| Month | Day(s) | Event |
|---|
| January | 4 | Activision Blizzard announced that they had acquired Major League Gaming. [24] |
| 5 | The Mixer streaming service is launched as Beam. |
| 6 | Square Enix closed cloud video game subsidiary Shinra Technologies. [25] |
| 8 | Marc Laidlaw, lead writer of the Half-Life series, retired from Valve. [26] |
| David Brevik, the CEO of Gazillion Entertainment, left the company. [27] |
| 12 | Electronic Arts introduced Origin Access, a new subscription service for Windows. [28] |
| 13 | Leslie Benzies, producer and president of Rockstar North, left the company after a 16-month sabbatical. His positions were taken up by Aaron Garbut and Rob Nelson. [29] |
| 16 | Brian Horton, director of Rise of the Tomb Raider , left Crystal Dynamics for Infinity Ward. [30] |
| 22 | David Gaider, lead writer of Dragon Age , left BioWare. [31] |
| 28 | Bungie announced that Pete Parsons had replaced Harold Ryan as the company's president. [32] |
| GOG.com launched Games in Development, their own early access program. [33] |
| Sumo Digital announced their plan of establishing a new studio in Nottingham. [34] |
| 29–31 | PAX South 2016 held at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center. [35] |
| February | 8 | Blizzard Entertainment celebrated its 25th anniversary. [36] |
| GameTrailers video game website was closed. [37] |
| 15 | Rapper Lupe Fiasco and esports player Daigo Umehara have an exhibition match of Street Fighter V to promote the game. [38] |
| 16-18 | Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences hosted the 2016 D.I.C.E. Summit and 19th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada; Hideo Kojima inducted into the AIAS Hall of Fame, and Satoru Iwata received the Lifetime Achievement Award. [39] [40] [41] |
| 27 | The Pokémon franchise celebrated its 20th anniversary. [42] |
| Unknown | Ryan Barnard, game director of Tom Clancy's The Division , left Massive Entertainment for IO Interactive. [43] |
| March | 7 | Press Play, the developer of Max: The Curse of Brotherhood and Kalimba was closed by Microsoft Studios. [44] |
| 9 | Nexon acquired Big Huge Games, the developer of DomiNations . [45] |
| Riot Games acquired Radiant Entertainment, the developer of Rising Thunder . [46] |
| 14–18 | Game Developers Conference 2016 held in San Francisco, California. [47] |
| 15 | Jagex was acquired by Chinese mining company Shandong Honda. [48] |
| 22 | Bigpoint Games was acquired by Youzu Interactive. [49] |
| Evolution Studios, the developer of MotorStorm and Driveclub , was shut down by Sony Computer Entertainment. [50] |
| The Resident Evil franchise celebrated its 20th anniversary. [51] |
| 24 | Sony Computer Entertainment announced that they had founded a new studio, ForwardWorks to develop mobile games. [52] |
| 31 | n-Space, the developer of Sword Coast Legends , was closed. [53] |
| Sega completed its acquisition of Atlus. Future Atlus-developed titles localized for America will be published by Sega. [54] |
| April | 5 | Karthik and Guha Bala, founders of Vicarious Visions, left the company. [55] |
| 11 | Codemasters announced the company had employed the majority of Evolution Studios' employees. [56] |
| 14 | Leonard Boyarsky left Blizzard Entertainment to join Obsidian Entertainment. [57] |
| 18 | GameStop announced GameTrust, a new publishing division. [58] |
| 20 | Microsoft announced the discontinuation of the production of Xbox 360. [59] |
| 22 | Tatsuya Minami, president of PlatinumGames, left the company. [60] |
| 22–24 | PAX East 2016 held at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. [61] |
| 25 | Patrice Desilets gained back the rights to 1666 Amsterdam and settled the lawsuit with Ubisoft. [62] |
| 26 | NIS America announced that they had cut ties with Atlus after Sega's acquisition of Atlus. [63] |
| SNK Playmore was restructured to form SNK. [64] |
| 29 | Lionhead Studios was closed by Microsoft Studios. [65] |
| May | 10 | Avalanche Software was shut down by parent company Disney Interactive Studios. Disney decided they would not self-publish any titles in the future, and instead rely on external partners. [66] |
| 13 | Yahoo! Games was shut down by Yahoo!. [67] |
| 18 | Electronic Arts announced that they had formed a new studio called Frostbite Lab. [68] |
| The creator of the Madden NFL series, Rich Hilleman, left Electronic Arts. [69] |
| IGN purchased assets of GameTrailers from Defy Media. [70] |
| 30 | Starbreeze Studios acquired the Payday franchise from 505 Games. [71] |
| June | 1 | Vivendi succeeded in Gameloft's hostile takeover, seizing control from the Guillemot brothers. [72] |
| 2 | Techland established a new publishing label called Techland Publishing. [73] |
| 3 | Aaron Linde, the writer of Battleborn , left Gearbox Software. [74] |
| 6 | Future Publishing purchased Imagine Publishing, the owner of GamesTM . [75] |
| 10 | Ubisoft Casablanca was closed by Ubisoft. [76] |
| 12–14 | Electronic Arts held their first fan-orientated public event named EA Play. [77] |
| 14–16 | E3 2016 was held at the Los Angeles Convention Center. [78] |
| 21 | Supercell, the developer of Clash of Clans , was acquired by Tencent for $8.6 billion. [79] |
| 23 | The Sonic the Hedgehog franchise celebrated its 25th anniversary. |
| July | 1 | Josh Mosqueira, the director of Diablo III , announced that he had left Blizzard Entertainment. [80] |
| 5 | Sega announced that they had acquired Endless Space developer Amplitude Studios. [81] |
| 8 | Adam Boyes, VP of third party relations & developer technology group of Sony Interactive Entertainment, departed from the company. [82] |
| 11 | Splash Damage, the developer of the two Enemy Territory games, was acquired by Chinese chicken meat company Leyou. [83] |
| 19 | Dino Patti, co-founder of Playdead, departed the company. [84] |
| August | 3–13 | The International 2016, the second highest paying eSports tournament in history, was held at the KeyArena in Seattle. [85] |
| 4–7 | QuakeCon 2016 was held in Hilton Anatole in Dallas. [86] |
| 5 | Relentless Software, the developer of the Buzz! series, shut down. [87] |
| 12 | Nordic Games, the company that acquired most THQ's franchises, rebranded to THQ Nordic. [88] |
| 15–16 | Game Developers Conference Europe 2016 was held in Cologne, Germany. |
| 17–21 | Gamescom 2016 held in Cologne, Germany. [89] |
| 21 | Shinzo Abe appears at the 2016 Summer Olympics closing ceremony out of a warp pipe while wearing Mario's hat to promote the 2020 Summer Olympics. [90] |
| 29 | Independent developer Renegade Kid was replaced by two companies: Atooi (who owns all of Renegade Kid's 2D IPs) and Infinitizmo (which owns all of Renegade Kid's 3D IPs). [91] |
| September | 2–5 | PAX West 2016 held at the Washington State Convention Center. |
| 13 | Microsoft Studios launched Xbox Play Anywhere, a cross-play program between Windows 10 and Xbox One. [92] |
| Chris Metzen announced his departure from Blizzard Entertainment. [93] |
| 15–18 | Tokyo Game Show was held and celebrated its 20th Anniversary |
| 21 | Blizzard Entertainment announced that they would be phasing out their online system Battle.net. [94] |
| 28 | Ubisoft acquired Ketchapp, the developer of 2048 . [95] |
| October | 12–13 | Steam Dev Days held in Seattle, Washington. [96] |
| 17 | United Front Games, the developer of Sleeping Dogs , shut down. [97] |
| 20 | Nintendo publicly announces its next home console, the Switch. [98] |
| 21 | The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists begins a strike against eleven American video game developers and publishers over payments of residuals to voice and motion capture artists in video games. [99] |
| 25 | The Tomb Raider franchise celebrated its 20th anniversary. |
| November | 4–5 | BlizzCon 2016 held in Anaheim, California. [100] |
| December | 1 | Annapurna Pictures establish video game division Annapurna Interactive. [101] |
| The Game Awards 2016 held in Los Angeles, California. |
| 3–4 | PlayStation Experience 2016 held in Anaheim, California. |
| 16 | Shinji Hirano, the former president of Konami Europe, became the CEO of Kojima Productions. [102] |
| 20 | Atlus formed a new development studio called Studio Zero. [103] |
| Crytek closed its studio in Bulgaria, Hungary, Turkey, South Korea, and China. [104] |
