Top 5 Worst AAA PC Launches Ranked

[TheWay]

5. Assassin's Creed Unity (2014)

Even tho it was extremely buggy, it was fixed pretty quickly and main issue was, that the game was just graphically ahead of time and runs flawlessly on modern hardware. As of right now, it's the best version of that game, both graphically and performance wise.

4. Horizon Zero Dawn (2020)

Lots and lots of issues, took over a year to make it decent. thankfully after this, other Sony releases got way better. Days Gone, Spider-Man and God of War were petty much flawless, so it's really weird that one of their best selling games (Last of Us) is again having problems.

3. Red Dead Redemption 2 (2019)

By some miracle, Rockstar managed to release this game completely broken and buggy. It was pretty much unplayable for weeks and took them months to make it, as it should have been from the start. Thankfully now, it runs perfectly and is best version of that game.

2. Arkham Knight (2015)

This launch was so bad, that developers stopped selling it for some time.

Honorable mention: Cyberbug 2077 (2020)

One of the buggiest AAA games ever made, game so buggy, that it's even buggy 2 years later.

Honorable mention: The Callisto Protocol (2022)

Not only was it bad Dead Space clone, it had extreme stuttering issues.

Honorable mention: GTA IV (2008)

Mixture of ahead of time physics and lack of optimization.

1. The Last of Us

So far, worst PC launch of all time. Game has idiotically high system requirements. When you need mid-high range 8gig vram (minimum) card, to run it on mid-high settings 1080p, then that's just not okay. I don't tolerate stuff like that. But that's not even the worst problem. Worst problem is that it crashes constantly, most people can't even play it without the game crashing every 2-5 minutes. Some people can't even finish loading shaders, because it crashes every two minutes.

[kiteless 凧無し]

GTA4 should be in the top 5, horizon was bad but not to that extent

[TheWay]

Originally posted by kiteless 凧無し:

GTA4 should be in the top 5

Forgot to add, but yeah 100%. Added it under honorable mentions.

[Vilipili]

Arkham Knight. For me it was the worst one ever.

[Weaver]

Cyberpunk and Arkham were way way worse than LOU.

Cyberpunk might as well been in Early Access for a year and a half after it launched. It was one of the few games that were so clearly, laughably broken, I got a refund for instead of waiting for patches.

Arkham had to pulled from Steam for 4 months.

What it is, and it's a good thing, I think most gamers are finally fed up with AAA companies launching games in piss poor shape. It's somewhat understandable when it's some tiny Indy Dev, but not billion dollar companies with virtually unlimited resources.

[Mexicola9302]

Days Gone was also a really stuttery mess when it got released for PC. But now it works fine. I remember this because i bought it shortly after release i think, then i just played other games for a few months. At some point i just started the game again, and it worked perfectly fine. I didn't even notice it has been updated. :D

It had this issue that it stuttered like crazy while driving the bike for some weird reason, and similar hiccups or something that TLOU1 now has too.

[TheWay]

Originally posted by Mexicola9302:

Days Gone was also a really stuttery mess when it got released for PC. But now it works fine. I remember this because i bought it shortly after release i think, then i just played other games for a few months. At some point i just started the game again, and it worked perfectly fine. I didn't even notice it has been updated. :D

Hmm, not sure about that. It's performance wasn't perfect, but i played it on launch day with RTX 2060 and i got solid 60fps for the most part, I remember people even praising it, how much better launch it was, than Horizon. Wasn't perfect, but i would't call it bad launch at all.

[Rick]

RDR2 on pc was perfectly fine for me on release, same with Uncharted 4, and TLOU1. No issue's whatsoever

[TheWay]

Originally posted by Rick:

RDR2 on pc was perfectly fine for me on release, same with Uncharted 4, and TLOU1. No issue's whatsoever

RDR2 was extremely buggy and barely ran for first two weeks, it has been documented all over youtube. I had no real issues with Uncharted 4, but TLOU1 is extremely bad.

[SecularStoner]

Arkham Knight was horrid. Not even playable. I am halfway through TLOU no crash no issue at all.

[Trevor Reznik]

Two of them are Sony games

[C1REX]

What about Forspoken?

[zaeroid]

The worst is probably Ultima IX.

[TheWay]

Originally posted by C1REX-PL:

What about Forspoken?

You consider it AAA? lmao

[The King in Yellow]

All Blizzard games at launch. Remember error 37 from Diablo 3? I 'member...
And lets not forget the Warcraft 3 "remaster".

[jambi]

In my experience it was Cyberpunk 2077 (I launched the game and immediately saw characters t-posing and a range of random stuff). And recently Callisto Protocol (literally unplayable before they dropped the first patch).