| Date | Name | Age | Notability |
|---|
| January 25 | Mark Tseitlin | 78 | Israeli chess player |
| January 28 | Gilles Mirallès | 55 | French chess player |
| February 6 | Abram Khasin | 98 | Russian chess international master |
| February 14 | Borislav Ivkov | 88 | Serbian chess Grandmaster |
| March | Ralph Anspach | 96 | Economics professor and designer of Anti-Monopoly |
| March 26 | Garry Leach | 67 | Comics and Magic: The Gathering artist |
| March 28 | Scott Bennie | 61 | Role-playing game and video game designer |
| May 6 | George Pérez | 67 | Comics artist who also contributed to role-playing games |
| May 7 | Yuri Averbakh | 100 | Russian chess grandmaster |
| June 2 | Ken Kelly | 76 | Fantasy and game artist |
| June 5 | Aleksandr Nikitin | 87 | Russian chess player |
| June 13 | Maureen Hiron | | Game designer |
| June 13 [1] [2] | Paul Lidberg | 55 | Game designer |
| July 13 | Igor Naumkin | 56 | Russian chess Grandmaster |
| July 14 | Nikolai Krogius | 91 | Russian chess Grandmaster |
| July 25 | Richard Tait | 58 | Game designer who co-created Cranium |
| September 2 | Mišo Cebalo | 77 | Croatian chess Grandmaster |
| September 2 | Lee Hammock | 45 | American role-playing game and video game designer |
| November 29 | John Prados | 71 | Wargame designer, notably Third Reich |
| December 12 | Kim Mohan | 73 | Game designer and editor for TSR, New Infinities Productions, and Wizards of the Coast |
| December 31 | Darren Watts | 53 | Game designer, one of the founders of DOJ Inc., and president of Hero Games |
