With Steam seeing record numbers of released games in 2025, one could say that the current game market is more “abundant” than ever before (though your mileage may vary). However, more games means greater competition, and almost half of over 19,000 titles released on the platform didn’t manage to secure more than 10 reviews (source: PCGamer). And there’s probably even more titles in the works that have never seen (or will never see) the light of day due to various development circumstances, budget constraints and the increasingly competitive market.
Inspired by a recent viral post discussing the instability of game projects, numerous Japanese creators and devs working in the scene as freelancers decided to share their experiences with the issue, explaining how the inevitable cancellations impact their careers in the long-term.
Translation:
Game development is really tough.
Ever since I went freelance, three of the projects I was mainly involved with got cancelled midway.
Translation:
One illustrator said in a recent stream: “When a young illustrator works as a game’s character designer, they tend to pour all of their resources into the project, which means that practically their whole career vanishes if said project gets cancelled,” which made me think, wow, what a world we live in.
The greatest problem for freelance artists which arises when projects get cancelled is that what could be years of work all comes down to zero. Since the game never gets to see the light of day as a finished product, this results in a huge gap in their portfolios, making it tougher to smoothly hop onto the next project.
Translation:
We live in a world where this kind of stuff happens:
A: I’ve worked in the game industry for 10 years
B: Oh? What’s your most famous work?
A: I’ve got none.
B: Ah, here you go again… How many have you released so far?
A: Zero.
B: In ten years?
A: Zero.
Daraneko, solo-developer of “Very Positive”-rated JRPG The Use of Life, explains that, while indie creators might have more control over what they do, the career of freelancers working for corporate developers is, more than anything, based on sheer luck. “No matter how hard you try, if a game can’t be released, it just can’t be released.”
Speaking of which, NieR and Drakengard series creator Yoko Taro has previously said that he had been facing similar problems. Addressing criticism that he “hasn’t been working on anything” in the past years, the game director explained that he has actually been quite busy with projects recently, it’s just that most of them ended up getting discontinued midway through development.
Even big names like Capcom have witnessed a fair share of cancellations, and according to the company’s ex producer Shintaro Kojima, even Monster Hunter was on the chopping block at one point in time.
Translation:
This is what I thought seeing that post about game development being tough due to cancelled releases.
It may not come as a surprise, but there are quite a few Capcom games that got discontinued midway without ever seeing the light of day. There are cases when projects get cancelled right at the beginning or even midway through production.
When that happens, it sometimes even made me feel like crying out of frustration.
We actually had to work really hard to push past the threshold that would let Monster Hunter get a proper release.
Illustrator Danryoku, who has worked in the industry for 14 years, most notably providing monster designs for Brave x Junction and Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, also wrote a lengthy response to the discourse, doubling down on the sentiment that freelance illustrators and developers show “achievements” far too small compared to how much time they invested into them.
So far, Danryoku has worked on 6 mobile games and 3 unreleased projects (not counting projects they’re currently working on), with the periods they’d been assigned to the projects ranging from just a few months to numerous years. However, all 6 of the mobile games have ended services, leaving the artist without a tangible track record. Furthermore, Danryoku points out that the overall time they spent working on the three projects which were never released was around 5 and a half years. With this in mind, Danryoku says they still might be one of the luckier ones, as there are probably people who’ve worked on games for decades with even fewer projects under their belts. While discontinuations of video games projects are indeed frustrating on their own, for freelance artists and developers, it’s a really big “debuff” when it comes to building professional reputation and expanding their career.
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