Gaming is a give-and-take hobby. For every fun game, there’s another that falls flat. And for every one gamers choose to play, there’s one that will never get to be played— most often not by personal choice.

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Some games get announced and cancelled quickly, while others keep gamers in anxious agony for years, still hoping for their eventual release. When the choice to play what looks like a great game gets taken away, gamers feel that pain for a long time. Ask a gamer, and many can easily tell you at least one cancelled game they still long to play.

10 EverQuest Next Becomes EverQuest Never

EverQuest Next screenshot with game logo in upper right corner

Sony Online Entertainment revealed EverQuest Next in 2013, after four years of development. The MMORPG was billed as “an entirely new genre within online gaming” by then-SOE president John Smedley, who also planned to launch an “Emergent Era” for MMORPGs.

In February of 2015, SOE was suddenly sold to an investment firm and renamed Daybreak Game Company, which quickly shuttered years of game development into the darkness. EQ Next was cancelled in March 2016 because, according to Daybreak president Russell Shanks, “..it wasn't fun.”

9 Amazon's Lord Of The Rings MMORPG Goes Into The West

Promo image for Amazon's Lord of the Rings MMORPG

This Lord of the Rings MMORPG was in development by Amazon Game Studios and Athlon Games, the publishing division of Leyou Technologies. First revealed in 2018, the game had the support of Middle-earth Enterprises and was being set to focus gameplay in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Second Age of Middle-earth, the same as Amazon’s upcoming Lord of the Rings TV show.

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Then, just as quickly as Gollum lost the One Ring, Amazon cancelled the game in April 2021, citing failed negotiations for a new contract agreement between Amazon and Tencent after the latter acquired Leyou by takeover in 2020. It seems this game has gone into the west, and may never be seen again.

8 Command & Conquer: Tiberium Ordered To Stand Down

Cover image and logo for Command & Conquer Tiberium

The Command & Conquer IP alone has many cancelled games on its list, with Command & Conquer: Tiberium being the most painful. Officially revealed in January 2008, the game was in pre-production by Electronic Arts Los Angeles for two years. Once the game was made public, it was revealed to be a tactical first-person shooter, similar to the 2002 C&C: Renegade and featuring commander Ricardo Vega leading GDI forces in a war against the Scrin.

That September, a short eight months later, the game was cancelled. The official statement by then-EA spokesperson Mariam Sughayer stated it “was not on track to meet the high-quality standards set by the team and by the EA Games Label.” Now all C&C fans have left to mourn over is some gameplay footage of what could have been.

7 The Iris Closes On Stargate Worlds

Official screenshot of Stargate Worlds

In 2006, developer Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment began dialing in the chevrons on Stargate Worlds. The game was to be based on the highly popular Stargate SG-1 sci-fi TV show, and feature NPCs voice acted by many of the show’s cast members. Gamers would also get to play as Stargate Command and the System Lords, with classes matching the show archetypes including Archeology, Engineering, Medical, Science, Combat Marine, and others.

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Sadly, CME ran out of money, filing for bankruptcy and canceling the game in February 2010. There might still be some glimmer of hope yet, with the increasing attention surrounding a Stargate resurgence and possible new TV show.

6 World Of Darkness Forced To Stay There

World of Darkness Online promo screenshot

Tabletop roleplaying games have inspired multiple video games, and many of them are also ripe to be translated into video games themselves. World of Darkness (Online) was one such example, as CCP Games and White Wolf announced the game in 2006 with a promise it would elevate the MMORPG genre with its open-world supernatural horror theme.

WoD was in development for nearly a decade before CCP’s grievous mismanagement and lack of focus ultimately caused the studio to diablerize the entire project, leading to its cancellation in April 2014. The World of Darkness TTRPGs continue to (un)live on, but hopeful WoD video gamers have nothing but a nondescript two-and-a-half-minute trailer to remember it by.

5 Ultima Online 2 Kills Lord British (Again)

Ultima Worlds Online: Origin screenshot

Ultima World Online: Origin was announced in 1999, and set to be the sequel to 1997’s hit game Ultima Online. With the UO parent team of Origin Systems and EA once again leading the project, UWO:O was supposed to bring the world of Sosaria into the modern 3D space, and blend Industrial Revolution and steampunk elements into an alternate-UO fantasy world.

However, in March 2001, fearing the game would somehow steal subscribers from UO, EA decided to cancel development on UWO:O, helping cause the famed creator of the Ultima series to resign from EA and set out to begin work on Tabula Rasa.

4 Star Wars 1313 Could've Been The Mandalorian Video Game

Star Wars 1313 official artwork

Long before the hit TV show The Mandalorian, gamers could have been playing the immersive game version in the form of Star Wars 1313. The 2012-launched story being developed by LucasArts, Industrial Light & Magic, Lucasfilm Animation, and Skywalker Sound involved players taking on the role of none other than Boba Fett himself, as he blasted his way through various missions in the underground level 1313 of Coruscant.

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Just a year later, The Walt Disney Company bought the Star Wars franchise from George Lucas, and in direct opposition to its “Where Dreams Come True” motto, promptly closed down LucasArts, cancelling the game and laying off all the studios’ employees.

3 Van Buren, The Original Fallout 3, Gets Nuked

Fallout 3 Van Buren start screen image

Fallout is one of the most acclaimed IPs in all of video gaming, and even more so now with its addition to the wargame and TTRPG genres. Fallout 3 (codenamed Van Buren) is the one Fallout game that almost was, and one of the most painfully missed video games of all time.

Meant to be the next Fallout game in the series following the highly-praised Fallout 2, Van Buren would have set gamers to crawl out through the fallout of the American Southwest in the year 2253, billed the main character as The Prisoner, and involved players running from pursuing robots, capturing escaped prisoners, and searching for the antidote to the New Plague. A great part of what makes Van Buren 's cancellation so tragic is that it was being developed by the Black Isle Studios and Interplay Entertainment teams that created the first two amazing Fallout games. Instead, Interplay went bankrupt in 2003, which canceled the game and closed Black Isle Studios.

2 Silent Hills Fails To Reboot The Series

Silent Hills promo image

Master video game artisan Hideo Kojima and renowned horror film director Guillermo del Toro teamed up to develop the survival horror video game Silent Hills in 2012. Actor Norman Reedus was also on board as the game’s main character. Kojima Productions and publisher Konami went so far as to surprise gamers with the official announcement via P.T. (Playable Teaser), a free-to-play demo released in 2014. And it looked good.

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But being hailed as “one of the scariest games of all time” still wasn’t enough to keep hopes for a full Silent Hill franchise reboot alive. Some messy breakup drama happened between Konami and Kojima— much of which is still not clear— resulting in Konami confirming the game’s cancellation in April 201o. Sony stepped in and gave Kojima a place to make his own game, and Reedus was also brought along to star, but what they delivered instead was the successful (but highly divisive) Death Stranding.

1 Only The Spirit Of StarCraft: Ghost Remains

StarCraft: Ghost screenshot

Blizzard Entertainment announced StarCraft: Ghost in September 2002, with Nihilistic Software as the developer for what was supposed to be the next great game in the StarCraft series. It would have brought gamers the experience of playing a third-person shooter in the StarCraft universe, complete with stealth and action elements in both single and multiplayer modes.

But soon after its announcement, development problems began to creep in like some zerg superorganic life form. For years, nothing much more than rumors were heard about the game’s development, causing it to be branded as vaporware until 2014 when Blizzard finally officially announced it was cancelled.

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