Eidos-Montréal's Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy was the second game based on Marvel Comics characters to be published by Square Enix. However, unlike Crystal Dynamics' Marvel's Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy was a single-player game. More importantly, critics loved Guardians of the Galaxy, with many believing that it had the potential to be nominated for a GOTY award.

Although the nomination never happened - if it's any consolation, the game did notch the Best Narrative award at the 2021 Game Awards - the fact that critics and audiences alike had high praise for Guardians of the Galaxy would suggest that Square Enix was happy with its investment. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Square Enix's recent financial filing shows that the publisher was not satisfied with the sales performance of Guardians of the Galaxy. Then again, you can't exactly blame Square Enix for stating the obvious. After Marvel's Avengers, most gamers had reservations about buying a Marvel game that wasn't made by Insomniac Games. In this case, Guardians of the Galaxy could have sold poorly at launch, but the game's number of reviews on Steam alone suggests that the unit sales went on an uptrend following its release after word of mouth about the game had spread.