I used to think AAA game failures were accidents. Like, maybe Cyberpunk 2077 was just a case of CD Projekt Red over-promising and under-delivering. Maybe Battlefield 2042 was just rushed. Maybe Redfall was just mismanaged.
But after seeing the same pattern over and over again, I started asking a different question:
What if some of these failures aren’t just bad luck or poor planning?
What if AAA publishers know exactly what they’re doing—and they don’t actually care if a game fails?
Because when you look at the way big-budget games are made and how they collapse, it starts to feel less like mismanagement and more like a business model.
The Endless Cycle of AAA Game Burnout
If a game studio wants to make a great game, you’d think they’d do something simple:
- Give developers enough time to finish the game.
- Release it in a polished, finished state.
- Support it with updates that improve the experience—not just squeeze more money out of players.
But that’s not how AAA gaming works anymore. Instead, we get a cycle of burnout, failure, and layoffs—over and over again.
- Hire a massive dev team for a big-budget project.
- Push unrealistic deadlines to get the game out before the fiscal year ends.
- Launch it half-finished because the publisher needs to make their quarterly revenue target.
- Promise patches and updates later, while making players pay for “live service” features.
- Lay off a huge chunk of the dev team once the game ships, because they’re no longer “needed.”
- Move on to the next project and repeat.
It’s a cycle of intentional burnout, and it’s been happening for years.
Why Would a Publisher Set a Game Up to Fail?
Because AAA publishers don’t care if a game is good—they care if it’s profitable enough in the short term to keep investors happy.
And the scary part? Failure doesn’t always hurt them. Sometimes, it helps.
- When a game flops, the publisher has an excuse to shut down studios and cut costs.
- If a game fails, they can still milk early adopters for pre-orders and deluxe editions before people realize it’s broken.
- When layoffs happen, they can justify them as “necessary restructuring,” even if the company just posted record profits.
It’s a system that rewards short-term profits over long-term sustainability—and we keep seeing it play out.
Examples of This Happening Over and Over Again
- Anthem was meant to be BioWare’s big new live service hit. It was rushed, launched half-broken, and abandoned.
- Battlefield 2042 was so bad at launch that EA had to pretend they were “rebuilding” it—after already taking players’ money.
- Redfall was dead on arrival, but Microsoft still laid off Arkane devs afterward, instead of taking responsibility.
- Cyberpunk 2077 had one of the worst launches in history, but CDPR still made billions from pre-orders before anyone knew how broken it was.
These aren’t just bad launches—they’re part of a pattern where publishers burn through developers, milk players for early sales, and then move on.
And instead of fixing this? They repeat it.
Why Is This Allowed to Keep Happening?
Because players keep giving them money.
We’ve been trained to accept that a game isn’t really finished at launch. We’ve been conditioned to believe that “they’ll fix it later.” We’ve been told that layoffs are just part of the industry.
And as long as people keep pre-ordering games, buying battle passes, and paying for unfinished products, publishers have no reason to stop.
In fact, they have every reason to keep doing it.
Because in the short term? It works.
How Do We Stop This?
The only way to break this cycle is to stop rewarding it.
- Don’t pre-order games.
- Don’t buy broken games just because a company “promises to fix them.”
- Support developers who actually finish their games before launch.
Because right now, AAA publishers don’t actually care if a game is great.
They care if it makes just enough money before the backlash sets in—and then they burn it down and move on.
And if we don’t start pushing back?
This cycle will never end.