re putting out an apology saying ‘sorry about this.’”^[6] Escalante would further add / argue that “If you look at the reviews, it wasn’t that the game was broken or buggy, people just didn’t like it.”

While the bit about the game “not being buggy” is certainly debatable, the messaging on the publisher’s part was clear: They were wiping their hands clean of Revenge of Kuma, and had no intention of investing any further time or money into the endeavor. To that end, a planned Xbox One release was also cancelled, signalling the complete cessation of work on the maligned title. For their transparency [and relative promptness in refunding purchases], Versus Evil were more or less forgiven by consumers, and were able to quickly return to business as usual. Redacted Studios, on the other hand, fell quickly into a disarray they had no hope of recovering from — toiling away for two more years on odd contract work that never seemed to materialize into anything substantive. Founder David Robinson finally shuttered the company in December 2017 (according to his LinkedIn), before moving on to a directorial gig at a “guest experience” company called INTELITY, and later founding an LLC ‘Augmented Cognition Health’ with a focus on VR-driven medical equipment. I guess what I’m trying to say is, don’t expect him to pick Revenge of Kuma back up as a passion project any time soon: The only slicing and dicing he seems to concern himself with now is strictly surgical.

** I’m sure we’ll get into further, specific details when it eventually comes time to write a full article on the game. But for the time being: Just know that the game constantly subjects you to completely blown-out voice overs — audio far beyond the point of volume-peaking / clipping. At the same time, so much of the rest of the game’s audioscape is so quiet, it borders on inaudible; to the point where you’ll be tempted to raise your device volume, only to be promptly deafened by the next blast of maxed-out dialogue. Games really don’t get much worse than Revenge of Kuma in terms of audio design, and it’s a shame that a genuinely killer soundtrack is rendered completely unlistenable due to this inability to properly balance volume.

#4. Jumanji: The VR Adventure (Sony Pictures / MPC VR)

Released: January 17th, 2018 | Cancelled: February 9th, 2018

Promotional poster for
Jumanji: The VR Adventure.

2017’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is, by all accounts, a motion picture. It runs roughly two hours in length, stars an ensemble of popular actors, and – perhaps most importantly – made Sony Pictures a metric shit-ton of money — nearly a billion dollars in worldwide theatrical gross. With the film’s plot centered around the original board game [from the 1995 movie] magically transforming itself into a video game in order to entrap new generations of hapless players, it was inevitable that Sony would eventually land on the idea of licensing some video game tie-ins to match the movie’s premise. A little on the nose, to be sure, but no more or less obvious a move than selling a real-life board game counterpart to the original Jumanji movie back in the day. I guess the concept of potentially getting trapped inside games of literal life and death wasn’t enough to dissuade kids from begging their parents to buy it for them? In designing a tie-in video game for the 2017 movie though – rather than simply slapping together a standard 3D platformer made to vaguely approximate some of its action set pieces – Sony would authorize a decidedly more novel undertaking — a promotional game made to leverage some of the trendiest tech going in late 2017: Virtual reality.

Sony Pictures had previously established a partnership with the VRX Network — a company centered around producing and distributing “virtual reality experiences” based on film and TV licenses. As per a press release issued by VRX: “Our strategy allows us to scale rapidly into cinemas, malls and other high traffic venues to reach large audiences and extend the movie going experience. [Sony Pictures VR] has been incredibly supportive and dedicated to the growth of the VR industry and ‘Jumanji: The VR Adventure’ will be another great spectacle for our global audiences to experience the wonder and awe that VR offers.”^[7] Sony had already leveraged VRX’s mall and movie theater VR kiosks to deploy advergames for the likes of The Emoji Movie and Jigsaw (friendly reminder that Sony Pictures produces nothing but the finest in cinematic experiences), and sought to continue the working relationship in promoting their new Jumanji movie. To this end, two more companies were contracted to attend to the business of actually developing the application: Reality One and MPC VR. With so many different companies coming together to collaborate on Jumanji: The VR Adventure, it was clear that Sony must’ve been pumping some serious money into this thing — expecting to turn out the VR equivalent of a blockbuster film, for their no-doubt significant investment!

Jumanji: The VR Adventure had its VRX kiosk debut alongside the film’s theatrical release, serving as a novel distraction in select cinema lobbies. Without much in the way of review outlets dedicated to covering these sorts of odd products, there wasn’t really a “critical consensus” for the public (or for Sony Pictures themselves) to reference with regards to the game. But if that’s where the story of The VR Adventure began and ended, we wouldn’t be talking about it in this article. For us to be discussing it right now, Sony had to have had a terrible idea: To further release this lobby novelty as no less than a retail product, purchasable on Steam’s digital storefront for $4.99. It’s here where I should note that the game – entirely faithful to its kiosk counterpart – is designed to be completed in no more than ten minutes time, as helpfully indicated by an ever-present timer hovering just above your head. The brief adventure sees you solving the most rudimentary of puzzles and engaging in a bare minimum of environmental interaction, as you guide vague likenesses of the film’s cast (Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Karen Gillan) on a remarkably short trail toward a large statue. On overcoming a small handful of simple obstacles and reaching said statue, you’re made to insert a magic jewel into it, at which point the game abruptly ends. With minimal practice (or maybe even none), you can probably complete the whole adventure in less than three minutes time, and run out the remainder of the clock wondering how the hell Sony had the gall to charge money for this.

Within hours of the game going live on Steam – potentially within minutes, given the game’s brief time to complete – a handful of players had bought it, captured footage of it in action, and reported their findings to the rest of the world wide web. Needless to say, none of them had anything particularly nice to say about The VR Adventure; between its shamefully short length, utterly uninspired gameplay, and visuals frequently likened to “PS2-era graphics.” And just as quickly, the game was gone — pulled from the market with no immediate explanation given.^[8] One could be forgiven for assuming that Sony and MPC VR (the product page’s sole credited developer) had caught wind of early reactions while the game was briefly available, realized their error in attempting to profit off of this drek, and made the tactical decision to pull it before any further damage was done. But nope: It turns out that the game launching on the 17th had been some sort of “accident,” and that the title was back on the market by the following day, with nothing in the way of changes or updates to show for it. A further wave of curious consumers would go on to try out the title for themselves, tear it to shreds in scathing reviews, before presumably filing for immediate refunds within Steam’s two-hour window. I highly recommend giving WayneRadioTV’s video on the game a watch, as it also served as the first I had even heard of The VR Adventure.

When the game disappeared from Steam again on February 9th (twenty-two days later), it was actually gone for good. With nothing in the way of warning or statement from the publisher or developers, consumers could only speculate as to what had happened; with the predominant theory being that the overwhelmingly negative reception had become a source of embarrassment for Sony, and that trying to erase the game from history was their attempt to save face. To this end, planned releases of Jumanji across PlayStation VR and Oculus storefronts were quietly cancelled, lest further clean-up be required in the future. What’s surprising is, this strategy actually seemed to work, with little in the way of public outcry: None of the websites that had taken to condemning the title would follow up with news of its cancellation, and message boards / social media barely seemed to notice the disappearance either. I guess it helps that not many folk had even noticed the game’s release in the first place, let alone realized when it was taken down. What’s more surprising than that though is the fact that nobody who owned the game has ever taken to the likes of Twitter to talk about it — to confirm whether or not they were ever issued refunds for their purchases. I can only assume that most folk who bought the game had already requested for their own refunds through Steam in the weeks prior.

In the time since The VR Adventure came and went, Sony went and launched a second Jumanji VR experience subtitled ‘Reverse the Curse,’ which ran exclusively as a kiosk experience across locations run by “mixed reality entertainment” provider ‘The VOID’ in early 2020. For its part, it seemed a massive improvement over the previous attempt at translating Jumanji to VR; though it still underwhelmed the handful of VR-dedicated critics who covered it, who would write it off as “the weakest title at The VOID.”^[9] Unfortunately for all involved, COVID-19 soon rendered The VOID’s operations null and void, as the pandemic quickly annihilated their business model / dreams of running “virtual reality theme parks.” Of course, I’m not counting Reverse the Curse on this list or anything: It’s just kinda funny to see how truly cursed the idea of creating a VR game based around a “cursed game” has ironically wound up being. All that’s left is for Sony to release a third attempt at a VR Jumanji game, and to see someone actually die as a result of playing it.

#3. The Culling 2 (Xaviant Games)

Released: July 10th, 2018 | Cancelled: July 18th, 2018

Steam banner graphic for The Culling 2.

The “battle royale” subgenre is a fascinating trend to track; from its humble beginnings in the ‘Survival Game’ mod for Minecraft, to the surprise success of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds paving the way for the incomparable market dominance of Fortnite, and so on and so forth. But in recounting this rise to prominence, there’s a game that typically gets left out of the conversation — an oft-overlooked stepping stone in the genre’s ascent to glory: Xaviant Games’ The Culling, initially debuting as a Steam early access title in March 2016. Despite a decidedly smaller scale than the genre would soon come to be renowned for (matches comprising just sixteen players, compared to the now-standard hundred), its incorporation of crafting / survival mechanics into the elimination game formula would wind up attracting a moderately-sized, highly-dedicated playerbase. For the better part of a year’s time, The Culling nestled nicely near the top of the battle royale perch, until a combination of underwhelming updates and the eventual launch of PUBG caused its popularity to plummet. Feeling as though they had no other road forward, Xaviant chose to discontinue the game’s development – leaving it in a state arguably worse than when it had first launched, thanks to a series of largely unpopular updates and patches – and began work anew on its successor.

When the gaming press questioned the company’s decision to release a new battle royale game in a quickly-crowding market, Xaviant’s director of operations Josh Can Veld made the admission that “apart from a passionate core audience, the majority of PC players haven’t seen or thought about The Culling in two years,” and contended that the company was on “a healthy timeline for a sequel to roll around.”^[10] While this did little to quell fans frustrated that the original game had been so short-lived (it had only officially “launched” / left Early Access on October 5th, and already been discontinued by December 17th**), the team soldiered forward in preparing The Culling 2 for a July 10th, 2018 release date. And when that fateful day came, the response from the community was unlike anything Xaviant could have predicted or accounted for. Players didn’t just express their dislike for the game: They practically revolted against it, and dismissed it so readily and collectively as to completely sabotage it. And in fairness, they were all pretty well justified in doing so, given the absolute state of the game at launch.

Gone from The Culling 2 were all the elements that had defined the original game, now replaced by half-hearted attempts to copycat PUBG‘s proven design. Instead of crafting and an emphasis on improvised weapons, players were meant to race to stockpile generic firearms scattered across the map. In dropping the previous entry’s jungle island theming, competitors would now be dropped into a comparatively uninspired expanse of large open fields and empty houses, tied loosely together by a half-baked “game show” presentation. Unspectacular graphics, the switch to a third-person perspective, and a general lack of any discernible identity / uniquely-defining features (save for a ‘Perks’ system largely unseen in other battle royale games) all work against The Culling 2, making it look and feel like little more than an inferior take on genre contemporaries. As an added “bonus,” the decision was made to expand the sixteen player count to a total of fifty — still short of most of its peers, and hardly enough bodies to fill out its comparatively oversized map. Not that any of this really mattered too much, on account of one fatal flaw: You couldn’t find anyone to actually play the game with.

On The Culling 2‘s launch day, the most competitors anyone reported queuing up for a match against peaked at around thirty. By the following day, the number of active players would be reduced to single digits, before matchmaking simply became a complete impossibility by just the third or fourth day out, due to a lack of any concurrent players. The drop-off in numbers here is practically unheard of — a game developer’s worst nightmare come to life. The phrase “dead on arrival” has never been so aptly applied to a [retail-offered] multiplayer title before, and may never be again. Xaviant had made one of the most grievous miscalculations in the history of the industry, and launched a video game that literally no one had wanted to play — at a $20 price point, no less! And so, there was really only one thing they could do, other than just laying down and dying: Cancel and retract the game entirely, just eight days after having released it.

News of the cancellation came paired with an apology to players by Xaviant, as issued in video form by ‘Director of Operations’ Josh Van Veld. Over the course of six minutes, a dejected Josh acknowledges that the launch of The Culling 2 “was not successful,” and that “it was not a game that you [the consumers] asked for, and it’s not the game you expect as a worthy successor to The Culling.”^[11] He announces the company’s determination that “the best course of action is to take [The Culling 2] down off of store shelves […] and to make sure that those of you who bought the game get refunds.” Rather than re-focusing on any sort of new project in development at that point in time, Xaviant would instead return to work on the original game, and further pair it with the release of what they would call ‘The Culling: Day 1’ — a separate instance of the game presented it in its pure, unadulterated, original Early Access version. Finally, there was the announcement made that The Culling in its ongoing / continually-updated form would switch over to a free-to-play model, in order to guarantee an initial influx of new players. Truly, Xaviant were doing all they could to make good with their disgruntled consumers, and to get themselves back on the right track.

Of course, it was all too little too late for Xaviant and The Culling: Its players had all moved on, and found themselves quite content to just continue playing the likes of PUBG and Fortnite. Whatever minor buzz existed around the time of the relaunch (what Xaviant likely exaggeratedly claimed to be “a million new players”^[12]) quickly dissipated, and Xaviant were soon left with yet another dead product on their hands. The games industry can be a cruel and confusing mistress, but it was absolutely justified in its ruling in this instance — in soundly rejecting a game that had already fizzled out once before, relaunched as an act of desperation by a studio clinging hopelessly to their past. Come March 2019, Xaviant admitted defeat once more; disclosing that revenue from rebooting The Culling as F2P wasn’t enough to cover monthly server bills (which were later revealed to number in the tens of thousands of dollars^[12b]), and announcing that the game’s servers would be shut down in May that same year.^[13] But alas, Xaviant still had one last nail to drive firmly into their coffin — one final, futile play to ring in their deserved doom.

In May 2020, the company re-rebooted The Culling one last time; now rechristened ‘The Culling: Origins,’ made available exclusively on Xbox One, and incorporating a convoluted token economy that would prevent your ability to even play the game more than once a day unless you ponied up real-life money.^[14] Players openly revolted once again, and Xaviant issued another apology, but they refused to budge on the broader strokes of the new business model — likely the only model they envisioned as having even a snowball’s chance in hell at making the game remotely profitable. In any case; the game barely ran, consumers didn’t bite, and The Culling: Origins represented another flop out the gate. At some undodcumented point – past the point of players having long-since abandoned it – Origins too appears to have quietly shut down, presumably alongside the company responsible. You have to wonder: If Xaviant hadn’t launched The Culling 2 in the first place – if they had simply chosen to move on to some new IP at that point, and stop trying to play catch-up with the battle royale trend – could they have found some different sort of way forward? I suppose though with a company like Xaviant, who so stubbornly insisted on living in the past, that was never really an option for them.

** To be clear: Even if you take the game’s “official” launch date as the day it left Early Access, and count the two months until development was discontinued; the original The Culling doesn’t qualify for this list, on account of the fact that its servers were still left to remain running (at that time). A game’s active development ending doesn’t count as an outright cancellation or necessarily indicate an end of service.

#2. Ashes Cricket 2013 (505 Games / Trickstar Games)

Released: November 22nd, 2013 | Cancelled: November 26th, 2013

European cover art for Ashes Cricket 2013
on PC.

Ah, cricket: The game of sticky wickets and baggy greens. The Commonwealth’s second-most favorite sport I hear, with admittedly significant distance behind good ol’ football. Naturally, as a red white and blue-blooded American, I can’t actually tell you the first thing about how cricket is supposed to be played, and I am vehemently opposed to learning as much! What I can speak to are video games, and to the fact that cricket’s digital representation has never really been all that significant — at least compared to the likes of any other recognized major league sport. You may well be able to track the history of cricket video games back all the way to 1983 (with the release of Test Match + One Day Cricket on the ZX Spectrum), but they’ve never been the sorts of titles to set sales charts ablaze or attain critical acclaim. Maybe it’s something to do with the fact that cricket can be more of an endurance sport than gamers are used to, with matches dragging on into the tens of hours across multiple days of play? Maybe it’s partially due to it losing something in the translation to controller play, where the nuance and psychology of bowling can’t be contained to just a handful of buttons and an analog stick? Or maybe it’s just due to the simple fact that cricket is boring as shit, and that even the most fully-featured and true-to-life virtual simulation of it is bound to be equally boring by nature. Then again, baseball video games somehow manage to do pretty well for themselves, and I can’t sit here and tell you that’s honestly any more compelling of a sport.

Putting aside whatever personal feelings you or I might have about cricket, there’s no denying its enduring popularity, and the fact that the games industry is entitled to make some effort to capitalize on that. Cue the Ashes Cricket series, so named for the sport’s most popular tradition / event: The semi-annual competition held between Australia and England’s teams, stemming from a heated rivalry which began in 1882. Though the first video game to invoke the Ashes name came in 1995 (Audiogenic’s Battle for the Ashes, released across DOS and Amiga), the first to bear the direct branding would be 2009’s aptly-titled Ashes Cricket 2009, as developed by Australian software house Transmission Games. Now, there’s actually a lineage here rooted in the longer-running ‘Brian Lara Cricket’ franchise, which Codemasters had been publishing installments in since 1994; but that’s a whole can of worms I don’t much feel like opening at the moment, and so we’re just gonna pick up from the Ashes era if y’all don’t mind?** With this in mind, and with the 2013 Ashes series (the real life sporting event, that is) due to occur between July and August of that same year; publisher 505 Games picked up the official licenses from the ‘England and Wales Cricket Board’ and ‘Cricket Australia,’ and set about having a video game ready in time for June — a month before the matches were due to begin. Unfortunately, their choice of contracted developer would soon prove disastrous.

To their credit: Australian studio Trickstar Games were, in fact, familiar with the cricket genre; having picked up a number of ex-employees from Transmission Games before them, and having produced the decently-received International Cricket 2010 in the years prior. Where the problems seemed to start was with their choice of game engine in Unity — a toolkit the team was evidently unfamiliar with, and which they unwisely chose to build from a beta release thereof. In taking the time to adapt to the new engine, the team missed their originally slated development deadline, before further failing to provide a finished product in time for a pushed-back July release. By this point, 505 Games were clearly frustrated already, and took to the press to publicly (unprofessionally, arguably) vent; indicating “It is hugely disappointing that 505 Games has had to make this announcement today,” and noting that “we took a long hard look at the game as it stands and decided it simply wasn’t good enough in its current state. It was simply not worthy of the Ashes name.”^[15] The new release date would be set for November that year, in time to coincide with an alternate round of the Ashes series being held in Australia. Come November 22nd, Trickstar would be obligated to release their game to the world, regardless of whether or not they had the time to “add the final polish” that 505 believed they needed.

Needless to say, the version of Ashes Cricket 2013 that got released – debuting on Steam’s PC storefront – didn’t quite rise to the occasion. By all accounts, the game was still blatantly unfinished; missing much in the way of promised features, lacking some of the most common animations, and generally playing as if it were still in an early prototyping stage. It’s hard to understate just how half-baked the supposed “final product” was — how very nearly unplayable the batting and bowling both were, let alone the abilities to play the field and perform runs. Beyond that, performance was dismal (in spite of its lacklustre graphics), customization and options were offered at a bare minimum, and the game didn’t even attempt to provide anything in the way of online play. It’s here where I would want to point to a few reviews of the game for further insights into its failings, except I can’t in this instance: The game was launched so quietly, and pulled so quickly from sale, that not a single major outlet would even get the chance to review it in official capacity. Instead, sites were left to report on the news of its sudden removal from Steam on November 26th (after just four days of availability), followed by 505 Games issuing a frank letter of apology to consumers:

“As most people who have followed the project closely can affirm, the development of Ashes Cricket 2013 has been fraught with challenges almost from the outset. The chosen developer, even with their many years of cricket game development experience, was unable to overcome the unexpected challenges that the chosen game engine threw up, even with multiple extensions to the development schedule. At the start of the project, 505 Games received all assurances from the developer that the engine was up to the task of creating a dynamic, cutting-edge cricket game for the modern age across multiple platforms, and unfortunately those assurances were found to be misplaced.

The net result of the challenges we have faced was a game which, despite our best efforts over the course of a 2 year development, couldn’t meet the quality benchmarks of either us, our licensors or our customers. […] Our deepest apologies, however, are reserved for the fans of cricket and cricket games worldwide. 505 Games prides itself on being a safe pair of hands on which gamers of all tastes and denominations can rely to put their best foot forward to create compelling gaming experiences. It is clear that, in this instance, we have fallen way short of our stated aims and failed to deliver. We know that the mitigating factors, as highlighted above, hold little solace to the hordes of excited cricket fans worldwide who had hoped this year to be able to play out their fantasy of playing in the Ashes series. The people who purchased the game will be contacted very shortly with details of a full refund.”^[16]

Despite the game being pulled from sale, and 505 Games owning up to their mistake; what followed over the next month were a series of ‘Quick Look’-style videos across several notable review outlets (who still had access to the game through their Steam press accounts), in order to make as grand a spectacle / generate as much traffic as they could out of Ashes Cricket 2013’s negative buzz. It ultimately made its way near the top of several websites’ “Worst of 2013” lists, thus cementing the game’s legacy as a historic failure — all in spite of how limited its market availability may well have been. Trickstar Games, for their role and fault in this whole debacle, could no longer seem to line up contract work with any other publishers on the back of their now tarnished reputation. The developer finally dissolved come June 2015,^[17] while publisher 505 Games have continued to endure and flourish into the modern day. Which really goes to show you: When a game fails to deliver, it’s always the developer who suffers all the blame and consequences for it, while the publishers never seem to have any problems bouncing right back. Funny how that works, huh?

** Against my better judgment, I make this promise: If and when I get to reviewing Ashes Cricket 2013 as the subject of its own dedicated article, I’ll go over the whole history of of the Brian Lara Cricket series, in helping to establish a sequence of events / precedent of quality prior to Trickstar Games’ notorious entry. I try to write these simple listicles as a way of getting away from having to do any real research, and I’m already failing well enough in that pursuit as you can tell, so at least let me keep from having to fall all the way down the cricket hole at this particular moment in time?

#1. NBA Elite 11 (Electronic Arts / EA Canada)

Cancelled: September 27th, 2010 | Released: Against EA’s wishes.

North American cover art for NBA Elite 11
on PS3.

For our top spot, we’re calling something like a technical foul: A case where a game was, in fact, ordered to be cancelled before its release. By all accounts, EA Games’ NBA Elite 11 was never supposed to make its way onto store shelves, with its launch being publicly axed at the proverbial eleventh hour. So, how exactly does it still manage to qualify for this list? Well, you see, there’s a risk you run when you wait ’til the last second to make such a big decision: The chance that your last-minute epiphany might just come a moment too late, after the proverbial buzzer has already sounded. In the case of NBA Elite 11 – by the time the Electronic Arts had made the call for the release to be scrapped – retailers had already been selling copies of it to customers, ostensibly unaware of the recall order having been given. And when it comes to a game that’s already been printed and shipped, you can’t call for a time-out when the ball’s already in play — much the same as in basketball itself.

NBA Elite 11 had been intended to continue in the legacy of Electronic Arts’ ‘NBA Live’ franchise, which had begun officially with the release of NBA Live 95 [in 1994]. The games had been the products of EA’s Canadian branch (so branded as ‘EA Canada’ at the time), and remained so for the better part of fifteen years; allowing for a relative consistency in both playability and quality, and resulting in sustained profitability for the publisher. That said, it’s hard to keep a series going for over a decade – with consistent annual releases mind you – without returns eventually beginning to diminish. Where franchise sales had peaked with the release of NBA Live 2005 – with its PlayStation 2 release alone having sold 1.95 million copies^[18] – they had dropped to just below the million units sold mark by the time NBA Live 10 hit store shelves, even when combining estimated sales across Xbox 360 (450K) and PlayStation 3 (540K). The plan, then, was to turn the brand back around with the release of NBA Elite 11; completely revamping the controls, introducing the series’ first single-player career mode (titled ‘Become Legendary Mode’), and generally polishing up every other aspect of the game to a mirror sheen.

Only one issue with that ambition: EA Canada would be described as attempting to “bite off two years’ worth of work that they could only get done in 18 months.”^[19] Such is the dilemma when it comes to contractual annual obligations, where in order to attempt to rebuild your product from the ground up, you have to carefully manage your time to the very last second; between all the demands of development on your current year’s game, while simultaneously attempting to plot out the course for the next one down the line. It’s a risky move to abandon an established formula / the safety of iterative design, but a necessary one for when you recognize your franchise as starting to get long in the tooth. The way the timeframe wound up working out, EA had begun the process of approving master status for the game in the latter half of September 2010, and released a downloadable demo for it at around that same time. Unfortunately, said demo quickly became the subject of public scrutiny, and eventually spelled disaster for NBA Elite 11’s launch prospects.

Where many took general umbrage with the game’s new control scheme (leveraging dual-analog in order to facilitate almost all aspects of ball control), the more publicized criticisms centered on the game’s animations, which were most generously described as “not synching up well [with the flow of gameplay].”^[19b] The most infamous result of these stilted / outright broken animations would be referred to as “The Passion of the Bynum” — or “Jesus Bynum,” for short: Recorded gameplay demonstrating that the character model / AI routines for player Andrew Bynum (of the Los Angeles Lakers) was incorrectly implemented, resulting in his striking a T-pose in the center of the court for the duration of entire matches. The image of his Christ-like stance soon became synonymous with the demo, and quickly dominated discussion of the larger game in general — an unfortunate development not unknown to EA themselves. By recollection of the company’s then-CEO John Riccitiello, the situation internally played out as follows: “The demo goes out. We final the game. We do an internal review. We’re not happy. Interaction between the label and sales organization says the game is likely to be a 60 or something along those lines essentially for the fact that it wasn’t finished. What do you do? […] So there’s the table: You can ship a product you’re not proud of and compete for marginal share. You can delay the game to get a better product, but that’s going to have a knock-on effect. And we made what I judged to be the best call given the circumstances.”^[19c]

That call, of course, had been to cancel the game’s launch outright (after initial messaging that it was simply being “delayed”);^[20] rather than continue its development, somehow work to rebuild / repurpose it, or release it as it was. Only – as alluded to earlier, and given the conceit of this article – the decision had been made too late: Copies of the game’s PlayStation 3 version had already been shipped to retailers, eight days prior to news of its cancellation. As such, stores not privy to the communication from EA (or who had otherwise decided to sell copies ahead of its release date / after the recall order had come down) had already sold through some number of units, putting the technically “unreleased” game in players’ hands. News sites were soon able to confirm reports of players obtaining and reselling copies of NBA Elite 11, which was quickly being valued at well above its intended retail price due to its quickly-established scarcity status.^[21] Since then, copies of the game have been seen selling for upwards of $2,250, confirming its status as both a playable product and an extreme rarity. But for those foolish enough to pony up the cash (or figure out how to emulate it, more sensibly), it is technically a “finished” title, which can theoretically be plugged into any stock model of PS3 and played through to completion. As far as I’m concerned, that still counts as the game having seen some form of release — even if EA did everything in their power to prevent it.

From that point forward, the NBA Live branding should just as well have been put to rest: Rival 2K Games’ NBA 2K11 sold like hotcakes, and positioned the ongoing franchise for continued critical and sales success in the years to follow — effectively monopolizing the basketball simulation genre in the process. EA’s attempt to resurrect the Live series with the release of NBA Live 14 – rotating development duties onto their EA Tiburon branch – resulted in notably poor reception, to the point where the publisher had no choice but to issue a public apology for the game’s underwhelming state at launch (“As you can imagine, this isn’t exactly the NBA Live comeback story we were hoping for this year.” ~ Executive producer Sean O’Brien).^[22] The franchise would only continue to flounder from that point forward; between disastrous sales figures (NBA Live 16 only managed to sell 8,000 copies in North America within its launch week^[23]), being made to skip the 2017 season entirely, and not having seen any further entries since 2018. It’s probably safe to say that NBA Elite 11 marked a point of no return for EA’s basketball aspirations — the moment where the brand became irrevocably tarnished, and forever poisoned by its negative energy.

The fact that EA had the good sense to attempt to cancel its release was honestly the best move they could have made; in trying to prevent it from reaching the hands of consumers, and doing further untold damage to their reputation. But again, that revelation had only come a moment too late — stalled off until the “last possible moment” had already passed. And with the ability for curious / crafty players to experience for themselves the game that had been deemed “not yet ready” for release,^[20b] the cat was well and truly out of the bag — the opportunity granted to those who wanted to see for themselves what unworthy product EA had sunk their millions into. In a way, it’s actually something of a lucky break, for those interested in the likes of games documentation and preservation: It’s not often you get to actually play for yourself the sorts of games that publishers so readily abandon. But if you take this whole list as examples of titles intended to be pulled from public consumption – titles which have [mostly] been preserved through what are technically “illicit” means – I guess that leaves us with at least a small handful!

[1] Robertson, Adi. “Cyberpunk 2077 is delayed again to December 10th.” The Verge. October 27, 2020. Web.
[2] Cryer, Hirun. “Cyberpunk 2077 runs ‘surprisingly well’ on current-gen consoles […]” GamesRadar+. November 27, 2020. Web.
[3] Colantonio, Giovanni. “Cyberpunk 2077 Pulled From PlayStation Store: Why It’s Totally Unprecedented.” Inverse. December 18, 2020. Web.
[4] Yaden, Joseph. “Cyberpunk 2077 PS4 Re-Release Exposes CD Projekt Red’s Biggest Mistake.” Inverse. June 22, 2021. Web.
[5] Lien, Tracey. “Afro Samurai 2 currently in development.” Polygon. June 25, 2014. Web.
[6] Biordi, Jordan. “Versus Evil Explains the Disappearance of Afro Samurai 2.” CGM. November 19, 2015. Web.
[7] Pressberg, Matt. “Enter a 3-D Jungle With ‘Jumanji’ in Virtual Reality This December.” The Wrap. October 10, 2017. Web.
[8] Hayden, Scott. “Update: Official ‘Jumanji’ VR Experience Appears on Steam.” Road to VR. January 18, 2018. Web.
[9] Graham, Peter. “Hands-On: The VOID – Jumanji: Reverse The Curse.” VRFocus. February 3, 2020. Web.
[10] Chalk, Andy. “Xaviant addresses The Culling 2 gameplay leak and sequel concerns.” PCGamer. June 18, 2018. Web.
[11] Veld, Josh Van. “A Message From Xaviant.” YouTube, uploaded by XaviantLLC. July 18, 2018. Video.
[12] b Brown, Fraser. “The Culling is keeping its pay-to-play system […]” PCGamer. May 19, 2020. Web.
[13] Tarason, Dominic. “The Culling shutting down servers on May 15th.” Rock Paper Shotgun. March 18, 2019. Web.
[14] Coberly, Cohen. “Ill-fated battle royale title ‘The Culling’ relaunches tomorrow […]” Techspot. May 13, 2020. Web.
[15] Karmali, Luke. “Ashes Cricket 2013 Delayed to November.” IGN. July 29, 2013. Web.
[16] Purchese, Robert. “Ashes Cricket 2013 cancelled ‘following negative consumer feedback.’” Eurogamer. November 28, 2013. Web.
[17] “Notice of Application for Winding Up Order.” Australian Securities & Investments Commission. June 12, 2015. Web copy of legal filing.
[18] “US Platinum Videogame Chart.” The Magic Box. Last updated December 27, 2007. Web.
[19] b c Totilo, Stephen. “How a Big Video Game Was Killed.” Kotaku. December 2, 2010. Web.
[20] b Moore, Peter. “NBA ELITE Delayed; NBA JAM Ships on Wii Next Week […].” EA Sports. September 27, 2010. Web (Archive)
[21] Wiedey, Bryan. “NBA Elite 11 Copies Do Exist.” Pastapadre.com. October 1, 2010. Web.
[22] O’Brien, Sean. “Letter from NBA LIVE 14 Executive Producer Sean O’Brien.” EA Sports. November 23, 2013. Web (Archive)
[23] Wiedey, Bryan. “No one bought NBA Live 16.” Pastapadre.com. October 20, 2015. Web.