We’ve all been there; watching a trailer for a newly-announced game, streamed live from a major show such as Gamescom or (should it ever return) E3, setting the mighty wheels of the hype train turning. ‘What’s the release date?’ ask the fans. ‘Coming soon’, teases the pre-rendered reveal video. It’s a hotly-anticipated title and the developers are remaining tight-lipped about their new project. Maybe you’ll get a less-than-concrete release window in six months’ time.
A year passes, then two, then three. Radio silence. No second trailer, no new screenshots, no dev diaries. If you’re lucky, you might see a senior member of the development team pop up on social media, assuring eager fans—without any actual proof of life—that the game is very much still in production. However, nothing arrives and, a few more years down the line, the game is either quietly canceled, repurposed into something very different, or left in unspoken limbo forever.
This isn’t exactly a common occurrence, nor is it unique to the games industry; plenty of films and TV shows stagger through early production but never see the light of day. Likewise, plenty of games survive a troubled development process to produce a satisfying end result. But ‘development hell’ has become a frequently used phrase in the gaming sphere, with some developers seemingly unwilling (or unable) to commit to canceling a game outright.
Stumbling to a full release is no guarantee a game will live on, either. Some titles manage to hit the store shelves (both physical and digital) before collapsing under their own weight months or even weeks after release. In cases like this, it’s harder for developers to escape rigorous scrutiny from their player
