Fans, ultimately, can make or break the success of a video game. At the end of the day, it’s them that the product is for, and it’s down to them to buy the product to keep it afloat.
Yet as we’re aware, whatever the medium, fans can also be very, very vocal about something that upsets them. There are times when a broken game does merit the outcry, granted.
But when it completely overshadows what an upcoming game is about, or demanding unrealistic change, it gets silly. Review bombing (putting a negative review on a title) before it’s even out due to unsubstantiated leaks, for example.
If a product is faulty, a refund isn’t too much to ask. Yet demanding refunds and polls because the final verdict isn’t quite what the fans expected it to be, slightly different story.
Then of course, there’s the age old debate about game difficulty. Even those that don’t intend to play the game in question will chime in, creating a negative discourse before it’s even out.
The inherent with fans, short for fanatics after all, is they are a fickle yet loud bunch. Regardless of how good the game is, or will be, those vocal detractors will go about marring its existence before many get a chance to play it.
As you’ll see with these ten examples, sometimes being a fan doesn’t always mean good results.
For Honor, Ubisoft’s multi-period brawler, isn’t inherently a bad game. Once time has been invested into leveling different characters up, the fighting becomes almost an art itself.
But that’s the problem here: Ubisoft took that notion, threw it very far off into the distance, meaning it would take an insanely long time to unlock everything.
In fact, it was worked out to be some five thousand hours to unlock everything. Or, if that wasn’t available to players, the shortcut was found in money.
How much, do you think? About the price of a deluxe version of the game, perhaps? Maybe about ten copies, perhaps.
A sum total of $730 (in 2017) would instantly have everything for you, removing both the fun of playing to unlock and the time constraint.
As to be expected, many called out this practice as abhorrent by Ubisoft, and eventually, both the time and monetary requirement was significantly shortened.
Now, if only that were the only example of that on this list…
Source: https://whatculture.com/gaming/10-fan-controversies-that-dominated-video-games-2
