The Game Awards have come and gone and we are days away from 2024; what a year it has been for video games. Baldur’s Gate 3 rightfully won the Game of the Year, its industry shaking mentality and breath of content won the hearts of all gamers as the game of the generation. The other game of the year nominees plus other titles made this year quite memorable. But this year has been filled with numerous cases and situations that should leave the everyday gamer at least a little bit concerned. So, to wrap up this year for the blog, I’ll be going over the major events and stories (at least in my view) in gaming only. Cause the situation in Hollywood is a completely different beast.

Let’s start with the biggest and most concerning trend in gaming: the layoffs. Working in the video game industry is a living hell due to crunch and the lack of compensation. On top of that it is normal that after the conclusion of a major project, many employees are let go in the interim. Many industry experts say that it is just the nature of the beast. Last year the gaming industry saw approximately 1,000 layoffs according to a community lead list. This year? Around 10,000! In a year where revenue and profits from all gaming sources are up, the gaming industry saw a massive spike in layoffs, which I view as unacceptable. Now the gaming industry isn’t the only job market to experience a job squeeze as the entire economy is struggling. Every company is looking to cut costs and give money to leadership, that’s just the nature of capitalism in America unfortunately. As someone who was laid off and still unemployed at the point of writing this article, I feel for those game developers who unjustifiably lost their jobs due to corporate greed.

So, who were the big culprits of robbing people of their livelihoods? Well Microsoft is one of the bigger companies to release employees this year. A grand total of 10,000 employees in Microsoft alone, these layoffs extend beyond their gaming division with Xbox. Most of Xbox’s layoffs were targeted at former Bethesda Studios and 343, the makers of the modern Halo games. The Bethesda layoffs make a lick of sense to me because it is what happened to me. My company got bought out and despite promises of job security, I was laid off in a cost cutting measure and reorganization. Many leadership positions like Pete Hines, the former head of publishing for Zenimax, left with healthy severance packages. This would allow Xbox to properly integrate Bethesda into their leadership structure. Now does this excuse letting go the people in the trenches making your games? No of course not! Expect the same amount of layoffs to occur in Activision/Blizzard, though that is a company whose whole direction needs to change. As for 343, Halo Infinite has been struggling as leadership and game direction had nearly killed the franchise while the so-called decade long plan for Halo’s latest title faulters with its audience. Big Boss on YouTube sums up the reign of Halo Infinite really well, but the TLDR is that Halo’s progression is tedious, the UI was unfinished and ‘hindered’ updates with terrible live service. As a result, 343’s leadership was axed and almost half the studio was let go, mostly in the art and programming department. It was so bad that Xbox and 343 had to release a message saying that the franchise wasn’t in danger. Sure, Microsoft sure, whatever you say. Then again Halo has been dead since Bungie left.

Embracer Group is next in the long list of terrible companies that laid off people in a cost saving maneuver. Embracer is a Swedish based firm that went on a spending spree earlier in the year and last year, gaining the rights to numerous IPs like Tomb Raider and Saints Row and many studios. Embracer was also riding on a supposed $2 billion from Savvy Games Group, a Saudi funded organization. However, this deal fell through, and Embracer was out of a suspected vast sum of money. I can only assume that in response to not getting this funding Embracer, went to the guillotine to chop up jobs. A total of 900 developers were laid off from famous studios like THQ Nordic and Gearbox. Volition, the studio that delivered the pile of garbage that was the Saints Row remake in 2022, was shut down. Embracer also closed Campfire Cabal and Beamdog throughout the course of the year. So, what’s left? Well Embracer still controls Gearbox, but is looking to sell it to further make up for the lost deal. They still own what’s left of THQ Nordic, Crystal Dynamics, Saber Interactive, Deep Silver, and Focus Entertainment, as well as two studios purchased from Square Enix based in Montreal.

Next is Epic Games. Now one might suspect from the heavy presence of Fortnite at the Game Awards earlier in the month that Epic is quite healthy, but that isn’t the case. Epic laid off 830 workers in the wake of the highest recorded player count for their popular battle royale. Great timing there. Those 830 employees accounted for 16% of their workforce! It is widely known that Epic is leaking money like crazy, mostly because of the Epic store, despite the presence of Fortnite and Epic exclusives. The idea of giving away free games every month just isn’t cutting it for the platform as many gamers like myself have stuck around with Steam. I never really liked the Epic Store, for at the time they lacked a Wishlist system, and the UI was buggy, plus I like the Steam achievements and community pages, including mods for some of the games I play. It also probably didn’t help that Epic pursued two costly court cases against Apple and Google, both in the same year, getting little in return and a failed metaverse project.

Let’s rapid fire through the rest of these. Electronic Arts laid off around 800 employees, continuing their reign as gaming’s worse company. Now while their sports games continue to see success through their live service and annual releases, EA saw layoffs mostly come from Bioware, a studio that is a shell of their former selves. This raises more red flags for their upcoming Dragon Age game and the future of Mass Effect as many veterans responsible for those successes have been let go. Sega announced major layoffs at their studio of Creative Assembly, known for the Total War franchise, after they canceled their Hyena project, which was a live service shooter, something completely out of the depths of Creative Assembly. Naughty Dog too saw layoffs after they too canceled a live service game for their Last of Us franchise. Daedalic Entertainment, after the turd that was their Gollum game, decided to give up on development altogether and closed all of their internal developers, shifting their strategy to publishing. Finally, there is Activision Blizzard, who let go of employees from their esports division and the Hearthstone team. I almost certainly have missed more cases of layoffs and closures, but there are other topics to get to.

E3 has long been a stable of the gaming community for the amount of announcements from the developers and companies that historically made great games. Since COVID however, conventions like E3 took a great blow. I discussed the fall of E3 earlier in the year, but the summary of that article is that many companies have turned to in-house showcases instead of spending a meager amount of money to attend a conference. I previously explained to lengths that this is a poor decision, not for financial reasons, but from PR point of view. Developers and team members could communicate directly with gamers to get feedback to improve their game. Games like Everspace 2 and Aliens Dark Descent got on my radar because of their appearance at PAX East, my local convention, so appearances at these conventions are free publicity that can result in sales. But the big companies decided to ignore the pros of attendance and decided to do things themselves from now on. Now the big companies have killed the high mark of the gaming year. Earlier this month, the Entertainment Software Association, or the ESA, announced that the event will not be returning in 2024 or anytime afterwards. It is over. The event that allowed gamers to walk through sets of their favorite franchises is gone and we pour one out to its death.

As mentioned earlier, this year Microsoft finally got over the hump of getting past regulators in their quest to acquire Activision Blizzard. This is something I touched on over the course of the year, but it is good to bring up again for this article. Microsoft overcame its two biggest obstacles in the acquisition in the FTC and the British regulatory board by making some concessions. These concessions included deals on cloud gaming and promises to not make Call of Duty an Xbox exclusive. The biggest concern for the acquisition was worry for competition in the gaming space. I personally think those concerns are overblown. Looking at the market share, there are four main competitors: Xbox, Sony, Nintendo and Steam/Valve. Each of these companies control a console and yes I’m giving Steam the PC market because as much as Epic wishes to get in on the market, most PC gamers use Steam, plus the SteamDeck has proven to be a good device for mobile PC play. There are also many independent publishers still out of the grasp of these big four companies. As companies are purchased, new ones from industry veterans spring up. Although Activision Blizzard is a very large piece to add to Xbox’s portfolio, the company has been losing the public relations battle over the years with the scandals, poor products, and live services titles. This year alone the company angered fans by canceling Overwatch 2’s PVE, the four hour long $70 dollar Call of Duty title and the grindy Diablo 4. If anything, Microsoft has their work cut out for them saving what is left in the company before they can turn a profit. The fabric of balance between the four companies wasn’t altered with this acquisition but a continuation as all four compete in an arms race with studios and IPs being the weapons.

Like every year, 2023 had its share of terrible releases, but the piles of crap were as bad as the game of the year was good. First, we had Redfall a game whose concept intrigued me. A fun co-op shooter that could be the heir to Left 4 Dead. Obviously, that wasn’t the case. Next was Gollum, which was dead on arrival as many didn’t even ask for a Gollum game. Terrible graphics and a half-finished game that was rushed will never be a formula for success. Then there is the King Kong licensed game that had the worst gameplay loop of the year. Crime Boss: Rockay City had a stellar cast, yet no content. Payday 3 severely wounded the reputation of the franchise with networking that didn’t work as players who paid couldn’t even get into the game; this was fixed but the damage was done. Finally, there was the Day Before, a literal scam that managed to turn an asset flip into the most wishlisted game on Steam. Marketing had plagiarized trailers from larger games with the final product not even being what was promised. Bad titles will never go away as there will always corporate leadership wanting to make a quick buck.

Finally, a quick word on esports. I have always been a fan of the sport and even participated in tournaments in college. So, I kind of have a personal stake. Esports took a hit from COVID, like every other industry, but the damage was a little more severe. Esports took pride in hosting live events like EVO or World Championships for different titles; the pandemic took that away. Esports adapted well to the full online streaming platforms it had to take, yet changes came. Many keystone esports organizations have either lost much of their rosters or have vanished. One such organization was the Golden Guardians, members of the North American League of Legends Pro League or the LCS. The organization folded when the LCS reduced the number of teams from ten to eight. Counter Logic Gaming closed down after it was bought out by NRG esports, the same can be said for many other organizations that merged together to survive. Esports also took a hit as the Overwatch League ceased operations amongst the esports layoffs conducted by Activision Blizzard. To be fair ,the product has been slipping and Overwatch had become less popular due to the botched sequel and overall fatigue of the game. With all this occurring in the year, is esports in danger? Not quite, as many of these changes happened in the North American leagues and it is hard to tell the health of esports in other countries. Esports will always stick around, and new titles eventually will take the place of those that fall.

2023 has been a great year for gamers for we feasted on several great titles, however we must be aware of the changes that is occurring in our favorite industry. Let’s be frank many of these titles arrived to release in this year due to the pandemic as delays and setbacks pushed them to this year. So, the great year we had had was mostly circumstantial. If these games came out any other year than what would we be left with? Layoffs, failure and maybe one or two decent games. The industry is shifting, and we need to do support developers in whatever way we can. Unions need to come in and represent the entry level workers and staff so that they have the job security they need to make the games we love. I don’t have all the answers on how to help them. Sadly, the only solution is something I can’t provide. It will be a long battle to secure better working conditions. As much as the work of Larian, Insomniac and Capcom have done this year to deliver great titles, their success doesn’t cover up the faults this year has seen.