The website of 1UP count down five of the worst PC game launches ever. "We promise, reading this list will not automatically reformat your hard drive! " said by 1UP staff.

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Installing a new PC game can be something like a blind date. Yeah, sure, it may have sounded great when your friend was saying you'd be perfect for each other, but if things start off on a bad foot, like, say, she vomits in your car, you may just not want to bother with the rest of the night. Plenty of atrocious PC game launches litter the past, but what we have here are our five "favorites", the ones that still make us shake our heads and cluck our tongues and make other such disapproving gestures with our bodies as we recount their particular horrors. And while it would be easy enough to fill this entire list at least two times over with MMOs alone, we decided not to do that, as it's just too much fish-in-the-barrel shooting even for us. So let's laugh, cry, and get annoyed all over again at five of the all-time worst PC game launches. We promise, reading this list will not automatically reformat your hard drive!

5. Hellgate: London 

 
When Hellgate opened on Halloween, 2007, s*** hit the fan. Never mind the ongoing demonic invasion and dimensional gash in no-longer-jolly-old England; players paid up to fight it off. But persistent crash bugs were a bad start. And while lost progress in an action-RPG is always painful, double and triple billings chafe in any context. Many subscribers to Hellgate: London's optional membership program, who exchanged 9.99 dollars a month or a flat lifetime fee of US 149 Dollars for priority server access, easier in-game transportation, and other perks, reported massive problems and mistaken charges. According to popular gaming site Shacknews, one user claimed that he was "charged two times on November 3, one time on November 4, and one time on November 5" and summarized the situation as "the worst online gaming experience I have ever had." On developer Flagship Studios' support forum, others claimed to have proof of payment with no subscription to show for it.

Asian gamers encountered another crisis altogether. In November 2007, Infocomm Asia Holdings (IAH), which operates Hellgate's Southeast Asia server, apologetically announced that a forthcoming patch would entirely erase all progress players had made over the previous two weeks. The proposed compensation, a 30-day free subscription, couldn't cut it with an increasingly irate audience. According to Singapore-based paper The Straits Times, "the resulting uproar...sent IAH back to the drawing board" in search of a less drastic solution. In the end, and with Flagship's intervention, IAH avoided the reset switch. By then, however, it was Hellgate's reputation that needed a reboot, and perhaps someone, somewhere learned that any PR points gained by launching a demonic-themed game on Halloween aren't always worth the hassle.

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