Ten developers who have fallen from their once lofty reputations

Destiny has just been released; with so much money poured into the project and so much anticipation having been built, it’s been met with good but not excellent reviews, considering Bungie’s long-standing track record on the Xbox platform, this has led many (including myself) to call it the first major dud that Bungie has put out. This begs the question, how far can a company fall in terms of reputation? There are plenty of studios who once held a high reputation of the eyes of the gaming community but have since fallen on hard times. To make the list a gaming company, specifically a game developer must still be in business but their reputations have been significantly lowered in modern gaming

1. Gearbox Software

Gearbox has taken a beating over the past few years. After starting off with making Half Life expansions and eventually making the wildly popular Borderlands series, Gearbox’s name has been tarnished by two futile undertakings that ended up severely hurting the company after years of waiting. The first was Duke Nukem Forever, which Gearbox picked up to finish development after 3D Realms let their developing team go in 2009; what was a legendary piece of vapourware  that had been in development for over twelve years became a critically panned and thrown-together mess of a game, something which was made worse by Gearbox’s marketing. 3D Realms even attempted to sue them for unpaid royalties to the game (which was eventually dropped in September 2013).

But it didn’t stop there; Gearbox went on to enrage another large aspect of the gaming community with their poor handling of Aliens: Colonial Marines, which had also been in development for a long time beforehand. The backlash that began on the game’s release last year was and still is enormous; ACM stung gamers even more than Duke Nukem Forever did because Gearbox (and their publisher Sega) outright misled consumers by showing off a demo that wasn’t included in the final product, not to mention outsource the game to multiple studios who ended up degenerating the game into a generic Call of Duty clone. Multiple lawsuits were filed against the two companies with Sega paying out 1.25 million dollars for false advertising. Gearbox has claimed many times over the past year that the debacle was not entirely their fault but nonetheless their reputation has been heavily diminished, perhaps more than any other company on the list.

2. Bioware

Bioware had been an incredibly successful company and one of the defining companies in the realm of the RPG, some even called them the Pixar of gaming at one point; Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect were all incredibly successful titles both critically and commercially, so what happened? The answer lies in 2012’s Mass Effect 3; whilst the game scored and sold well, the community went ballistic at the game for all kinds of reasons. They disliked the practices for DLC; they showed their disdain for the new characters that got in the way of the proceedings but most of all the fans were furious about the ending, something which ended the trilogy on such a sour note that fans even made petitions and gave to charity to demand a new ending for the game. It was a huge incident for Bioware which seemed to trigger their ultimate downfall in the eyes of gamers the world over. The company is currently working on Dragon Age 3: Inquisition, but with such a huge backlash still in the minds of gamers, the company just isn’t taken seriously anymore, something made worse by the departures of co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk and Casey Hudson earlier this year.

3. Crytek

Crytek was once a household name in gaming for its technical prowess; the original Far Cry and Crysis were technical marvels in their day that backed up their excellent technical presentation with some brilliant gameplay, but after the release of Crysis 2, things started to go downhill. Crysis 3 was met with a significantly lowered critical reception and 2013 saw Ryse: Son of Rome put the nail in the reputation coffin with its repetitive and mindless gameplay. Legions of gamers just haven’t seen Crytek the same way since then and their newest projects are now free-to-play titles, a sizeable step back for a once renowned company.

4. Rare

Rare Ltd has been in the gaming business for a long time yet ironically many would argue they fell down the furthest over the years. The company started off making games for the Nintendo Entertainment System in the eighties. Titles such as Battletoads and R.C. Pro-Am were very popular for the system, establishing the company as a prime developer in the 8-Bit space. From 1994 to 2001, Rare’s partnership with Nintendo led to their greatest hits including Goldeneye 007 and Banjo-Kazooie. But then the 2000s came along and once Microsoft acquired Rare in 2002, things really started to go downhill. After Rare’s reincarnations of Conker (Live and Reloaded in 2005) Banjo Kazooie (Nuts and Bolts in 2008) alongside their other titles failed to gather a large audience on Microsoft hardware, the mega-corporation assigned them to work on Kinect titles instead and as a result, most gamers who played Rare’s games in the eighties and nineties just refuse to support them anymore, given the poor reputation Kinect possesses in the community. Whilst Kinect isn’t a primary focus for Rare anymore, several staff members have recently left the company, leaving its future in question.

5. Infinity Ward

A vast majority of the gaming community knows Infinity Ward as the creator of Call of Duty and the company who made the seminal Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, a game which arguably changed and moulded the entire gaming landscape into what it is today. After the game’s release in 2007 and the vast amounts of money the series started to pull in year after year, everyone wanted to be Infinity Ward, everyone wanted to be the franchise that raked in millions each year. But after a hugely successful sequel with Modern Warfare 2 2009, things began to change in the company. After the studio heads Jason West and Frank Zampella left the company, half of the work force followed their lead in 2010; after this, the company underwent a reconstruction with Sledgehammer Games being brought in to work on multiplayer for Modern Warfare 3 in 2011. Now that Sledgehammer has become a full time developer for Call of Duty, Infinity Ward has become by many accounts, a shadow of its former self; what was once the best developer of Call of Duty has sunk to become the worst. This was proven by the release of Call of Duty Ghosts last year, which many believe was a lazy and downright pitiful effort to debut the series onto the newest generation of consoles.

6. Capcom

Capcom is a huge and long-standing Japanese game company but judging from recent events and multiple failures, many have suggested that they could well be on death’s door, ready to sell most of their assets in a bid to stay in the business. This is down to many things, most notably failing franchises. Resident Evil 6 in 2012 was a colossal critical disappointment with reviewers stating that the series had lost its way by devolving into mindless action over horror. Mega Man has been dormant since 2010 and when his creator Keji Inafune left the company, it became hard to tell when or if the Blue Bomber will make a full comeback. The Devil May Cry reboot in 2013 didn’t help much either as the game was met with abysmal sales after Capcom failed to listen to the fans who hated the new design of protagonist Dante. Add to this the controversial On-disc DLC restrictions and we have a company that could end up sliding over the edge if they don’t get their act together soon.

7. Square Enix

As the oldest company on the list, Square Enix is the creator of Final Fantasy but has since moved to acquire Tomb Raider, Hitman, Deus Ex and Thief in modern gaming. Final Fantasy, a series as long-running as the company itself was once the biggest powerhouse in the genre. From the Nintendo days through to the PlayStation the series captivated gamers the world over but once the PS3 and Xbox 360 came along, the series fell off its perch. Thirteen turned out to be the unlucky number for the franchise as it was heavily criticised upon its release in 2010 for being far too linear and stripped down from previous entries in the series. From there things continued to go downhill with the MMO Final Fantasy 14 being a catastrophic failure which still haunts the company and more recently the new Thief reboot not being as big a success as Square had hoped for. Square has made headlines for choosing to take Crystal Dynamics and the upcoming Rise of the Tomb Raider and make them Xbox exclusive, a move which infuriated gamers everywhere. The company who was once known as the “King of RPGS” has most definitely lost its majesty in the HD era of gaming.

8. Sega

Sega was once the primary competitor to Nintendo through the eighties and nineties; since retiring from hardware development in 2001 they’ve still been in the development business and haven’t been doing too bad; the sales are still solid, a fair few of their published titles get by with decent scores but as a developer, they’ve constantly had one fundamental flaw that has dogged them ever since the 3D generation began. Their primary franchise, Sonic the Hedgehog has never managed to properly transfer to 3D, many of the mascot’s games over the past fifteen years or so have been met with mediocre to bad reviews, leaving fans confused as to why Sega just refuses to go back to the 2D sidecrolling greatness that Sonic was once famous for. It’s true that Sonic the Hedgehog 4 in 2010 and Sonic Generations in 2011 have captured a bit of that nostalgic magic but nevertheless, Sega really aren’t the powerhouse they used to, especially seeing as how Sonic’s original titles were able to stand up to Mario’s when they were first released.

9. ID Software

The makers of the FPS, ID was once the king of the shooter; Wolfenstein was the one of the first games to properly put you in first person perspective of the character which was followed up by Doom and then Quake through the nineties. ID set the rules for both the genre and its multiplayer and they still kept up their name in technology with the release of Doom 3 in 2004. But ten years later with the releases of the not very successful Quake 4 in 2005 and Rage in 2011, ID seemed to have become irrelevant compared with all the modern shooters that had risen to take their place. The Doom reboot is on the way, but with the departure of John Carmack last year, ID just isn’t as well-known as they used to be.

10. Bungie

After four years of development, Destiny finally came out on September 9th 2014. It’s made five hundred million dollars in a single day and has been declared the most successful new IP ever made. But lost amidst all this celebrating from Bungie and Activision is the fact that the game itself just isn’t that memorable, and has been branded a title that isn’t really next-gen and has failed to live up to the hype. While the game certainly looks the part and has the infrastructure to sustain the game for a long time to come, reviewers have been quick to point out the non-existent story and shallow gameplay design that bogs the game down from beginning to end. Buyer’s remorse might soon become rampant amongst the thousands who bought the game and as such, this could be the beginning of a slow decline for Bungie, a company who were once world famous for creating Halo, one of the best FPS franchises of all time.