Video Game Failures That Caused Mass Refunds

"Cyberpunk 2077" was one of the most-hyped game releases of the 2010s, even though it didn't end up actually being released until 2020. Perhaps its extremely extended development period should have been the first red flag. Once it was released, "Cyberpunk 2077" became one of the poster children for bad game launches. It's no surprise it finds itself on this list, then. At launch, "Cyberpunk 2077" was filled with everything mentioned above. Players complained of performance problems, missing features, a disappointing story, and innumerable bugs.

This disappointment led to a huge number of players refunding the game. "Cyberpunk 2077" developer CD Projekt helped players with this, attempting to salvage some of the company's reputation via its "Help Me Refund" project. The game was even delisted from Sony's Playstation store for months after release, allowing the devs some time to patch it up and bring it closer to expectations.

The initial costs of the player refunds and the "Help Me Refund" project was rumored to be a little over two million dollars, however, CD Projekt's financial statements for 2020 would later reveal that the true cost was instead over fifty million dollars. Despite this abject financial disaster, the company never gave up on "Cyberpunk." In the time since, the developer has released countless patches, content updates, and expansions, slowly but surely turning the game into something resembling what it was meant to be. It is now well-liked by those who still play it, but much of its public reputation remains tainted by the disastrous days after its launch.

"The WarZ" was a part of the craze of zombie horror survival games in the early 2010s that looked to capitalize on a rising trend. The "WarZ," however, was missing a huge variety of features that had been promised when it launched in early access. Namely, it boasted a much smaller map and smaller servers than were originally marketed in its Steam store description. This misleading description led Valve to take the game off its store and offer refunds to anyone who requested one from Steam customer support. The WarZ's developer apologized for the debacle (per PC Gamer), but also tried to claim that customers had simply misread the description, which left a bad taste in players' mouths.

The game was eventually put back up on the Steam store and was later rebranded as "Infestation: Survivor Stories." This new name was chosen due to a copyright issue with the previous title, though some have theorized that the rebrand might have been done to escape the stigma of the game's poor reception at launch. The new version didn't exactly light the world on fire, even after the rebrand and a few improvements, and another sort of soft-reboot successor was released called "Romero's Aftermath."  That version didn't meet with much success, either.

"Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos" was one of the most-beloved games of all time when it came out in 2002. That makes sense, as it was the immediate predecessor to one of gaming's greatest success stories, "World of Warcraft," an MMO still played and enjoyed by millions to this day. The 2022 remaster of "Warcraft 3," "Warcraft 3: Reforged," could not have found itself further from the success of those that came before it, though.

The game was met with mixed reviews from critics, but it was outright reviled by fans of the "Warcraft" series. Gamers pointed to everything from a variety of missing features to oodles of bugs and frequent crashes as causes for concern. Perhaps the biggest reason for their distaste was the cardinal sin of any bad remaster or remake: It changed features the original had for the worse, and in some cases just outright removed them. This was made worse by the fact that "Reforged" became the only officially available version of the game, meaning players were unable to go back to the original, even if they liked it better.

Shortly after launch, many players reported they were able to get instant refunds for their purchases of "Reforged." Blizzard released a statement outlining some of its plans for fixing bugs and adding in missing features to bring the game to where it needed to be. However, Blizzard stood by some of its more controversial moves, such as the lack of completely new cutscenes and the removal of the Reign of Chaos ruleset.

The disastrous launch of "The Day Before" is still fresh in the consciousness of gaming culture. There are some games that had difficult launches on this list, but "The Day Before ” is the only one that was so bad the developer announced its closure mere days after launch. Some fans have even speculated that "The Day Before" was all a scam from the beginning. Even before launch, many gamers were skeptical of the game due to its repeatedly delayed release and accusations of stolen assets in its trailers. Others worried about the inexperience of the development team, with Fntastic strangely using unpaid volunteers to help make the game. In the wake of its failure, some fans believe the whole thing was just a con designed to run off with players' money. 

Regardless, pretty much everyone who bought "The Day Before" was disappointed. It was pitched as an open world zombie apocalypse survival game with a huge map and tons of depth to its world and lore. Instead, what players got was a barebones extraction shooter with some minor survival elements. After it became clear the game was so far from what was promised, Steam began offering players refunds, regardless of whether they'd exceeded the usual two hours of playtime that locks players out of them. Leaked reports from shortly after the game's release indicated that nearly half of all players who purchased "The Day Before" ended up returning it.

"No Man's Sky" is a game that's mostly well-liked by those who play it now, but it was considered to be a massive disappointment when it first released. In fact, it has never really fully escaped the reputation it had at launch, still being seen by many gamers as the standard-bearer for what it looks like when a developer overpromises and under-delivers.

Developer Hello Games was accused of trying to hide the fact that the promised multiplayer wasn't in the game at launch, with stickers covering the part on the box that still advertised the feature. This was in addition to numerous other features that differed from early previous, including a simplified faction system and what gamers felt was a lack of exciting differences between ships. As a result, players complained of false advertising and were able to get refunds from major online distributors such as Amazon and Steam. 

On the downside, refunds had to meet specific criteria from different retailers, which added to the headache for consumers. In the case of Sony's store, some customers claimed that they were permanently locked out of repurchasing the game and playing it again in the future.