Trust in gaming is hard to earn and incredibly easy to lose. Over the years a handful of studios and publishers have made promises they did not keep, shipped games that were nowhere near finished, shut down beloved teams, and prioritised monetisation over the players who made them successful. Some of these are studios I grew up loving. That makes it hurt more. Here are ten gaming studios that have lost my trust and the receipts to back it up.

1. Bethesda Game Studios

Bethesda built its reputation on sprawling open world RPGs that felt genuinely alive. Skyrim, Oblivion, and Fallout 3 were landmarks. But somewhere along the way the studio started shipping games that felt like they needed another year in the oven and doubling down on live service decisions that alienated the fanbase that built them.

  • Fallout 76 at launch arrived in November 2018 in a state that was widely considered unacceptable for a full price release, with game breaking bugs, missing features promised in marketing, and a canvas bag controversy where the collector's edition shipped with a nylon bag instead of the advertised canvas one
  • Starfield launched in 2023 to a deeply divided response, with many players feeling the game failed to deliver on years of hype around a next-generation open-world RPG, with empty planets and repetitive content drawing widespread criticism

2. Ubisoft

Ubisoft is a case study in a studio that found a formula and ran it into the ground while simultaneously making decisions that felt openly contemptuous of its own player base. The open world checklist fatigue is real but it is the off-screen behaviour that has done the most lasting damage.

  • The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake was announced in 2020, quietly delayed multiple times, changed development studios internally, and recently they announced that the development has stopped

3. Electronic Arts

EA has been one of the most consistently controversial publishers in gaming for over a decade and the reasons are well documented. The studio has a pattern of acquiring beloved developers, running them into the ground, and shutting them down when the results do not meet financial expectations.

  • The closure of studios including Maxis, Bullfrog, Westwood, and Pandemic, represents a graveyard of beloved developers that were bought and eventually shuttered under EA ownership.
  • Star Wars Battlefront II's loot box controversy at launch in 2017 sparked one of the biggest microtransaction debates in gaming history, with progression locked behind either hundreds of hours of grinding or real money purchases.
  • FIFA Ultimate Team has faced years of criticism for being structured similarly to gambling mechanics particularly given the large number of young players engaging with the mode.

4. Activision Blizzard

Fortnite Overwatch Quests

Once two of the most respected names in gaming, the merger of Activision and Blizzard and the subsequent years of controversy have left both brands in a significantly worse position with players than they occupied a decade ago.

  • Warcraft III: Reforged launched in 2020 as one of the most criticised remasters in gaming history, removing features from the original game, shipping with missing promised content, and carrying a terms of service that claimed ownership of user created content.
  • Overwatch 2 effectively replaced Overwatch as a free to play title while removing the ability to play the original game, converting previously earned cosmetics into a new currency at unfavourable rates.

5. Konami

Konami occupies a unique and deeply frustrating place on this list because the studio did not just make bad decisions, it actively dismantled some of the most beloved franchises in gaming history while simultaneously seeming to lose interest in making games at all.

  • Hideo Kojima's departure from Konami following a very public and messy split in 2015 effectively ended the studio's most prestigious development relationship and left Metal Gear Solid without its creator.

6. CD Projekt Red

CD Projekt Red built enormous goodwill with The Witcher series and positioned itself as the anti-corporate alternative to studios like EA and Ubisoft. That goodwill made the Cyberpunk 2077 launch all the more painful and the way it was handled made things worse.

  • Cyberpunk 2077 at launch in December 2020 was pulled from the PlayStation Store by Sony after widespread reports of the game being nearly unplayable on base PS4 and Xbox One, with CD Projekt Red offering refunds through its own website

7. Warner Bros. Games

Warner Bros. has developed a reputation for rushed releases tied to film schedules, shutting down servers for games with ongoing player bases, and making decisions around monetisation and support that prioritise short term returns over long term player relationships.

  • Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League launched in 2024 to significant commercial and critical disappointment after years of development, with the game's live service model being widely rejected by fans of the Arkham series it was connected to. The game's servers were subsequently shut down
  • MultiVersus launched in open beta in 2022, built a substantial player base, then was taken offline in 2023 for nearly a year before relaunching in 2024 with changes that drew mixed responses from returning players

8. 343 Industries

Halo Gameplay 1

343 Industries inherited one of the most beloved shooter franchises in gaming history when Microsoft handed them the Halo keys after Bungie's departure. The studio has struggled to consistently deliver on the weight of that responsibility across nearly 15 years of stewardship.

  • Halo: The Master Chief Collection launched in November 2014 in a broken state with matchmaking that was largely non-functional for months, affecting a collection that brought together four games for a major franchise anniversary
  • Halo Infinite's live service promised a decade of content but the game launched without campaign co-op, Forge mode, and other features that had been core to the franchise, with content updates arriving slower than the community had expected
  • Studio layoffs and restructuring in 2023 saw significant headcount reductions at 343 Industries raising further questions about the future direction of the Halo franchise

9. Square Enix

Square Enix has some of the most beloved franchises in gaming history under its banner including Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Kingdom Hearts. But the studio has made a series of decisions in recent years that have frustrated long-term fans and raised questions about its strategic direction.

  • Babylon's Fall launched in 2022 as a live service title that failed to find an audience and had its servers shut down less than a year after launch making it one of the fastest major live service failures in recent memory
  • NFT and blockchain statements from Square Enix leadership in 2021 and 2022 drew significant backlash from the gaming community with the then-president expressing enthusiasm for play to earn models that most players viewed negatively
  • Final Fantasy XVI and XVI's Western releases were met with divided reactions from fans who felt the games moved too far from what made the series special, while also launching with performance issues on console at release

10. Microsoft Xbox

Microsoft Xbox closes this list not because of any single catastrophic failure but because of the cumulative weight of decisions made over the past several years that have eroded confidence in the platform as a home for game development and player investment.

  • The 2025 and 2026 studio closures and restructuring have seen the closure or departure of Ninja Theory, Compulsion Games having its independence restored, Double Fine returning to independent status, and significant layoffs across Bethesda, Activision, Blizzard, and other studios. Approximately 3,200 roles are being cut in what Xbox itself has called the most significant restructure in its history
  • The acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion was positioned as a move to strengthen Xbox Game Pass and first party content but has been followed by layoffs at virtually every studio involved in the deal