• @djsoren19
    link
    fedilink
    143 months ago

    I think the record still goes to Amazon’s Crucible, which was cancelled before release after a closed-beta that nobody played.

    • @Tropper@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      83 months ago

      I actually liked that game. Sure, it was unpolished and unoptimized. But there were still some fun to be had. It feels like they gave up on that game within a week or two.

    • @luciferofastora@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      53 months ago

      “Nobody” probably isn’t literal here, but I imagine some manager scheduling a meeting where they want a report on the game’s performance and feedback during the beta. Some higher up is going to sit in for the first few minutes for the KPI summary.

      The sweating analyst jokes about the heat in the room, the higher up dryly remarks that the AC seems to be working just fine. The presentation starts, the analyst grasping for some more weasel words and void sentences to stall with before finally switching to the second slide, captioned “Player count”. It’s a big, fat 0.

      They stammer their way through half a sentence of trying to describe this zero, then fall silent, staring at their shoes. The game dev lead has a thousand yard stare. The product owner is trying to maintain composure.

      The uncomfortable silence is finally broken by the manager, getting up to leave: “I think we’re done here.” There is an odd sense of foreboding, that “here” might not just mean the meeting. The analyst silently proceeds to the next slide, showing the current player count over time in a line chart.