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In the video game industry, 2024 saw many events including job losses extending from 2023, including large cuts from Microsoft Gaming, Electronic Arts, and Sony Interactive Entertainment, and with over 10,000 jobs lost through May. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Month | Day(s) | Event |
---|---|---|
January | 3 | Thirteen-year-old Willis Gibson became the first person known to "beat" the NES version of Tetris by reaching its killscreen. [5] |
8–11 | Unity Technologies, Twitch, and Discord separately announced layoffs affecting 1,800, 500, and 170 jobs, respectively. [6] [7] [8] | |
22 | Riot Games laid off about 530 staff. [9] | |
25 | Microsoft Gaming laid off 1,900 staff, and the President of Blizzard Entertainment, Mike Ybarra, left the company. [10] | |
29 | Eidos-Montréal laid off about 100 staff as part of the continuing Embracer Group restructuring. [11] | |
February | 7 | The Walt Disney Company announced a $1.5 billion investment in Epic Games. [12] |
13–15 | The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences hosted the 2024 D.I.C.E. Summit and the 27th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards at the Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada; [13] Koji Kondo inducted into the AIAS Hall of Fame. [14] | |
27 | Sony Interactive Entertainment laid off 900 employees across various studios. [15] | |
28 | Electronic Arts laid off 670 staff. [3] | |
Toys for Bob split from Activision and became independent. [16] | ||
March | 8 | Sega of America laid off 61 employees across its QA and localization departments. [17] |
600 Activision QA workers unionized under CWA, creating the largest video game union in North America. [18] | ||
14 | Embracer Group divested Saber Interactive and a portion of its studios to a private firm for $249 million. [19] [20] | |
18–22 | The 2024 Game Developers Conference was held in San Francisco. [21] | |
27 | Take-Two Interactive announced its intention to acquire Gearbox Software from Embracer Group for $460 million [22] | |
28 | Relic Entertainment was sold by Sega to an unspecified investor. 240 employees were laid off across multiple Sega of Europe studios. [23] [24] | |
April | 9 | Nintendo discontinued the online services for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U software. [25] |
16 | Take-Two Interactive announced plans to reduce its workforce by 5% by December 2024. [26] Take-Two also plans to shut down Roll7 and Intercept Games. [27] | |
22 | Embracer Group announced its intention to transform into three standalone publicly listed entities at Nasdaq Stockholm within the next two years. [28] | |
23 | Atari SA announced that the Infogrames brand would be revived for acquired and archived titles that don't fit within the Atari brand portfolio. The first title released under the brand was Totally Reliable Delivery Service , acquired by Atari SA from the original publisher tinyBuild. [29] | |
27–29 | The 2024 EVO Japan was held in Tokyo. [30] | |
May | 7 | Microsoft Gaming closed Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, and Alpha Dog Games, and merged Roundhouse Studios into Zenimax Online. [31] |
23 | Atari SA acquires the Intellivision brand and games catalog. [32] | |
June | 7 | The 2024 Summer Game Fest is scheduled to be held at the YouTube Theater in Los Angeles. [33] [34] |
July | 26–28 | The 2024 Evolution Championship Series is scheduled to be held in Las Vegas, Nevada. [35] |
September | 26–29 | The 2024 Tokyo Game Show is scheduled to be held at Chiba, Japan. |
December | 12 | The Game Awards, honoring the best video games of the year, will be held at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. [36] |
Month | Day | Console |
---|---|---|
February | 2 | Apple Vision Pro [44] [45] |
March | 28 | Atari 400 Mini [46] |
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Month | Day | Title | Platform(s) | Genre(s) | Developer(s) | Publisher(s) | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
O C T O B E R | 1 | Master Detective Archives: Rain Code+ [lower-alpha 2] | Win, PS5, XSX | Adventure | Too Kyo Games | Spike Chunsoft | [385] |
3 | Meiji Tokyo Renka: Full Moon | Win, NS | Visual novel | Mages | Dramatic Create | [386] | |
10 | Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time | NS | Role-playing | Level-5 Comcept | Level-5 | [387] [388] | |
11 | Metaphor: ReFantazio | Win, PS4, PS5, XSX | Role-playing | Studio Zero | Atlus | [389] | |
24 | Card-en-Ciel | Win, NS, PS4, PS5, XBO, XSX | Deck-building, role-playing | Inti Creates | [390] | ||
N O V E M B E R | 12 | Antonblast | Win, Mac, NS | Platform | Summitsphere | [391] | |
15 | Assassin's Creed Shadows | Win, PS5, XSX | Action role-playing | Ubisoft Quebec | Ubisoft | [392] | |
TBA | Uncle Chop's Rocket Shop | Win, NS, PS5, XSX | Puzzle, simulation | Beard Envy | Kasedo Games | [393] | |
Xseed Games is an American video game company founded by former members of Square Enix USA. It later became a subsidiary of the Japanese game company Marvelous, providing the localization and publishing services for video games and related materials.
CyberConnect2 Co., Ltd. is a Japanese video game development studio mostly known for its work on the .hack series, along with a series of fighting games based on the Naruto franchise. They are also known for creating the Little Tail Bronx series. In 2016, they expanded their workforce into the international market by opening a studio in Montreal, Canada.
Numerous video games were released in 2016. New hardware came out as well, albeit largely refreshed and updated versions of consoles in the PlayStation 4 Pro, PlayStation 4 Slim, and Xbox One S. Commercially available virtual reality headsets were released in much greater numbers and at much lower price points than the enthusiast-only virtual reality headsets of earlier generations. Augmented reality also became mainstream with Pokémon Go. Top-rated games originally released in 2016 included Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, Inside, Overwatch, Forza Horizon 3, Madden NFL 17, WWE 2K17, NBA 2K17, Dark Souls III, and Battlefield 1 and Doom 2016. The top five highest-grossing video games of 2016 were League of Legends, Honor of Kings/Arena of Valor, Monster Strike, Clash of Clans, and Dungeon Fighter Online.
Nacon is a French video game company based in Lesquin. It designs and distributes gaming accessories, and publishes and distributes video games for various platforms. In 2020, Bigben Group was consolidated to form Nacon.
In the video game industry during 2019, both Sony and Microsoft announced their intent to reveal their next-generation consoles in 2020, while Nintendo introduced a smaller Nintendo Switch Lite, and Google announced its streaming game platform Stadia. The controversy over loot boxes as a potential gambling route continued into 2019, with some governments like Belgium and the Netherlands banning games with them under their gambling laws, while the United Kingdom acknowledging their current laws prevent enforcing these as if they were games of chance. The first video cards to support real-time ray tracing were put onto the consumer market, including the first set of games that would take advantage of the new technology. The Epic Games Store continued its growth in challenging the largest digital PC game distribution service Steam, leading to concern and debate about Epic Games' methods to seek games for its service. Dota Auto Chess, a community-created mod for Dota 2, introduced a new subgenre of strategy games called auto battlers, which saw several games in the genre released throughout the year. Blizzard Entertainment faced criticism due to their involvement in the Blitzchung controversy, which began after they had banned a Hearthstone player for making comments during a tournament regarding the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests.
In the video game industry, 2020 saw the launch of the next generation of video game consoles, with both Microsoft and Sony Interactive Entertainment having released the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 consoles, respectively, in November 2020. The industry was heavily affected by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic which had begun in March and was characterized by COVID-19 lockdowns and remote work. While this caused numerous delays in software and hardware releases and the cancellation of live conferences and events in favor of virtual shows, it also created a boom for the industry as people turned to gaming as a means to pass the time. The industry also reacted to various political/cultural events.
In the video game industry, 2021 saw the release of many new titles. The numerous delays in software and hardware releases due to the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic heavily impacted development schedules, leading to several games being delayed into 2022 or even postponed indefinitely. Additionally, computer and console hardware were impacted by the combined effects of a semiconductor shortage and a rising growth of bitcoin mining that strained the supply of critical components.
In the video game industry, 2022 saw the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the industry, slowing hardware sales for most of the year as well as development delays for major titles. The industry continued its trend of acquisitions and mergers, highlighted by Microsoft announcing its plan to acquire Activision Blizzard for nearly $69 billion. The industry as a whole continued to deal with issues such as workplace harassment and discrimination, alongside crunch periods, leading to at least the quality assurance staff at three separate studios to vote to unionize.
In the video game industry, 2023 saw significant changes within larger publishers and developers. Microsoft, after having satisfied worldwide regulatory bodies, completed its US$69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, making them the third largest game publisher in the world. Embracer Group, which had been in an acquisition spree over the previous few years, had an estimated $2 billion deal fall through, causing many of the studios under Embracer to either lay off staff or close entirely. Similar layoffs were seen at Unity, Amazon, ByteDance, Epic Games, Bungie, and Ubisoft, leading to over 9,000 jobs lost in the industry in 2023 and part of a larger trend of layoffs at technology companies in 2023.
Serenity Forge LLC is an American video game developer and publisher based in Boulder, Colorado. The studio was founded in 2014 by Zhenghua "Z" Yang.
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