Making games isn't easy. That's something any game developer will be able to tell you. They'll also be able to tell you how the process of making a game almost never goes the way they thought it was going to go at the start. Unless they've been around the block enough times to expect it to be a little bit chaotic.

Even with that expectation, there are still games that have stories behind them that reinforce the old adage, that truth can very often be stranger than fiction.

4 Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

Developed by 38 Studios, released February 7, 2012

Stop me if you've heard this one before. Major league baseball star pitcher spends his retirement starting a game studio to make an MMO that he believes could end World of Warcraft's domination of the genre. If you have heard that before, then you can only have heard of Curt Schilling doing that with his now shuttered company, 38 Studios. Because it only happened that one time.

A lot of the Schilling and 38 Studios story isn't unlike other game studio endeavors. Someone with a lot of time and money bankrolls a game studio, attracting top talent and outside funding, and then, unfortunately, the game doesn't pan out. Schilling, of course, wasn't your typical rich tycoon looking to make it big in video games, he was a former baseball player. Who just happened to play a lot of MMO's while he was on the road, in-between games.

It was his love for the genre that made him think he could lead a team to make the next best one. And when he attracted top talent, he sweetened their deals by treating them like top athletes. Helped them buy houses in the area, offered them far more than any game studio would have paid at the time, and spared absolutely no expense when it came to building 38 Studios. But no one makes money quickly in video games, and Schilling's own coffers couldn't keep 38 Studios running indefinitely.

That's where the story gets really crazy. Schilling was able to convince the state of Rhode Island to give Schilling and 38 Studios a $75 million loan. An unprecedented event that we haven't seen since, because to say that Schilling 'fumbled the bag' would be an understatement. 38 Studios was able to release one game, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, but that wasn't the World of Warcraft killer they wanted to make. That was Project Copernicus, which never did come to fruition.

Just a few months after the release of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, the Schilling laid off the entire team, and filed for bankruptcy. The state of Rhode Island also did not get its full $75 million back. Years later though, we did get Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning, a remake of the original that served as a reminder of the fact that Schilling was at least able to pull some really talented developers together, and they did make something worth playing.

3 Cyberpunk 2077

Developed by CD Projekt RED, released December 10, 2020

Five years later, this is a story many players are very familiar with, and one that they'll keep being familiar with because it's been burned into all of our minds.

This story begins back in 2012, around the time that 38 Studios would have shut down, in fact. While that tale was hitting its tail end, CD Projekt RED's greatest let-down-to-redemption-story was just beginning. It was May 2012 when the game was first announced (before we even knew about The Witcher 3), and it wasn't even called Cyberpunk 2077 by that point. We just knew that CDPR was making a game in that world. A little less than a year later, we'd know the name and get our first teaser trailer.

At first, the radio silence on Cyberpunk 2077 could be explained away by the fact that The Witcher 3 was getting the team's attention. But after The Witcher 3 launched to critical and commercial success unlike CDPR had ever experienced, the stakes could not have been higher. The Witcher 3 came out in 2015, and players thought that, surely, they would see the inside of Night City not too long after.

No one expected that it would be another four years until we had a release date announced. A release date that did not come to pass, as the game was then delayed three times to its eventual December 10, 2020, date. The story then turns up the crazy meter when we get to that date, and it's absolutely broken at launch. Critics were only given PC codes pre-launch; no console codes were sent out. This is why you can still find reviews from launch that praise the game - because those reviewers had the machines to run it, and even they still faced a great number of bugs.

Nearly a decade after its first reveal, Cyberpunk 2077 was unplayable on the platforms it was originally meant to be available on (PS4 and Xbox One), and it was so bad that it was removed from sale on both platforms' digital stores. Then came the outpouring of stories about CDPR having a toxic work culture, the crunch developers were subject to, and essentially, the colossal mess of a development process this game went on.

It was three years later, alongside the Phantom Liberty expansion, that CDPR would finally release the completed game that we know and love today, as Cyberpunk 2077. The 2.0 update and the expansion (which is only playable on PC and current-gen consoles) was the last big fix CDPR had to deliver. It still doesn't really work on last-gen consoles, the devices it was originally promised for, but on current-gen consoles and PCs, it does hold-up as another great RPG from CD Projekt RED.

2 Dead Island 2

Developed by Dambuster Studios, released April 21, 2023

Yet another game that went through development hell, Dead Island 2. The thing that makes the story behind this zombie-killing adventure pretty crazy, is how studios played hot-potato with this game's development.

Techland, the team that developed the first Dead Island game, passed on making the sequel to make Dying Light. A good choice for them in hindsight, though they couldn't have known it was a choice that set off Dead Island 2 not being made for another 12 years. After Techland, it was Yager Development who took the reigns, with a release window set for 2015.

Publisher Deep Silver dropped Yager halfway through 2015, however, and Deep Silver found a new team to take on the project at the beginning of 2016, with Sumo Digital now leading the way. Three years later, Deep Silver took the game's development in-house, dropping Sumo Digital, and handing it off to Dambuster Studios, who would finally be the ones to complete Dead Island 2.

For years, it wasn't even clear if Dead Island 2 would ever get to the finish line. The fact that it did, after changing hands so much within 12 years, and the fact that it was a critical and commercial success, is a fairy tale ending for a game many wrote off years ago.

1 Duke Nukem Forever

Developed by 3D Realms and Gearbox Software, released June 10, 2011

If you were a teenager in 2011, and you like shooters even liked shooters just a little bit, then there's a good chance you heard about Duke Nukem Forever. Not as a game you should rush out to your local GameStop or regional equivalent to buy. But as one of the worst games the industry has ever seen, that took absolutely forever to release.

Duke Nukem 3D wasn't the first Duke Nukem game ever, but it was the one that really got people going about the series. In 1996, when it released, it was a critical and commercial success. A sequel was almost immediately green lit, and Duke Nukem Forever would be that sequel. This was supposed to be out in the 90's. It was 14 years later when it would finally be out.

It also wouldn't be the original 3D Realms team who would finish the job. They had indeed been working on it since 1996, but by 2009, it still hadn't released. It was an industry joke that the game would even be finished by that point. Then, 3D Realms was shut down before it could finish the game.

Take-Two was the game's publisher, and retained the rights to the game, which is why it could to give the project to Gearbox Software. Gearbox then took what 3D Realms had done, and took the next two years to put it all together and make sure it would work on the consoles and PCs of the time. Take-Two wasn't done with 3D Realms there, however, and sued the studio for not delivering on the game.

A settlement was reached in 2010, a year after 3D Realms closed and the year before the game would finally release. It was awful on release. It's still awful today. Even after going through the whole hassle of a lawsuit about the game not coming out, it's a wonder why Take-Two did actually release Duke Nukem Forever at all.

These are just the tip of the iceberg.

The video games industry is riddled with stories like this. Whether they end in failure or success, there are plenty of games that have stories that are quite unbelievable when you take a step back to view them.