Well, 2018 is nearly over and boy has it been a bit of a mixed bag this year! We’ve had a lot of good things and we’ve had a lot of bad things! The same as most years I guess. I will, however, highlight some of what I consider to have been some of the biggest fails of 2018. Strap yourself in because, despite the festive season, I’m not feeling in a particularly charitable mood!
Might as well start with a strong one. Well, your year can’t possibly get any worse than having your company shut down, can it? Admittedly, I saw this coming much earlier than many. In September this year, I wrote an article suggesting that the change of CEO at Telltale Game was more indicative of the company being in trouble than it was about it entering a ‘fresh new dawn’. How right was I!
I must admit, I wasn’t expecting Telltale Games to announce it’s closure as soon as just 2 months later, but when you think about it, it was hardly surprising either.
While Telltale Games had a pretty period between 2013-2016, the last couple of years were pretty poor. Mediocre games were the order of the day with the company spewing out games left, right and centre using the same story-telling engine that was beginning to show more than a few cracks around the edges.
When you think about all the franchises they bought the rights to as well! Guardians of the Galaxy, Minecraft and Game of Thrones just to name a few. These surely didn’t come cheaply and was, perhaps, the biggest reason for their cash-flow failure.
One of the biggest highlights of 2017 was undoubtedly the rise in the value of Bitcoin. Starting the year at under $2000, it ended the year at just under $20,000 a coin. The insane level in which the value rose saw people (and companies) buying graphics cards en-masse. This, by proxy, resulted in a huge price increase that largely just ended up punishing us poor consumers.
In January 2018 though, the bubble firmly burst. Within a few months, the price had dropped to less than $6000 a coin. While it has remained relatively stable since then, the last month or so has seen it dip further to a price roughly around the $4500-$5000 value.
The irony is, perhaps, that Bitcoin didn’t necessarily do anything wrong. The price was massively overinflated due to excessive hype in it. It was, after all, the currency that could make us all millionaires overnight.
With it losing around 75% of its value, it’s hard to not class this as one of the biggest failures of 2018.
Where to begin with Facebook! It’s certainly been a year of PR disasters for Facebook. Certainly one of the most notable instances of this was the Cambridge Analytica scandal. This was when it revealed a huge number of users data had been shared with third parties without their permission. It was a matter that brought the company a lot of flack, a pretty huge fine from the UK (which they are currently appealing) and Mark Zuckerberg to have to make appearances in front of both the US Congress and EU Parliament.
It feels like the company has been spinning plates the last few years and suddenly a few have started to fall. In a year where the company was supposed to really kick off (particularly with stagnating user figures), it instead feels like it’s stood still.
Ok, now I understand that some people don’t quite understand the hate directed towards this game and in fairness, despite the next Diablo game being a mobile-only exclusive, that’s not the reason for the ‘fail’ here. You have to consider the circumstances in which Blizzard made this announcement.
For months, Blizzard teased us with the news that various Diablo projects were in the works. Given that we already knew that they had basically given up on any more DLC for Diablo 3 this had to be a brand new game, right? Well, Blizzard decided to use the final showpiece of their opening ceremony to announce some huge Diablo news! This was It! Blizzcon 2018, centre stage! Diablo 4 was going to be announced… and no! Instead, we got Diablo Immortal. A mobile exclusive release that literally no-one was asking for! – Gee, thanks Blizzard!
How big a fail was this? Well, considering that the guy who asked if this was a “late, out of season, April Fools joke” got a bigger applause than the announcement itself kinda tells you everything you need to know!
I guarantee that Blizzard will formally announce Diablo 4 before February!
Firstly, I should add a huge caveat to the point that as a person, I both like and admire Elon Musk greatly. I think he is one of the worlds few (but true) entrepreneurs. In terms of social media though, he’s something of a loose cannon. I daresay he says what he means and means what he says. The problem is, as the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company, sometimes saying what you mean too often just causes problems.
There are literally too many Twitter faux-pas’ to list for Elon Musk. Right at the top of the list, however, has to be his post where he declared he was taking Tesla private. Yes, he announced this on Twitter. Worst of all though, it seems that the entire thing was a joke cooked up purely to cause problems for the people who had been ‘short-selling’ the car companies stock.
It landed him in so much hot water in fact that the SEC wanted to remove him from the company. Instead, a compromise was made for a $20m fine and him having to step down as the Tesla chair for at least 3 years.
I don’t want Elon Musk to change. As above, I love the guy! It’s clearly been a very stressful year for the guy though and hopefully 2019 proves to be a lot better!
I had to throw this in. No explanation necessary, if you haven’t seen it, watch the video we did on it above!
I daresay a few of you might be expecting Fallout 76 to be on this list. There is, however, just one problem with that. I actually like the game! I’d love to hear what you think though!
What do you think was the biggest fail of 2018? – Let us know in the comments!
Mikes is a miserable sod at the best of times and may not necessarily be experiencing the love and forgiveness of the Christmas Season – As such, please note that Mikes Rant is an opinion piece and we at eTeknix as a whole may not (and probably don’t) agree with him!
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Did you enjoy Mike’s Rant and want to check out more? – Well, for all of his rants you can check out the link here!
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