Epic's Fortnite buckled under 3.4M concurrent players — six outages in one weekend
From 60K to 3.4M concurrent players in months: the weekend Fortnite crossed the line, hot shards and IP-starved load balancers broke it six times.
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2,000 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDHyflux funded a flagship plant with retail debt repayable only if power prices held
Singapore's water champion bet its flagship plant on power prices it didn't control, borrowing S$900M from 34,000 retail investors never told that was the bet.
Read the caseCCI fined Maruti Suzuki ₹200 crore for policing dealer discounts with mystery shoppers
India's antitrust regulator fined Maruti ₹200 crore for capping dealer discounts; the fine was stayed pending appeal.
Read the caseStarbucks wrote 'Race Together' on cups — the campaign was dead in a week
Starbucks asked baristas to write 'Race Together' on cups to start conversations about race. The country told Starbucks to stick to coffee.
Read the caseDisney paid Ovitz $138m to leave after 16 months — 'breathtaking', said the court
Eisner hired his friend Michael Ovitz as Disney president in October 1995; sixteen months later the board ended it, and the no-fault clause paid ~$138m.
Read the caseNike's $350 self-lacing shoes needed a phone app — then the app died
Nike spent years on Adapt self-lacing sneakers, priced $350–$720, then killed the companion app in 2024 — bricking every pair's smart features.
Read the caseMacmillan published Worlds in Collision — then folded and handed Doubleday a bestseller
Macmillan published a book scientists hated, folded under a boycott threat — and handed Doubleday a record bestseller.
Read the caseM&S closed its largest Asian food store in HK after 10 years — Din Tai Fung took over
M&S 3,600 sq ft Langham Place flagship: largest Asian food outlet. Lease expired Aug 24, 2025. Din Tai Fung took the space. 21 stores remain.
Read the caseNBC moved Leno to 10 p.m. to keep him — the fix cost $45m to undo
To stop Jay Leno defecting, NBC moved him to 10 p.m. nightly in September 2009. Ratings halved, affiliate news fell 25%, and undoing it cost $45m.
Read the casePPARS: Ireland's health payroll system ran from a €9.14m budget to a €195m bill
Ireland's SAP health payroll programme let each agency build its own version, then mandated national rollout — costs hit 21x budget before suspension.
Read the caseCrédit Agricole lost €250M in unauthorized trading at its New York subsidiary
The French bank's New York trading desk ran unauthorized positions that cost €250 million — its largest rogue-trading loss.
Read the caseCBS benched its $17M-a-year lead analyst, and JJ Watt took the mic
CBS made Tony Romo the highest-paid NFL analyst in TV history at $17M a year, then put him on leave in July 2026 — JJ Watt took his seat.
Read the caseTelstra's 2016: four nationwide outages in four months broke its reliability brand
Australia's premium telco went down nationally four times in four months - human error, a severed cable, a bad upgrade - then poured $300M into the network.
Read the caseClinton Cards' biggest supplier bought its bank debt and pulled the plug in a day
American Greetings bought £35m of Clinton's loans, demanded immediate repayment, and took 400 stores via a credit bid — 350 shops and 3,000 jobs gone.
Read the caseElite created the supermodel — lawsuits and a dying era bankrupted it
The agency that built the supermodel era filed Chapter 11 in February 2004, buried under legal costs, and was sold for £4.4M six months later.
Read the caseAbsolut's 'Absolut World' ad used Mexico's lost map — and the US was outraged
Absolut ran an ad in Mexican magazines showing a 1830 map with California still part of Mexico. US consumers demanded a boycott. The ad was pulled within days.
Read the caseCathay Pacific cut 8,500 jobs, shut Cathay Dragon, and lost half its pilots
The airline cancelled 96% of flights, took a HK$39B government rescue, and still lost 1,000 pilots to redundancy and 1,000 more to resignation.
Read the caseJordan Brand was Nike's $7.3B engine — then sneaker fatigue cut 16% off its revenue
The world's most iconic sneaker sub-brand saw revenue drop 16% to $7.3B as resale margins collapsed from 100% to 10-25%.
Read the caseCornell University professor's p-hacking brag led to 18 retractions, $22M program lost
Cornell's Food and Brand Lab director wrote a blog post celebrating data mining — it triggered 18 retractions and a $22M program lost.
Read the caseMorellato capped its sellers' discounts and banned marketplaces — Italy fined it €25.9M
For seven years it capped its sellers' online discounts and banned marketplaces, punishing stragglers. Italy's AGCM fined it €25.9M.
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