Update Patch | August 2024
A month named after a Taylor Swift song, August had plenty of excellence to savour. People flocked to Köln for Gamescom, and others descended on Wembley Stadium for either the aforementioned pop star or in my case, to watch AEW All In and one of the greatest wrestlers of all time win the World Championship. All in all, pretty busy. Games also were releasing in their droves, with Black Myth: Wukong, a new Steamworld entry, Concord, Star Wars: Outlaws and a bounty of indies all releasing to varying degrees of critical and commercial success. Meanwhile, news was also in supply.
1. Comms From Gamescom
The aforementioned Gamescom took place from the 21st August, with a record 335,000 visitors descending on the Koelnmesse to check out demos and games from developers and publishers big and small.
The event started with the Opening Night Live event run by Geoff Keighley with highlights including:
A reveal of Mafia: The Old Country, a new Mafia entry set in Sicily.
A poorly timed announcement of another fourth entry in Borderlands 4.
A surprise Peter Molyneux appearance to unveil his next game, Masters of Albion, a strategy game blending many inspirations from his previous games including Fable and Black & White.
An extended look at survival MMO Dune: Awakening showing character creation, vehicles, combat and more.
Another trailer for Indiana Jones and The Great Circle confirming a 9th December release date and the release of the game on PS5 in Spring 2025
A new anthology series for Amazon Prime called Secret Level with showrunner Tim Miller (Love, Death & Robots) revealing each episode will be based around a different game series. Games already confirmed include Mega Man, Armored Core, Pac-Man, Sifu, God of War, Concord and more.
Coverage continues to flood out of Gamescom following numerous demos on and off the show floor, with previews of Atlus’ Metaphor: ReFantazio, Avowed, Atomfall, Monster Hunter: Wilds and many more upcoming games. Other adjacent announcements included Microsoft unveiling a new adaptive controller in the Xbox Adaptive Joystick.
2. Xbox’s Simple Exclusivity Question
Of course, the aforementioned reveal of Indiana Jones and The Great Circle’s PS5 release date once again saw questions raised for Microsoft around their first-party strategy. Certainly, the figures and talk suggest more games from Microsoft would be going to other platforms in the future.
The trend certainly seems that way and not without reason for Xbox. According to Windows Central, Rare’s Sea of Thieves which arrived on PS5 earlier this year with three other former Xbox exclusives has sold over 1 million copies on Sony’s Platform. The online pirating game (the “yar har fiddly dee” kind, not the torrenting kind) was the most downloaded game on PS5 in both Europe and North America in the month of May.
Xbox’s Big Cheese Phil Spencer was at Gamescom this year and in an appearance on Xbox On, touted the reasoning behind the aforementioned announcement of the Indiana Jones PS5 reveal. In this, Spencer said that Xbox would “learn” from the games already released on PS5. Whilst Spencer was keen to stress “Xbox console players are as high as they’ve ever been”, he did tie it back to their commitment to the wider Microsoft company, stating “We run a business… the bar is high for us in terms of the delivery that we have to give back to the company”. Spencer also spoke about there being “a lot of pressure on the industry” in terms of growth, and trying to “anticipate… more change”.
Between these words and the sales figures, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Xbox move more future exclusives onto other platforms with the ecosystem itself (Xbox Game Pass, xCloud, PC and Console) being its USP.
3. More Cuts At Ubisoft
The sky is blue, water is wet, and job cuts are happening across the gaming industry in 2024. This month, it’s Ubisoft making more cuts.
The company, in a press release, announced that 45 staff would be affected in its global publishing and Asia-Pacific divisions in order to “adapt them to the market evolution with a more efficient and agile approach”
Separately, layoffs were also made to two of its US subsidiaries in Ubisoft San Francisco and Red Storm Entertainment with another total of 45 employees affected. In a statement given to IGN, the company said the decision was necessary “to align these studios’ organisations with their future business and development objectives.” Red Storm had been working on Tom Clancy’s The Division Heartland before its cancellation earlier this year.
4. Equity Responds To Performers’ Surprise Scripts Controversy
With the recent calling of the SAG-AFTRA voice acting strike, UK union Equity has been in the news with its own issues to work on.
Whilst Equity has stood in support in SAG-AFTRA, it isn’t organising its own dispute as it doesn’t have a collective agreement with UK game vendors. In the meantime, the union has published a new set of guidelines for the industry alongside new recommended minimum rates for performers. These guidelines aren’t necessarily legally binding but have been published by the trade union.
First, the new rates are for AAA games, defined as “games that are created and released typically by mid-size or major publishers”. The recommended rate card suggests a minimum of £300 per hour for voiceover sessions with slightly more depending on if a headcam is used, if the game is a sequel and if the game uses the actor’s likeness. The card also suggests £650 per day for a motion capture session with £850 per day for a full performance capture. According to Equity, these are “reflective of the current, global, agreed rates for voice work”. Of course, these are recommended minimums which can be negotiated between performer and studio.
This is part of Equity’s new Best Practice document aimed at offering fair and good practice for companies. The practice looks to address a number of issues, including requiring studios to provide “a full summary and outline of the story” and allowing performers to “be able to request a closed set” to tackle a pervasive culture of actors being surprised with explicit and intimate material just before shooting as detailed in a report by the BBC.
The document also has guidance relating to generative AI usage, with the recommendation that studios should “confirm with the performer that the data recorded within the stipulated performance sessions will be used for the stated project only and not re-used in future titles.” If a studio wants to keep the performance data for potential re-use in a library, Equity recommends a “pre-purchase/integration fee should be paid”.
5. Hi-FI Rush Rocks On Through Krafton
Many people criticised Microsoft in April when they closed, amongst four studios, Tango Gameworks, the studio behind The Evil Within franchise and Xbox’s best exclusive this generation, Hi-Fi Rush. However, the studio and IP have been miraculously revived in a surprise announcement as detailed by GamesIndustry.biz.
South Korean publisher Krafton (PUBG, The Callisto Protocol) have acquired Tango Gameworks and the IP for Hi-Fi Rush as part of a ‘strategic agreement’ facilitated between Krafton and Xbox. Whilst there are no details on any compensation or transaction, Krafton has confirmed that the deal doesn’t affect the availability of Tango’s previous works.
Of course, the nature of this odd deal and the intermittent time saw Tango employees seeking new jobs. Whilst Krafton did aim to “inherit the entire development team” as detailed by Stephen Totilo, Krafton have acquired about half of the team, totalling 50 employees, from the original studio.
6. Deaths of Rachael Lillis and Atsuko Tanaka
Sad news emerged following the passing of two talented voice actors who have made massive impacts on the industry.
Firstly, Rachael Lillis passed away at the age of 55 after a battle with breast cancer. Lillis had a lengthy career in voice acting most notably as Misty, Jessie and Jigglypuff in the Pokémon show, as well as the same characters in film adaptations and voicing Jigglypuff for the Super Smash Bros. games. Her career included roles in other series included Hunter X Hunter, Sonic X and numerous anime dubs. Tributes were lead by Ash voice actress Veronica Taylor, who called Lillis an “extraordinary talent” and “a bright light that shone through her voice”. A GoFundMe set up by her family raised over $100,000 which will go towards payment of medical bills and funeral costs.
Secondly, Atsuko Tanaka died aged 61 after an undisclosed year-long illness on the 20th as confirmed by her son. Tanaka had an incredible and wide-ranging career going back to the early 90s where she began a career that she had aimed to do since childhood, as detailed by Crunchyroll. Tanaka would take numerous roles for games both made in Japan and elsewhere, including Chun-Li in Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, Eleanor Varrot in the Valkyria Chronicles series, Professor Layton and the Curious Village, Trish & Eva in Devil May Cry 5 and Bayonetta herself in the eponymous series. Other roles in games include Lara Croft, Tess in The Last of Us, Cassandra in Dragon Age II and more.However, her biggest role was as protagonist Motoko Kusanagi in 1995’s Ghost in the Shell and 2004’s Ghost in the Shell: Innocence.
We would like to pass on our condolences and thoughts to the family and friends of both Lillis and Tanaka who have left indelible marks on the games industry and beyond. We also want to share the NHS advice on breast cancer in women to raise awareness of the disease and how to spot it.
7. Warner Bros.’ Gaming Division Continues To Exist
Warner Bros. continues to make its way through the universe seemingly at random, with some concerning gaming news for the company.
Firstly, an earnings call for the company this month saw its gaming revenue decrease by 41% from last year. Last year, the company had Hogwarts Legacy but this year has seen the poor release of Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League which was acknowledged in February as having “fallen short of our expectations”. The earnings report saw the company posting a Q2 revenue of $9.7 billion but posting a $10 billion net loss in the process.
The earnings call saw CEO David Zaslav and Global Streaming & Games President JB Perette answer questions about their strategy going forward. According to IGN, Perette emphasised continued investment in the “free-to-play space” which he hopes will “provide some more balance to our games business”. Perette also acknowledged the industry’s challenge of launching new IP being “harder and harder for a number of reasons” and contrasted that with Warner Bros. IPs that are “in high demand”. Zaslav floated allowing other development studios to make games based around their own IP, stating “there's also a lot of interest among others in coming to take advantage of some of that IP for gaming, which we're looking at.”
Whilst all this was said, the end of the month also saw the news of the closure of WB Games’ mobile card game Harry Potter: Magic Awakened with most of the game’s servers due to shut down and the game removed from storefronts on the 29th of October.
Patch Notes:
Balatro continued its massive success in 2024 with free DLC packs based off other games such as The Witcher and Among Us as it passed the 2 million sales mark.
On the other side of things, the Borderlands film ended up bombing at the box office, with the film out of most cinemas after 3 weeks and garnering just $9.3 million at the global box office in its opening weekend on a reported budget of at least $115 million.
Plenty of games were revealed outside of Gamescom and the Nintendo Direct, including a roguelite sequel for 2021’s Lost in Random, Sega’s announcement of Two Point Museum, and even another remastered Atari platform due for release this winter in the Atari 7800+.
This included an extended look at Dragon Age: The Veilguard which gave a better look at its more action-focused combat, more character reveals including the return of series staple Morrigan, and confirmation of a Halloween release date.
The month also saw launches for the new mobile Epic Games Store, and the launch of PS5 exclusive Concord which sadly failed to attract a large player base with just under 700 playing the game on debut on Steam.
The Sunday Times published the 2024 Gaming Rich List, with Playrix founders Igor and Dmitry Bukhman topping the list as billionaires and other notable millionaire figures including Rockstar co-founders Sam and Dan Hauser, King co-founder Riccardo Zacconi and UK retailer Game co-founder Neil Taylor.
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick spoke, following the company's most recent financial call, on the possibility of Take-Two changing its position on putting games day one on subscription services. GamesIndustry.biz quoted Zelnick that the decision for new Call of Duty games on Game Pass that “It won’t affect our decisions… because our decisions are rational.”
Roblox has found itself banned from Turkey, with the government stating the ban is a result of an investigation finding the game can lead to child exploitation according to The Verge.
Sega continued its work on film adaptations with the announcement of 1993 fighter Eternal Champions due to be adapted with Jurassic World trilogy writer Derek Connelly attached to the project.
Writer’s Note:
With E3 no longer existing, it feels like the big convention spots are now less centralised in
America with more emphasis on the Tokyo Game Show, PAX events and conference style events like GDC. This is certainly for the better given the travel costs associated with L.A. This month, Gamescom demonstrated the usual hype from Germany but once again had the Opening Night Live event which showcased one of the worst components of gaming in the form of endless trailers.
Full disclosure, the only time I watch trailers outside of gaming showcases is when I am in the cinema. They have formed part of a culture that is pervasive in gaming where hype is more important than actual consumption, where the most important thing is the next thing as opposed to what is out at the time. The ONL show felt like this more than ever, speeding through most trailers in a blur of ray-traced promises and occasionally pausing to actually talk about games and in one case, a limited series on Amazon Prime. I’m not here to say that these events shouldn’t exist, but they do enforce a marketing style that calls for people to pay attention for a minute, get hyped, and then move on to the next thing.
Of course, that gives way to a convention where the actual demos, wandering through the Koelnmesse and trying out games creates genuine hype that leads to people finding their favourites. The hype where people pick up a game and leave wanting more of it. I think of games like Flat Heroes, a game I played at EGX with friends that is one of my favourite multiplayer games. I think of Jusant, which I played last year at Gamescom and was feverishly anticipating its release last year. More than ever, we need actual conventions for that reason.
