As the old song goes, "He's making a list, And checking it twice; He's gonna find out who's naughty or nice; Santa Claus is coming to town." While there's been plenty of 'Nice' this year in the gaming industry, there's a fair amount of things that will be receiving coal.
Let's focus on developers, though.
Which developers have been Naughty this year? Here are five we thought of, and odds are they'll be receiving coal in their stocking come Christmas.
Also, check back tomorrow to see which developers made the Nice List.
Bungie
For as much as I and many others play Destiny, the game has a lot of issues. Not only was the game advertised and hyped as something different than what we receive, but Bungie constantly patches things to make life more difficult for players, while putting obnoxious bugs and weapon buffs on the backburner. Players don’t want to be told they’re playing the game wrong, different than how was intended. That’s part of the fun of games — beating things in a different way. Throw in the fact that The Dark Below DLC makes a lot of gear people spent hundreds of hours getting and leveling up useless after three months, and Bungie deserves a spot on the Naughty List this year.
Ubisoft
While Watch Dogs was a bit of a let down, that game doesn’t land Ubisoft on the Naughty List on its own. However, the problems with Assassin’s Creed Unity does. Fans are leery of the franchise not receiving a proper amount of development time with multiple releases every year, and that fear became a realization when Unity released with a lot of problems. Among them were major issues with frame rate, random crashes, weird graphical issues and collision glitches, and connectivity issues with the games cooperative multiplayer.
Evolution Studios
Driveclub. ‘Nuff said. If there is one game that represents broken promises, it’s Driveclub. What was supposed to be a free game at the launch of the PlayStation 4, it ended up being a glorified demo that showed up far after the promised release date. When the game finally was released, it was plagued with problems in the online functionality. There were nonstop connection issues, and because of that they still haven’t released the PS Plus Edition. Evolution Studios gets a big ol’ lump of coal in their stocking.
Zynga
YoVille, a game beloved by many, was owned by Zynga until the original developer of the game — Big Viking Games — reacquired it. Before they did, Zynga was going to close it down because it wasn’t making enough money for them. After a huge uproar from angry players, Big Viking Games saved the day, saving everyone’s virtual world, game history and details, instead of a passionate gaming community getting their hearts broken by Zynga.
Square Enix
Oh eff you Square Enix. How dare you bring up Final Fantasy VII at PlayStation Experience, getting everyone excited for a HD remake of the beloved PlayStation One game, only to have it be a port of the PC version. No HD upgrade. Nothing. A waste of time. That’s what it is. This is probably the worst offender on the list, and just shows how out of touch Square Enix is with their fan base.
