Survey Reveals How Many People Think Cyberpunk 2077 Was 2020's Biggest Flop

Ah, 2020. A lot happened last year — it was the year of a video game boom caused by everyone being asked to stay at home, as well as the release year for the next generation of consoles. It was a good year for the gaming industry, but that doesn't mean that every game was good. Some games flopped, and flopped hard, despite plenty of publicity and hype. 

There are many reasons that a game might become a flop, from lack of marketing to bad reviews — or, as was the case in 2020, a highly-anticipated launch going badly. Cyberpunk 2077 comes to mind instantly, of course, as it was such a high-profile AAA release and people were sorely disappointed in it. But did it take the top spot in a poll designed to determine the biggest gaming flop in 2020? 

SVG surveyed 618 people around the United States for their opinions on five different games, and this is what it found.

As expected, CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 took the top spot in the pool, with almost 29 percent of the vote. The launch was so spectacularly bad, thanks to the game launching with (admittedly funny) bugs and glitches that made it nearly unplayable. The launch reportedly cost CD Projekt Red and its founders $1 billion.

Marvel's Avengers, with 18.61 percent of the vote, was a distant second, but not an insignificant one. It did poorly enough when it released in September 2020 that Square Enix posted a $67 million operating loss in its HD Games segment during the quarter in which it launched. Without the launch, the developer said, it would have been in the black.

In third place, WWE 2K Battlegrounds had 17.31 percent. GamesRadar's review called WWE "a brand that's reached its rock bottom" with this game. Arriving at 10.03 percent of the vote was Godfall, which was labeled "a lowlight of the PlayStation 5's launch lineup" by EGM.

The last contender for biggest flop was Madden NFL 21, which came in with 15.05 percent of the vote. IGN's review said that even with the formulaic nature of sports games, the latest NFL-based title was buggy, felt unfinished, and lacked improvements to previous issues. Clearly, players felt the same.

In the "Other" category, those being surveyed wrote in their own answers 10.03 percent of the time. Interestingly, no other games were named, but a few voters felt like "all of the above" games were big flops, while others never purchased any of them and had no opinion to add. This isn't surprising, since the very definition of a game being a flop is that it fails...hard. Flops don't often sell well, and eventually, they tend to disappear from gamers' radars.

Of course, the bad memory that most gamers will take lessons from this year seems to be Cyberpunk 2077, and there's evidence the industry will do so as well. It wasn't that it was a bad game — plenty of fans are giving it love on social media. And developer CD Projekt Red has still sold 13 million copies, which means the game was too big and too well-hyped to completely flop. But the issues that led to rushing it into the marketplace before it was ready turned it into a cautionary tale — one that will hopefully lead to fewer failed games in 2021 and beyond.