Crucible
Speaking of messes, we have Amazon Game’ Crucible. A free to play hero shooter pitting two teams of four players against each other – again, not the best recipe for success. Those who decided to take the plunge faced terrible performance, awful UI design, abysmal connectivity, terrible NPC AI and just overall sloppy gameplay. There was also only one map. In a PvP game. Did we mention Crucible had been in development since 2014?
The backlash was immediate and despite developer Relentless Studios’ efforts to update it, Crucible reverted back to closed beta status a little over a month after release. Less than five months after release, it was canceled with the development team shifting to work on Amazon’s New World MMO. Full refunds were offered for all purchases and soon enough, matchmaking and custom game servers were removed. Roughly six years of development undone in just a matter of months – it’s almost sad in a way.
