Battlecruiser 3000AD · PC · 1996 · Impact: Sparked one of the largest flame wars in Usenet history
Seven years in development, released unfinished by its publisher over the designer's objections, and reviewed as one of the most bug-ridden games ever shipped. The arguments about it filled Usenet for years.
Derek Smart began work on Battlecruiser 3000AD around 1989. It was conceived as an enormously ambitious space simulation, combining trading, combat, crew management and planetary exploration in a single game, and it was promoted for years before release under the slogan "The last thing you'll ever desire." Take-Two Interactive released it for MS-DOS and Windows in October 1996, against Smart's wishes, while the game was still incomplete. The result was a release riddled with bugs and stability problems. GameSpot scored it 2.6 out of 10 and predicted it would go down in legend as one of the most bug-ridden, unstable and unplayable pieces of software ever released. The game shipped about 80,000 units. The launch became notorious as much for what surrounded it as for the game itself. Arguments between Smart, players and critics produced one of the longest and largest flame wars in Usenet's history, running to more than 70,000 posts over several years. Smart sued Take-Two for breach of contract, and the case was settled out of court in late 1998 with Smart regaining the rights. He had already released a much-improved version 2.0 free online in February 1998, and continued developing the series with Battlecruiser Millennium in 2001.
Battlecruiser 3000AD is a clear case of a publisher's deadline overriding a developer's schedule. The game's scope — a whole simulated universe — made it unusually hard to finish and to test, and releasing it early exposed every unfinished system at once. The free 2.0 release was much closer to the game its designer had intended to ship.