One of the most recent catastrophes in PC gaming has been the release of Batman: Arkham Knight.

While there are always going to be bugs that creep into games (and usually get patched), unbalanced game mechanics or debugging code not removed before games hit the streets, I imagine that there have been some really bad releases in the past, not only on the PC but on consoles as well.

What are some of the most serious problems on game releases, regardless of platform, that have caused the game to either be pulled from shelves, stop production or go into immediate repair mode?

This isn't about the Texans or the Rockets?

Oh, then I'm outta here.

Nah, I'm more curious about some of epic video game failures in the past in the intent to learn how not to do something.

Well, I can't think of any that were actually pulled - or in fact patched. Normally they just shrug their shoulders and move onto the sequels. For example:

Dark Souls 1 on PC. Utter turd of a port/ No they didn't pull it, or repair, just left it as is, and then spewed sequels. And people seem to adamently defend it. Total and utter crap from install problems to the moment I removed it completey from my system.

Wasn't that one of those famous quotes that everybody gets wrong?
(Because it was never said in that way)

Well, there was of course the saga of Limbo Of The Lost.

For those who don't remember, or just never heard of it, Limbo Of The Lost was an adventure game which, upon release, turned out to have stolen most of its assets from other games and movies. When this was discovered, the game was pulled from the shelves, never to return.

Nah, because I was the one that said it. :)

I know and I can't think of any! :P That's why I made that stupid posts.

I've bought games that should have been immediately pulled and either fixed and/or trashed, but none that actually were.

And I just realized I'm saying the same thing nightcrawler did. :P

We're going to need the cover to the flight plan, 2 lithium-hydroxide canister, 2 LCG bags, 2 hoses from the red suits, 1 bungee cord, 2 socks, and a roll of duct tape. Ah hell, tinyE already beat me to it.

Well some of the most grievous have been caused by DRM. People not being able to play the game due to constantly dropping connections, the verification software not being compatible with their computer, things like that. Then there are the horrible bugs of missing NPC skins, broken physics engines, teleporting NPCs, saves that corrupt, stuff like that. Specifically I recall Ultima IX being an absolute nightmare due to the bugs. Spoony does a fantastic review of it. One of the Assassin Creed games had the freakiest missing skin bug I've ever seen. And Skyrim was just an utter mess when it released.

WAIT! Does Red Alert 3 count? When that came out there was a huge shit storm about the DRM and all of sudden official patches started showing up to remove it.

OK, I was big on adventure games up to a certain year, and honestly, I never heard of this one coming or going. However, taking a bunch of assets without permission was probably what did it in. It sounds like it might have been an interesting game though.
It wasn't the one (among music CDs too) that had Sony's DRM on it which really had a bunch of people in a twist was it? I think Sony also had their hand in publishing games too.

I give you Battlecruiser 3000 AD. Battlecruiser took so long to develop that three different publishers went bankrupt before it even released. Gotta love it. The release was so bad that it led to many patches (Derek Smart may still be patching it for all I know) lawsuits and finally the developer releasing it for free to download not that long after release as I recall.

I give you Outpost. Outpost was a steaming mess, buggy, incomplete and caused a minor scandal due to "reviews" of a beta release published as it went out that claimed features that were never implemented. The manual had documentation on many things that didn't exist, etc.

Haha, if only. The game itself was also awful, or so the reviews said anyway.

would vampire bloodlines count ?
its a great game but the game was released in the same week as half life 2
it was rushed
and had enormous game breaking bugs
troika was dismantled even before the game was released

and patch 1.2 only excists because troika employees wanted to deliver a good product
and even with patch 1.2 the game is buggy

Well, the Batman game to mind because they were actually issuing refunds for people who bought the PC version of the game. It's still on Steam, but they're not releasing a Mac or Linux version of it.

Now, I didn't pay for it, but I did buy an nVidia card which got me a code to get it on Steam, so I feel a little let down that I couldn't get a refund because it was bundled --but I wasn't really going for the game in the first place, just the card so that I could play "The Witcher 3".