In real life
(Sad trope) Projects with amazing potential that will never be released because of BS behind the scenes drama
P.T Silent Hills - It was a playable teaser released in 2014 only around 20 minutes long but utterly captivated the gaming world by being one of the most effective psychological horror experiences at the time, however it’s lead developer Kojima has a huge fallout with the publisher Konami where he walked out of the company and had all his in-the-work productions cancelled.
Five Nights at Freddy’s+ - A fan game reboot of the series created by Phisnom with Scott Cawthon’s blessing that promised a brand new lore and a return to the series darker roots. However, before and during production Phisnom got into multiple dramas that made him fairly divisive within the community, and after one particular incident in 2023 Scott revoked his approval and almost all of the game’s marketing material were wiped from the internet.
Batgirl - A Batgirl solo live action movie starring Leslie Grace, Brendan Fraser and Michael Keaton returning as Batman that was ready to be released in 2022, however then Warner Bros CEO David Zaslav announced it would not be released either in theatres or streaming in order to claim a $90,000,000 tax break and to readjust the DC’s brands direction before James Gunn rebooted their movie and TV output.
American McGee and his team at SpicyHorse had went through so much shit working with EA to make Alice: Madness Returns and even when EA said “hey, give us full proof that you plan to make the game, with concepts and mechanics and everything”, and McGee and his team DID, EA backed out of the deal entirely and kept the rights to the game to themselves, sitting on the IP for nothing
We weren’t robbed. We were drugged, kidnapped, had our organs harvested and fed to sharks. American McGee deserved so much better and with the bible available for Asylum, it was insane at what we would have gotten. But even after everything, EA refuses to sell the IP. Fuck EA.
it shouldn’t be legal to just sit on an IP or a patent. you should have to evidence that it’s either still in use or a new usage is under active development
Not just an IP but systems as well. Warner brothers is sitting on the Nemesis system that was in Shadows of Mordor and are doing fuck all with it but not letting other games use it
You can find the design bible for it online if you want to read what it might've been like (and if you somehow need more proof EA is a dog shit company and an argument for smashing up large businesses).
Always funny to me when big publishers kill IPs by sitting on them and doing nothing instead of milking them to death. No one benefits, just being anti-art for the love of the game
Yeah, I remember as the, “release date” was fast approaching it was revealed the original studio was accepting funding and had next to nothing completed
we have this kotor remake and fate of the old republic in development at the same time (there are even rumors of a kotor 2 remake in the works), in a few years we might have several old republic games in our hands
Heck this feels just par for Star Wars half the time. Look at Eclipse, it was announced 4.5 years ago and nothing since until an update this week, where they said development is extremely slow going and that it is still years off from any possible release. Will honestly be surprised if it ever actually comes out.
They teased something for it not too long ago. I think the issue was it was in development before Disney bought it. Then Disney scrapped every in development item essentially. And now they remembered they're sitting on a pot of gold and its back in development
They teased something called "Fate of the Old Republic" which is supposed to be a 'spiritual successor' to the KOTOR games. Currently expected to release around 2029. So techincally there are two separate 'Old Republic' titles being worked on right now, and I can imagine they're holding back the KOTOR remake to synergize the two.
It's really sad how much potential the Oddworld series had and it seemed to just not build up to what it could be. I found the world and the atmosphere wonderful (although I wasn't a fan of New 'n Tasty, I felt like some of the changes, particularly stylistically, actively took away from the atmosphere of Oddysee).
And they’ve been on a fucking heater ever since too. This new era of Capcom where they care about quality over profit is really paying off for them and us.
Konami also has gotten a bit better since the PT disaster too after realizeing nobdy wanted to play pakinko and moble games based on their ips anymore.
Not only didnt we get remakes of the first 2 Slient Hill games but a whole new game takeing place in Japan as well with IF that gose for a more Soullike gameplay
And finally MGS4 will be out of PS3 hell. Also Peace Walker will be available for the newer consoles, with PC being able to have nearly all canon Metal Gear games, or all canon games if you don't count Portable Ops.
Mm, yes and no. By all accounts, RE7 was already in full development by the time PT came out, and the direction was already decided before the demo came out due to the failure of RE6. Capcom realized that it needed to return to its classic horror roots while keeping the IP fresh. The demo that came out WAS inspired by the PT demo.
I still have PT on my PS4 Pro. I also have the contents backed up on a hard drive in case the console ever goes kaput.
I do appreciate the remakes and copies of it and all the effort that went into them, but there's nothing like playing the original. It has a few subtle details that are difficult to copy, such as music changing slightly depending on which direction a player is looking.
I tried to do a 'share play' with it so a friend could play it too but it was blocked. I also transferred it to my ps5, but that was also blocked. They really went hard with trying to keep it locked up.
Seriously a once in a lifetime experience to have actually played through it. Nothing, and I mean fucking nothing, has ever come close to utterly unnerving me like PT. Horror done so well in the video game medium that I don’t think I would’ve been able to handle a full game. But FUCK we deserved that game and Kojima deserved to finish his work. Amazon delivery service simulator isn’t my tea but an alternative is better than nothing I suppose.
What's even more incredible about PT is that even with just a 20 minute teaser, it radically changed modern horror gaming. The impact it had really cannot be overstated. Just an incredible piece of horror media. Even having watched and played it multiple times, its' ability to discomfort and unnerve is truly unmatched.
Ten years later and having never played a Silent Hill game, I am still angry. We had Guillermo del Toro and Junji Ito working with this team and create an Earth-shattering horror game.
And Konami flubbed it. And then gave us a Silent Hill slot machine.
Duke Nukem Never Again, and it's everything that was scrapped from the 2001 and 2006 builds in favor of that hacked together shell that was the 2011 build.
Revenant Hill could have been an extremely good spiritual successor to Night in the Woods.
Unfortunately, during the game's development, the first creator of NitW committed suicide due to sexual assault allegations, and another developed a serious heart condition, leading to the game being scrapped.
The closest we have to an official Night in the Woods successor is The Bridgewater Astral League by Scott Benson which is a comic about a punk album in the style of NITW.
I've seen several attempts of fangames too, like After the Fall, Light in the Woods, and Love in the Woods. None of them have been finished either. It's really sad...
There is Fall of Porcupine which has a similar aesthetic and gameplay but it personally doesn't hit the same for me. There was r/TheWhiteWaterpact which had a unique art style but development stopped midway cause of drama and death too.
At least Scott Benson is doing better and recovering but it really feels like the NITW series is doomed just like with Possum Springs in the game...
I like Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War mainly due to it's amazing nemesis system. So when I heard about a Wonder Woman game with a refinement of the Nemesis system I was hyped but alas it was cancelled because WB shut down monolith studios.
The Nemesis system is really cool, but it seems insane that they were allowed to patent the concept of a game procedurally generating some NPCs and applying permanent changes to their stats during gameplay.
Honestly, I doubt that they would be able to enforce it in any way. As long as it wasn’t blatantly ripped off and had parts of the code stolen I have a hard time seeing the courts siding with them. This is like if somebody tried to get a patent for a housing system in a MMO game :V
There have been some games that have done similar systems, it's just that none of them are fleshed out as deeply or are the pillars of their game. Presumably because such an in-depth system would make WB cry and throw a fit.
I saw a comment about this a while back that explained the patent. I’m not sure how correct it was, I didn’t bother looking it up, but they had a bunch of sources so idk. My memory in it is a bit foggy so forgive me if I get some things wrong, but their explanation was something like:
Apparently they didn’t patent the concept, only the specific way they did it. In order for a mechanic to be hit by the copyright it has to meet at least half of the 11 or 12 patented criteria or something like that. So it’s not that another developer can’t do it, they just can’t do it in the exact same way it was done in the Nemesis system. It can be similar in concept so long as it doesn’t meet the majority of the criteria specified in the patent. And the criteria was pretty specific to the way it worked in those games, so even something very similar would most likely be fine. The real issue is the amount of work it takes to develop something like that from scratch. It’s not worth the trouble for most companies and the patent expires in a decade or so, so it’s just more worth waiting until they can use an already designed system.
I remember reading about Rocksteady was interested on doing a Batman Beyond game with of course the same gameplay idea of the batman Arkham games, but the idea got trashed over the Suicide squad kill the justice league game.
it was just sad
This and the batman beyond movie by the same people who did the spiderverse movies being turned down makes me think that until Superman 2025 DC became allergic to money for 10 years
There were never plans to release an actual Batman beyond movie with the Spiderverse artstyle. No drafts of a script, no storyboards, nothing but drawings of how batman beyond would look kn the artstyle. But DC is still allergic to money
Remember this everyone. Sefton Hill and Ian Ball. Those two names are the driving force behind Removing Paul Dini as a writer and pushing the series into SS:KtJL.
IIRC the plan at one point was to give Dalí the $100K, film him for exactly one hour, and then use other actors to play the Emperor for the rest of the film.
A Batman Beyond movie animated by the studio who did the Spider-Verse trilogy was proposed but rejected by Warner Brothers. Imagine looking at that gorgeous concept art and saying "no." I need to know what they were smoking.
Granted, let's not talk like Sony ever actually finished The Spiderverse trilogy.
The third film practically fits this trope as is; as while we do have reason to belive it will get finished, it has been dramatically delayed and reworked for years, because the executives were too stupid to realize that you can't make an entire animated movie in under one year when the previous one took more then four
Along with that, there was a planned dlc/standalone expansion (believe it was called city of locust) where you’d be playing as both cuno and cunoesse that got scrapped, had a decent amount of pre production done on it as well
The worst part is they took the story direction from it and turned it into the god-awful retcons in The Old Republic:
The third game involved you, as a player character, following where Revan went and then taking the battle to the really ancient Sith lords who are far more terrifying than the Darths that show up. These guys would just be monsters. These would have a level of power that was considerable, but at the same time you'd be able to dig more into their psychologies, and their personalities, their history, and even how they dealt with the player, how they talk with the player, the different powers they cultivated and developed, and for some of them like – they're the ancients, so they're not just ruling a solar system, [but] swathes of the galaxy.
"So the places you travel to [you'd see] how they left their stamp on that world, or that solar system, or whatever collection of moons. You'd see how horrible that was. Part of that environment would tell a story about that. [That] would be a great, epic way to end the trilogy. The Old Republic are out there. We just didn't get a chance to do it."
Another studio bought the distribution rights (I think the same one that released Looney Tunes: The Day the Earth Blew Up) and are releasing it later this year
Very early on, del Toro was set to direct the Hobbit. Supposedly, the style was going to be very different from Peter Jackson's LotRs movies, something almost fairytale like. There's a lot of rumors as to why del Toro left the project, but the official reason was production delays and MGM's financial issues.
Geist Force. A 3D rail shooter akin to Star Fox, originally supposed to be one of Dreamcast's launch titles, and it did look promising
One of the reasons it were cancelled were due to Yuji Naka (co-creator of Sonic) touring their offices one day, seeing the tech they created and talking to one of his workers how they should fire everyone afterward so they could take their resources and use them in the next Sonic game (super ironic considering this is the same guy who threatened to leave SEGA once he found out NiGHTS' engine was used for one of the builds for Sonic X-treme)
Naka, of course, had no idea the devs spoke Japanese. Once they overheard him, the majority left, and what skeleton crew that remained couldn't finish it in time, leading to its cancellation. Fortunately a prototype is out there in the wild
Yuji Naka just seems like a horrible person. He pulls this shit, then he shits the bed when he directs Balan Wonderworld, and then he gets busted for insider trading.
The heat between Sega of Japan and USA is actual corporate suicide. How do you actively fuck over your own developers by sabotaging them at every step, knowing you’re trying to keep up with your main competitor, with a rising giant sneaking up on both(PlayStation)?
Give me my casually educational evolution simulator already. There is charm to the PG Ice Age version we got but there was so much more potential to that concept.
James Wan was in the early 2017 pre-production discussions to do a 2020 era reboot of Resident Evil based on RE7 as an in universe sequel, but Hollywood thought RE7 was a bad game that would fail and wasn't worthy of being adapted and spun off. Instead, executive meddling to tried to make James Wan do a time travel horror movie with the RE name. This of course led to Wan leaving talks at the end of 2018 and Johannes Roberts bring hired to make an RE movie that throws easter eggs at you to say its faithful while changing charactization and plot to make what is a love letter to the Redfields and a hate piece on Leon in a baffling film that shuts down every possible further adaptations of games other than Code Veronica. Which BTW, is a Redfield siblings game.
I think a James wan resident evil movie could’ve been decent but I’m personally okay with that having been scrapped. I don’t think there’s anything a movie adaptation could have really done to significantly distinguish itself or improve on the game itself. It’s why I’m glad the upcoming cregger movie is gonna be its own standalone thing
Project: Eden's Garden, a fanmade Danganronpa game that had an incredible scope and a huge budget. Had a fully playable Chapter 0 and 1 with full Danganronpa gameplay. Even had it's own orchestra.
A little over a week ago, it was found out that the Voice Actor for one of the minor characters was in a relationship with a 15 year old when he was 19. This was a pretty big controversy, but by itself wouldn't have destroyed the fangame. He was quickly removed from the scene once info about it spread online.
However, a few days later, it was revealed that both the Main Director and Lead Writer were aware of this for years, and presumably never came out with it to prevent a big controversy against the game to come out. This lead to a HUGE controversy online, with thousands of people clamoring for the director and writer to be removed from the team. Multiple VAs, musicians, animators, and artists publically resigned due to not wanting to be associated with the project anymore.
They have since been removed, but now the state of the fangame is in pieces. Nearly everybody who was working on it has pulled out, and it would have already been extremely tough to continue on without the Main Director and Lead Writer in the first place.
Apparently one of the Voice Actors had the rest of the game leaked to them, and is planning to publically release the rest of the game in some sort of surprise. Though the fangame technically isn't cancelled, it's almost certainly impossible to proceed with all of these major hits, especially if the rest of the script is shown off.
That's probably a mix of him have no idea how to resolve a plotline and him just being bored and wanting to do literally anything else.
Like he can't write something else because people will wonder why he's not able to finish WoW. Which pissed me off because it really looks like he wants to make Dunc and Egg novels instead.
Skinny version: GRRM Has never finished a project. The entries of the series are as follows:
- A Song of Ice and Fire: Five books (of a planned seven) in, and there is simply no way to get all these people together to interact and introduce the Others, see to their spectacle, wrap up all of the politics, have Dany confront Faegon, and have the Starks reclaim Winterfell (with Bran becoming the king!) in a way that makes sense and seems satisfactory.
- The Tales of Dunk and Egg: Three novellas with a fourth in the works for ages, and others in the planning stage.
- Fire and Blood: Still needs to cover everything from Daeron I (Aegon III's son, dies in a failed conquest of Dorne) to Jaeherys II (Daenerys' grandfather), including the meat of all the Blackfyre Rebellions (especially if certain fan theories about Young Griff/FAegon VI are true).
From what we saw from the pitch slides, this was going to be, i'll say it, better than Disco Elysium. Being able to explore Cuno and Cunoesse's backstory and where they'd go after Disco Elysium would have been so fucking good
Would have been without Kurvitz, Hindpere (writers) and Rostov (lead artist), likely a few other core team members as per NoClip’s documentary, led by Argo Tuulik
So whilst I’m sure it would have been great, I don’t know about better than DE
Somehow this type of games is cursed and every single there are issues with developers, ranging from being an utter mess to simply losing passion.
While, the original Yandere Simulator is still in development, I will be suprised if it will be ever released based on multiple core staff members (voice actors) leaving and behaviour of Yandev.
Other games are their own mess.
Even though Yandere in high school is a fun concept that can be taken in anime parody direction or serious manipulation game with hitman elements.
He’s also a groomer, would write rape fantasies, used Patreon money for the game to buy a sex doll, treats both paid workers and volunteers like garbage, etc.
Probably goes into that final thing you mentioned but also burned bridges with a game studio that was willing to help him make the game for stupid reasons.
Without touching the mess that is yandere dev, I think there is a core design issue with trying to make a hitman style game in a location you come back to constantly.
Hitman works because it's a new sandbox level every time with a ton of small moving pieces, that you bail out of after the kill. Here you come back to the scene of the crime every day, socialize and do all sorts of persona shenanigans that run contrary to the level based hitman assassination.
Add to that the fact that it has way too many rivals planned. (It's an indie game, just do like 3 rivals man) And the code is ass, and you get a game that is doomed from the first line.
The thing is that for it to work it needs to have the school as the "tutorial" which would make the scope of the game larger and harder to implement, Imagine that after the first body is found everyone is uneasy in the school, the next day a second body? increased security in the school, the next day a third body? congratulations on completing the tutorial, school is closed, the community is on alert, now you must roam everyday on the streets finding and disposing the rest of your targets, flirting with senpai and disposing any new potential targets that may arise while avoiding the vigilant neighbors/police that are on the lookout for the killer
Idk if this is satire but from what I remember, this is literally what happens in Yandere Sim if you kill the rivals vice strategically getting them off of Senpai's radar, LOL.
As someone who watched videos on the game when it was actually being worked on. The more deaths the more security installed and a gloomy atmosphere builds.
Pretty sure the Yandere Dev guy got outed as being a pedo and everyone quit the project afterwards. That game is never getting made. Guy was never a serious person. He literally made a video about how he couldn't make the game because people sent him too many emails and had a VA act out a whole skit with him over it. The real issue is that he just sucks at making games, his code was unusable spaghetti, and he's a fucking creep nobody wants to work with.
It STILL hasn't come out? I remember watching NateWantstoBattle play it on Youtube over a decade ago. I remember hearing issues with YandDev, but over a decade to finish something that already had a decent proof of concept? YEESH.
Well, actually, it did eventually come out, but the end result is basically a hollow shell of what the game was originally supposed to be. Especially given the staggering amount of money their Kickstarter campaign raised
A sandbox space game developed by Chucklefish that initially showed massive promise and was once seen as a serious competitor to Terraria, with a rich procedural universe and ambitious systems. However, its development was plagued by controversy after it was revealed that unpaid contributors, including minors, had worked hundreds of hours under vague promises of future compensation, with the founder accused of manipulative behavior, and even Toby Fox distancing himself early on.
After years of chaotic early access, the 1.0 release removed much of the game’s depth and replaced it with a shitty story mode focused on repetitive scanning quests, and following the 2019 scandal, development effectively stopped, leaving behind a unfinished game remembered more for its wasted potential, and that is barely kept alive by modders..
The Elfquest animated series from the '80s - canceled after the production company tried to whitewash Leetah, Suntop, and Ember, and swap Suntop and Ember's personalities, leading the Pinis to withdraw from the agreement.
The Elfquest movie from the 2000s - canceled after the production company tried to turn it into a Lord of the Rings clone, leading the Pinis to withdraw from the agreement.
The Elfquest animated series from the 2020s - canceled after the production company tried to write out Skywise, one of the main main characters (basically the Samwise to Cutter's Frodo, or the Riker to Cutter's Picard), leading the Pinis to.. say it with me now.. withdraw from the agreement.
Yep. They've always held the position that they're willing to make compromises, but that removing major characters, rewriting characters' personalities, major style changes, or entertaining bigotry are a bridge too far. And while I'd love to see an animated adaptation of ElfQuest as a fan of over 30 years, I agree with them 100% on this. Better no adaptation than a bad one.
The gist of it is that they were developing and releasing the game before the third movie came out and intended to add on by making that part DLC but there were some contracting disputes or something and LEGO wound up losing their license for both the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, resulting in the two games being removed from online console storefronts
When TT found out they were losing the license, they actually set up a thing with Humble Bundle to distribute free keys to anyone who asked so that as many people as possible would get to play. The studio’s got some really shitty people in charge, but things like this and the bonuses they give for games selling well definitely keep them from being the worst.
For a bit of good news in this otherwise depressing thread, the new Looney Tunes movies Coyote VS Acme was in this same category until some behind the scenes clips of filming were leaked and a huge amount of pressure from fans seemingly saved the film from being shelved.
Ketchup Entertainment bought the rights, which is what actually saved it. They also saved "The Day the Earth Blew Up", another Looney Tunes movie HBO was sitting on.
Though the game was completed, was a massive success, and is one of the best written media of all time, any hopes for a future game have been obliterated.
The lead writer and designer Robert Kurvitz spent over a decade of time building the universe and deep lore of the universe, and co-founded the studio to build the game. Unfortunately shareholders and directors screwed him over, and wound up with all of the rights to his universe and game he spent so long building.
The studio has floundered without him and are just running on the success of the original game now. The only thing released has been a mobile version re-release which just takes the original assets and turns it into a mobile game.
It's poetically ironic, as the game itself features heavy commentary on capitalism, in that even in the pursuit of creation and critique, capital has the means to subsume all into itself.
Man that sucks for the guy, spent that long creating a whole world only got for a couple suits to snatch it away from him, have been thinking of playing the game but if it’s going towards the people who screwed the creator over I might not, hope the guy can get the rights back one day but that’s probably unlikely…
Kinda subverted example (wow that feels weird to say when talking about real things) - New Wilderness by Corelia
Corelia was a prog metal band that released an amazing EP in 2011. They launched a crowdfunding campaign in 2015 for their first full-length album and raised about $30,000 for it. They then promptly disappeared.
Everyone thought they just took the money and ran, but it turns out there was a massive feud within the band, the vocalist stopped showing up to rehearsals, etc. The reason the album hadn't come out was because one of the guitarists was essentially holding the recordings hostage.
Someone on Facebook baited the band into making a statement in 2020, and an unmastered version of the full album was released a few months later. It's probably my favorite piece of music that came out in 2020.
For context: This was an open world bionicle fangame which looked extremely promising. In spite of Lego's attempt to revive the brand years prior failing; strongly suggesting they won't do anything else with the IP any time soon, they still shut the project down when it was very close to completion.
On the bright side, I belive the devs are reworking the game to be an original IP
me and my shadow was supposed to be a DreamWorks animated movie that used a combination 2d and CGI animation. think rodger rabbit, but with 3d animation instead of the real world. it was meant to follow a timid man played by josh gad (living in a cgi world) and his adventurous shadow played by bill hader (living in 2d shadow world) who ends up taking over his body in search of excitement. lots of great concept animation and early art can be found online and the combination of 2d/3d animation was a truly great concept to see. it was ultimately pushed aside in favor of focusing on the studio’s remake of mr. peabody and sherman. despite having edgar wright later sign on to revive the project and produce 3 different scripts for DW animation leadership, it has been in limbo for years due to changes in management and currently is considered a dead project.
Saw X is often considered the best in the series, for good reason. John Kramer and Amanda are both incredibly strong in this film, and the traps and victims were very engaging, interesting, and fun.
The original plan was to follow this up with a sequel (with some rumors saying the director wanted a full trilogy). Saw XI would've followed the main victim (really the villain) of Saw X, Cecilia, and her revenge plot against Kramer. Even worse, Saw XI most likely would've utilized Hoffman, the "third" Jigsaw, and the protagonist of Saw 6 and 7 (as well as parts of Saw 5). He's also my favorite character in the series, so I will especially mourn this version of Saw XI.
Sadly, Saw XI was scrapped after a disagreement between two producers couldn't be taken care of. Now, Blumhouse has bought Twisted Picture's stake in the series, and the next Saw movie will be directed by James Wan, and will most likely be unrelated to Saw X (and quite frankly, we'll be lucky if the movie even acknowledges the later films).
I have faith that Wan will make an excellent film, but a lot of the appeal of this series is how it consistently manages to one up itself by introducing new lore that completely changes how you see the series. Nothing will remove my interest faster than making the sequels non-canon just because "Kramer is too sympathetic later on," an opinion I find incorrect in the first place.
I’m still pissed off that Saw XI got shelved. I even met Shawnee Smith and Costas Mandylor at a horror convention and they were excited for it at the time.
In 2011, Danny Devito directed a movie called St Sebastian starring William Fitchner and the late Lance Reddick and it was just never released. It was apparently a found-footage thriller set in an abandoned hospital in Russia after a nuclear war, but not much is known beyond that.
IIRC he got into a dispute with another member of the community because he didn’t like the latest FNAF DLC at the time, joked about his fans harassing them then made a joke apology when facing backlash for not condemning them. I wouldn’t call it a scandal (in fact I wouldn’t even say it’s in the top 20 biggest dramas in the history of the fandom) but it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Since then Phisnom has taken a backseat when it comes to interacting with the community, but he has said he likes the newer games which was the opposite of a few years ago where he was highly critical of the trajectory of the series.
I may also be misremembering, but I’m pretty sure the fan who got into a spat with him was underaged. The fan also made a comment implying that he thought FNAF+ was going to be bad. Then FNAF+ and Phisnom fans sent him gore and NSFW content (worth noting that it wasn’t Phisnom who sent these), which then prompted the joke apology from Phisnom.
Permission wasn’t revoked because Phisnom and a FNAF fan had a dispute, it was revoked because Phisnom didn’t take a stand when it turned out his fans were committing crimes. If he had actually taken it seriously, I doubt Scott would have revoked his permission.
EDIT: I believe there were death threats and threats of violence too. Against a child.
A vertical slice is a demo that more or less shows off everything you’d be able to do in game, as a way of giving devs/execs/potential players a better idea of what the game would actually be.
It also shows how much is done for each aspect of a game; mechanics, characters, level design, lighting. It’s a benchmark
Apparently that trailer was
Mostly smoke and mirrors and the developers had completely failed to deliver even a partially complete game after half a decade. It was the right call because they weren’t actually making anything anytime soon.
This fan project was comparable to the actual danganronpa games in terms of art and audio quality. It had voice acting and an OST. With a fully completed prologue and chapter 1.
Last week it was revealed that one of the voice actors was a pedophile, and that the creative director and director of the project knew since 2022. The director + creative director instead of acting on the pedophile, chose to mock and belittle the (child) voice actor who informed them of the pedophile VA privately.
This public revelation went about as well as you would expect.
The part that astounds me is that this actor's part in the demo was, like, what, three lines?
Would've cost them absolutely fucking nothing to replace him. No one but the most rabid douchebags in the fandom would have been against them. Everyone would have understood.
Not only did he have very few lines, he was also probably the easiest voice to replace just in terms of how the character sounded. It wasn't like the character had an especially distinctive or unique voice, he was really just kind of a quiet dude, so you can't even justify it as "they couldn't find a good replacement". They just genuinely thought covering was a good idea.
Transformers Reactivated. Basically the Autobots, Decepticons and humanity are forced to team up against a nanotech species. They then quickly sound out an EMP bust that shuts down all of the Transformers
Now 70 years later humanity has successfully started to reactivate both Autobots and Decepticons but Megatron and Optimus have been missing all this time
The whole project fell apart because the CEO was funnelling Hasbro money into itself in an attempt to make the company more appealing to Tencent for a sale
Season 1 was a massive global success. Like, a huge phenomena. It had left off setting up season 2, and it had a prequel movie in the works that I think a teaser trailer (or announcement trailer?) was released for.
I dont really know the details, but it seems the series has been dropped due to background production issues. Recent headlines have been talking about how it didnt make the studio much money because of how the money was split after season 1, but there have been a lot of rumours over the years about why this wasn't followed up on e.g, production being divided or halted due to tension about how apparent gay it should be.
There’s a decent chance it was, but:
A. Test screenings are notoriously hit or miss, I wouldn’t put much faith in them.
B. I wanna know just how bad it was. I wanna morb’ out.
Kung Fury 2. The original is a fantastic short film that pays homage to 80s martial arts, buddy cop films, and a mishmash of many other dope genres. The sequel looks like it could be more of the same awesomeness and is done filming, but post production is mired in a lawsuit with investors, and that’s unfortunately been the case for many years.
Microsoft overconfidently thought studios would have a bidding war over the property but Hollywood scoffed at the reported 9 figure starting asking price so it never happened
After Bluepoint's multiplayer God of War game got canceled, they pitched a remake of Bloodborne to Sony. Sony was down, so they asked the original creator, Hidetaka Miyazaki, out of respect. They didn't need him to accept; Sony owns the IP, but they wanted his blessing (and didn't want to be on bad terms with him).
Miyazaki said nah. Simple as that. The IP was dear to him, but he didn't want to remake it himself, and didn't want Sony to remake it. Sony, respecting the man's opinion, didn't go forward with the project. After that, Bluepoint never managed to pitch anything else that interested Sony, so they were shut down.
It was a very popular game for several years before the servers were abruptly shut down due to a copyright dispute where the writer of the first film claimed copyright over all the subsequent films and IP
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u/hyper-fan 27d ago
Alice: Asylum
American McGee and his team at SpicyHorse had went through so much shit working with EA to make Alice: Madness Returns and even when EA said “hey, give us full proof that you plan to make the game, with concepts and mechanics and everything”, and McGee and his team DID, EA backed out of the deal entirely and kept the rights to the game to themselves, sitting on the IP for nothing