Over time there have been some very excessive profile and devastating failures on the earth of recreation growth and involving recreation engines particularly. At present we take a look at a few of the greatest blunders in recreation growth historical past!
1 – Unity Run-time Payment Fiasco
In 2023 Unity determined to retroactively cost all Unity builders a charge for utilizing the Unity runtime. This after all didn’t go over effectively. In truth it resulted within the firm dropping billions of {dollars} in valuation, all the govt suite being purged and rather more. Study Extra
2 – GameMaker DRM “Oops”
Then proprietor Yoyo Video games determined to combat again in opposition to those who pirated the GameMaker recreation engine by completely altering recreation property with a pirate cranium and crossbones. Sadly, they screwed up and never solely pirated copies received hit… paying clients did as effectively! Study Extra
3 – EA A number of Points
EA is definitely right here for a number of points associated to recreation growth. First, they compelled all of their in-house builders to make use of the Frostbite recreation engines resulting in excessive profile points at Bioware. EA had been additionally accountable for shopping for up and killing off the most well-liked recreation engine of the PS2 period – Renderware. Lastly in non-game engine associated information, EA earned its again to again Worst Corporations in America awards with the high-profile EA Partner labour dispute.
4 – BuildBox Insane Pricing Modifications
Worth will increase are by no means common, however BuildBox took it to the subsequent stage. In 2021 the No-Code recreation engine determined to modify to a income share pricing mannequin… with a 70/30 (not 30/70… 70/30!) income cut up! Study Extra
5 – The Equipment Termination
The builders behind the Bit Squid/Stingray (spoiler alert!) recreation engines went on to launch a brand new recreation engine referred to as Our Equipment/The Equipment. Then all of a sudden with out warning they retroactively modified their EULA and compelled all clients to delete the sport engine withing 2 weeks! Study Extra
6 – Autodesk KIll A number of Recreation Developer Merchandise
Oh… Autodesk… They make the checklist for a number of causes, however most particularly about all the sport growth merchandise they purchased, then didn’t market and in the end killed off. That checklist consists of Softimage, the Stingray recreation engine, Scaleform, Beast and rather more. Study Extra
7 – Amazon Lumberyard
Amazon actually tried to enter the sport growth business in a giant means. They bought a number of recreation studios, licensed a replica of CryEngine that they rebranded as Lumberyard and meant to make use of in home in any respect of their studios, in addition to releasing it free of charge to all the recreation growth group. A number of years later nearly the entire studios they bought/based are gone and Lumberyard has been open sourced as O3DE. Study Extra
8 – CryTek/CryEngine A number of Points
CryTek has been a relentless supply of errors over the past decade or so. To many errors to checklist in a single paragraph, though fortunately we coated the subject in additional element on this report earlier in 2025. CryEngine had the potential to large as large of a participant as Unreal or Unity however brutal mismanagement and different elements made that an impossibility.
You’ll be able to study extra about all of those recreation growth fails within the video beneath. When you have different ideas or your personal checklist of recreation growth/recreation engine failures you assume ought to have made this checklist let me know within the video feedback or on the GameFromScratch discord server.
