All product teams mean well. Companies genuinely want to build great things. They want to serve their customers -- they want to innovate. If that's true, then why do so many well-meaning teams release features, updates, or products that flounder and cause irreparable brand harm?

In gaming, these mistakes can dominate entire news cycles and destroy player trust overnight. In enterprise software, the consequences are quieter—but still as problematic. Whether you’re a developer, designer, PM, or executive, you’ve likely seen or felt the effects: launches that go sideways which lead to drastically lower user numbers (and revenue) than expected. It can hurt seeing something that you worked on so hard not get the traction that you feel it deserves. Why does this happen?

This post explores a growing pattern across both consumer and B2B software—through a handful of high-profile gaming case studies, enterprise misfires, and one counterexample that might show a potential way forward. Along the way, we’ll unpack what really goes wrong in “catastrophes of good intent,” and how modern organizations can avoid joining the hall of shame.

Case studies in missing the mark

Diablo Immortal: "Do you guys not have phones?"

Few moments have crystallized the disconnect between a company and its core audience quite like Blizzard's BlizzCon 2018 reveal of Diablo Immortal. Instead of the anticipated Diablo IV, fans were shown a mobile-only spin-off. When the fans booed, the famous “Do you guys not have phones?” line was Blizzard's response. The tone-deaf response became an instant meme and a lasting symbol of what happens when brand loyalty gets tested by poor communication and poor execution.

The real issue wasn’t the product itself. Diablo Immortal was designed to expand Blizzard's market in Asia and mobile-first regions -- a very reasonable business decision at the time. But it was announced as a brand new Diablo game in front of the franchise’s most hardcore PC gamers.

Even after the launch, there has been a disconnect in the legacy of this game. While it was no doubt a financial success, Diablo Immortal launched with an incredibly heavy and predatory focus on monetization with gameplay mechanics that seeked to aim to manipulate users into spending more time in the in-game shop than actually playing the game. This, along with the lukewarm reception of Diablo 4, has caused tremendous damage to both the Diablo and Blizzard brand alike.

Path of Exile 2: Beautiful, but backpedaling

Path of Exile 2 launched with a bold design pivot: it promised slower, weightier combat meant to distinguish it from the twitchy, fast-paced chaos of its predecessor. Some players (me included) found that initial campaign pace really refreshing. Fighting felt deliberate and methodical -- almost reminiscent of Dark Souls -- like the game was asking you to engage with positioning and pacing instead of just spamming skills. Most of the hardcore gamers loathed this direction. They saw the promise in many of PoE2s other features however, so even though they wanted the game to speed up a bit, they were willing to be patient with the dev team as they ironed out the vision.

And then came the 0.2 patch.

Grinding Gear Games doubled down on the slow, methodical gameplay to the point where even killing normal monsters was a slog.

Streamers and longtime fans like EmpyrianGaming voiced deep frustration not just with the speed, but with the entire direction of the changes. In a widely-shared post on Twitter, he listed off a cascade of nerfs: Breach mechanics gutted, stun and freeze effects that robbed players of control, density and rarity reductions that made pinnacle grinding content feel hollow. He summed it up simply: "The only mechanic in the game worthy of ‘juicing’ got utterly destroyed." Worse still, the patch added very little endgame content and failed to drum up any sort of excitement. “This was their best chance to push newcomers into the ‘new poe league’ hype cycle,” he wrote. “And I feel like they squandered it.”

The result is a version of Path of Exile 2 that doubled down on its most divisive ideas instead of listening to community feedback and giving them something they wanted. They didn't have to sacrifice their vision entirely, but refusing to acknowledge any bit of the community's prior feedback will start to shift public sentiment in a very negative way.

Tekken 8: The "defense-focused" patch

Around the same time as the Path of Exile patch, Tekken 8 also became a battlefield. The initial launch of Tekken 8 saw a heavy focus on aggression, stance-based gameplay, and resource management. This was a huge shift from the Tekken of old which focused on raw, realistic martial arts gameplay. Complaints about overly offensive play came through and Namco promised changes to revamp the game in favor of more defensive playstyles.

What followed, however, was a patch that doubled down on aggression. The patch introduced mechanics and balance decisions that heavily favored high-pressure offense, much to the frustration of long-time fans. Popular legacy characters were gutted or sidelined. Steam reviews dipped. Pro players, including 5x Evo champion Arslan Ash, began to express frustration.

Magic: The Gathering

For decades, Magic: The Gathering prided itself on rich worldbuilding, consistent tone, and an internal lore that made the cards feel like pieces of a living universe. Longtime players have fond memories of cards like Hurloom Minotaur, Snapcaster Mage, Lightning Bolt -- cards that felt like game pieces in a high-fantasy world. But in recent years, Wizards of the Coast has aggressively leaned into the multiverse trend with a product called Universes Beyond—injecting IPs like Lord of the Rings, Doctor Who, Fortnite, and now Spongebob Squarepants directly into the game. The goal? Broaden appeal. Increase reach. Sell more cardboard.

But for many long-time players, it feels like Magic has traded narrative cohesion for bland brand bullshit. The game now looks less like a fantasy epic and more like a Funko Pop shelf—random IPs jammed together to sit on someone's shelf. On Reddit and Twitter, fans have decried this as “the Marvel-ification of MTG.”

This is a textbook example of what tech critic Cory Doctorow calls enshittification—a cycle where platforms or products become more exploitative over time. First, they serve users. Then they serve business customers. Eventually, they serve no one but shareholders. Magic was once about immersive gameplay and complex tabletop card game mechanics. Now, increasingly, it’s about Wizards of the Coast selling paid advertisements directly to their loyal fans.

Longtime players are disengaging and the brand’s cultural identity is fraying. You can monetize anything—until people stop caring.

Case studies – enterprise edition

Gaming communities are vocal, organized, and public. This makes it easy to see and identify customer dissatisfaction. But the same dynamics—poor communication, surprise pricing shifts, and lack of trust—play out in enterprise software too. They just take longer to surface.

Oracle’s 2023 Java licensing changes shifted customers to a per-employee pricing model, causing some costs to spike by 5x. Nearly 90% of customers began looking for alternatives. VMware, after being acquired by Broadcom, ended its perpetual licenses and pushed more expensive bundles, leading over half of its customer base to consider leaving. Sonos, while technically consumer-facing, provides another example: a botched 2024 app redesign left smart home systems bricked and wiped $500 million from the company’s market cap.

The difference in enterprise is that customers don’t just complain on internet forums or YouTube vids—they leave. Quietly, slowly, and permanently.

Transparency done right

So what’s the alternative? One promising model can be found in Beyond All Reason, an open-source RTS game that flips the entire development model on its head.

I've become so enamored with how this team has built and maintained this game. It's almost like an anarchist way of building software. To me, it's more than just open-source. They have created a game where everyone is free to contribute, folks can donate, people can get involved in any way they deem fit. This is the first time I've seen something like this in a competitive video game.

This transparency builds more than goodwill—it builds player buy-in. Players feel heard because they actually are heard. The result is a kind of collaborative ownership that most commercial games can’t seem to touch. Algorithms used to determine player skill are openly documented with shared interactive charts built by the developers. Usually, game developers force the players to reverse engineer a lot of these things which creates an almost combative relationship. Like the player can't be trusted with raw numbers or something.

BAR is built in public. Its code lives on GitHub. Its developers talk directly with players on Discord. Users can (and do) contribute code, feedback, and bug fixes. Moderation for the game is also fully public so you can see who is getting banned for poor sportsmanship. Patch notes are automated based on Git commit. Devlogs and roadmaps and server infrastructure are all available for public consumption.

It's not that every company needs to go open-source -- obviously IP needs to be protected. But playing Beyond All Reason really made it clear that a world can exist where all sorts of software (games included) can be built, shipped, and maintained by loving fans themselves. The contrast with corporate-developed games is stark: when players feel ownership, they're not just customers waiting to be disappointed - they're stakeholders actively invested in success. They forgive missteps because they understand the tradeoffs. They champion improvements because they helped shape them. And most importantly, they stick around even when things break, because they believe in the shared vision.

Why do they keep getting it so wrong?

The companies in the case studies weren’t trying to fail. But they did—because of systems that make failure easy and course correction hard.

Incentive misalignment is often the root. Teams optimize for growth or profit, not long-term customer loyalty. A studio wants to attract casual players; an enterprise team wants to increase revenue per user. In both cases, the core customer becomes secondary.

User research is often absent—or worse, performative. Metrics trump meaning. Surveys replace conversations. Loyal users become outliers in the data.

Communication breakdowns keep bad ideas alive. The people closest to the problem know something’s wrong—but that feedback doesn’t get through. Or gets ignored. Or arrives too late.

Deadline pressure steamrolls nuance. Quarterly targets, release dates, and public demos leave no room for course correction. You ship what you have. And if it blows up, well, there’s always a blog post to explain it.

Ironically, these failures are often born from optimism. Teams think they’re innovating. They believe they’re evolving. But without grounding in user empathy and internal dissent, those intentions become echo chambers—and the fallout is massive.

Conclusion: The cost of not listening

The damage done to the companies in these stories isn't just financial. It is relational. Users aren't just walking away from the product -- they are walking away feeling betrayed and unseen. And that is a problem which is far harder to repair.

If your team or company can’t listen, it can’t adapt. If it can’t adapt, it will fail.

Research isn’t overhead. It’s your early warning system. Feedback isn’t friction. It’s your foundation.

Companies need to start treating their users like co-authors, not consumers. Whether that’s through better communication, tighter feedback loops, or genuinely participatory development, the path forward isn’t just open. It’s urgent.