Update Patch | January 2024 - Everything Sucks, Sorry
Here we are, one month down into 2024 and everything sucks. Happy New Year!
At least video games exist and provide some solace from the warmongers and despots of the world. Ubisoft inexplicably made a good Prince of Persia entry, Ryu Ga Gotoku explicably made another good Like A Dragon entry, and Sony remastered a Last of Us again. Sadly, the gaming news was largely negative, starting with the biggest trend of 2023 continuing into 2024.
1. Layoffs At Microsoft, Riot, And More
2023 saw massive numbers of layoffs and January has already seen more across the gaming industry.
The biggest news saw Microsoft announce that approximately 1900 employees would be laid off across its newly acquired Activision Blizzard, along with Xbox and Zenimax teams. In a memo obtained by The Verge, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer explained “the leadership of Microsoft Gaming and Activision Blizzard is committed to aligning on a strategy and an execution plan with a sustainable cost structure that will support the whole of our growing business. Together, we’ve set priorities, identified areas of overlap, and ensured that we’re all aligned on the best opportunities for growth.” These layoffs impact roughly 8% of the workforce and affects numerous teams, with Toys for Bob (Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time) suffering heavily and Blizzard President, Mike Ybarra, departing the company along with co-founder and Chief Design Officer Allen Adham. Microsoft this month managed to reach $3 trillion in market cap - making it the most valuable company on Earth. Despite the announcement of a new Overwatch esports series known as the Champions Series, a large number of layoffs were also made to esports divisions across companies.
Riot Games of League of Legends fame also announced layoffs. According to a statement published on the company’s website, 530 employees would be laid off in a move described by Riot as not “to appease shareholders or to hit a quarterly earnings number—it’s a necessity.”. The studio says it will be refocusing resources and “prioritizing” teams behind League of Legends, VALORANT, Wild Rift, Teamfight Tactics and the studio’s “esports, music and entertainment” exploits such as Arcane. Two teams are facing brunt of the reductions. First is the team behind card game Legends of Runeterra with the letter saying it had been “costing significantly more to develop and support [the game] than it generates.”. Second is Riot Forge responsible for the multiple spin-offs subtitled A League of Legends Story, including The Mageseeker, Convergence and Song of Nunu. The studio will no longer produce new titles following the release of Bandle Tale.
Unity has announced another round of layoffs in a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing says the company would lay off approximately 1800 employees, around a quarter of its workforce. The reasoning given from Unity was the ongoing need to “restructure and refocus on its core business, and to position itself for long-term and profitable growth.”
The Embracer Group continues its own layoffs with multiple separate subsidiaries affected this month. Eidos Montreal has been hit with layoffs, with 97 employees affected and according to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, the layoffs have led to an unannounced Deus Ex game being cancelled. Additionally, Gearbox subsidiary Lost Boys Interactive (Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands) saw “a sizable portion” of its employees laid off, according to Studio Producer Jared Pace.
Layoffs also took place at Amazon-owned Twitch and many other studios illustrating the vastness of these layoffs. A website tracking these layoffs has, at the time of writing, estimated that 5700 layoffs have occurred within the first month of 2024 with little sign of the trend slowing down.
2. Xbox Developer Direct And Sony State of Play
When Microsoft wasn’t announcing layoffs, it did nestle in a Developer Direct show following on from the 2023 edition which saw the shadow drop of the excellent Hi-Fi Rush.
This year’s edition was made up of 2024 releases and headlined by a first look at MachineGames’ Indiana Jones And The Great Circle. The game demonstrated puzzle-solving, first-person action and combat all in the style of MachineGames’ traditional art style and trend for battling Nazis matched with the Indiana Jones IP. The other big demonstration came from Obsidian Entertainment’s upcoming RPG Avowed. The presentation mainly focused on the game’s combat that will be familiar to Skyrim players. An update from Ninja Theory on Hellblade II: Senua’s Saga provided another behind-the-scenes look and clarified the game would be “shorter”, though an exact length wasn’t covered.
Oxide Games also provided another look at its upcoming RTS game Ara: History Untold. One third-party update provided was a look at Square Enix’s Visions of Mana which is the first new game in the Mana series in over a decade. Following the conference, rumours emerged that the game would be going on Xbox Game Pass on day one after metadata of google searches for the game indicated as such, but Microsoft has denied this will happen to Eurogamer and this is likely the result of a simple error.
Meanwhile, Sony also took the chance at the end of the month to show its wares at its own State of Play event. The event was headlined by an appearance from Geoff Keighley’s best friend, Hideo Kojima. A long cinematic and gameplay trailer for the now titled Death Stranding 2: On The Beach saw familiar characters returning along with new areas, a new puppet companion, a ship flying out of BB’s mouth, the director of Happy Feet de-mummifying someone and Bryan Cranston shooting electric sheep from a cliffside. That last one was made up. Kojima also appeared to confirm a new IP, codename PHYSINT, is in production between Kojima Productions and Sony, describing it as a “next-generation action espionage” game (and also maybe a movie?). Other announcements included the reveal of a remastered and excellent Sonic Generations coming with additional content framed around Shadow The Hedgehog, a look at combat gameplay for Bloober Team’s remake of Silent Hill 2, confirmation of a remake of Until Dawn, and another look at upcoming action-adventure Stellar Blade. On Silent Hill, Konami announced a free entry entitled Silent Hill: The Short Message that was made available now.
3. GDC Survey
Ahead of the 2024 Game Developers Conference, over 3,000 developers were surveyed on current and future industry trends.
A number of concerns came up in the survey. Layoffs were a particular worry for developers in the survey. 35% of respondents were impacted by layoffs with either themselves or team members being laid off. QA respondents were feeling the pressure of industry the most in the survey. 56% of respondents also expressed concern their company would implement layoffs in the near future. AI was also a large topic on the survey, with 84% of respondents concerned about the ethics around generative AI and a mix of positive and negative reception from respondents, with those in narrative and visual arts responding more negatively than those in business and marketing.
Other interesting trends include one third of developers saying that they, along with their studios, have considered switching or have already switched game engines whilst 48% of respondents said their company were including accessibility options in their games, up by 10% from the previous year.
GDC 2024 takes place in March this year.
4. Subscription Services And Digital Ownership Come Up For Debate
With the increasing number of gaming subscription services and digital marketplaces, a number of companies have weighed in on discussion in the month of January indicating some concern for digital ownership.
Concerns were raised following an interview by Christopher Dring of GamesIndustry.biz with Ubisoft’s director of subscriptions, Philippe Tremblay. In the interview, Tremblay discussed the potential growth of subscription models and how Ubisoft’s subscription model has worked for them with the company getting plenty of subscribers with some dipping in and out. What caused some concern was Tremblay’s comments around player behaviours, stating “[Consumers] got comfortable not owning their CD collection or DVD collection. That's a transformation that's been a bit slower to happen [in games]... If you resume your game at another time, your progress file is still there. That's not been deleted. You don't lose what you've built in the game or your engagement with the game. So it's about feeling comfortable with not owning your game.”
The comments raised concerns about the nature of digital ownership in current marketplaces. One voice keen to weigh in was Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke. In a number of posts on Twitter, Vincke explained “it's going to be a lot harder to get good content if subscription becomes the dominant model and a select group gets to decide what goes to market and what not… We are already all dependent on a select group of digital distribution platforms and discoverability is brutal. Should those platforms all switch to subscription, it'll become savage.”
Castlevania director Samuel Deats, obviously familiar with the Netflix-like model, commented as well stating that “the whole monthly subscription streaming deal is not a business model to chase; it's a freaking mess over here.”
5. Steam Introduce AI Guidelines And SAG-AFTRA Signs An AI Deal
Steam announced changes to its policy around the implementation of AI created assets. In a blog post, the company detailed that it would allow “the vast majority” of games but with a need for disclosure. Firstly, developers need to disclose AI usage in their content survey when submitting the game to Steam. This includes what Steam describes as “Pre-Generated” assets and “Live-Generated” assets and requires developers to either promise or show safeguards that the content doesn’t infringe on any copyright the developers don’t own. Secondly, players can now submit reports to Steam on “content that they believe should have been caught by appropriate guardrails on AI generation.” Whether the policy changes in the future is dependent on “learn(ing) from the games being submitted to Steam, and the legal progress around AI”.
More concerning was an agreement that seemingly came out of nowhere between trade union SAG-AFTRA and AI voice technology company Replica Studios. According to the BBC, the union has stated the deal guarantees “fully informed consent and fair compensation” and in an email to members, the deal was negotiated by a committee with actors who had “significant and diverse experience” in video game voice acting. Many in voice acting circles expressed concern over this deal, including prolific gaming actor Steve Blum who said “Nobody in our community approved this that I know of.” Baldur’s Gate 3 actor Thomas Mitchells described it as “disappointing”. Actress Shelby Young also criticised the lack of approval sought by the union from members as well as former Ash Ketchum voice actor Veronica Taylor. There’s little news yet indicating the union would reverse this agreement.
6. AGDQ 2024
Finally, some good news as the folks over as Games Done Quick began the year with AGDQ 2024, a week of charitable speedrunning that raised over $2.5 million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation.
The week saw plenty of excellent speedrunning across tremendous games. The full set of VODs can be found on this YouTube playlist, but some of the highlights include the following:
The shortest run belongs to an 8:44 run of 1987 game The Last Ninja by janglestorm.
1985 NES game Gyromite was completed in just under 27 minutes by an actual shiba inu called Peanut Butter, with assistance from actual human JSR_.
AGDQ regular Harcacola put together a 40 minute run of last year’s RPG Starfield.
Patch Notes:
On the Kinda Funny Games Daily show, Half Mermaid Productions founder Sam Barlow (Immortality, Telling Lies) announced the studio is working on two new games referred to as “Project C” and “Project D”.
Titan Forge Games has announced a sequel to long-running MOBA Smite with new characters but confirmed that purchased content may not carry over into the second entry.
In exciting adaptation news, Riot Games released a teaser trailer for season 2 of the critically acclaimed League of Legends adaptation, Arcane.
Fortnite Season 5 introduced a playable Metal Gear Solid skins with players able to get skins for Solid Snake and Raiden.
Criticism was levelled at Fortnite and the British Army after the British Army launched a custom-made map in the game as a recruiting tool known as Operation: Belong. The map has since been pulled from the game.
Halo: Infinite will be concluding its seasonal changes with the upcoming season five being the final update before they are replaced with shorter 4-6 week “Operations”.
In the regular U.K. New Year Honours list, co-founders of U.K. studio Rebellion (Sniper Elite franchise, Zombie Army franchise) Chris and Jason Kingsley have been awarded each a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire), the third-highest honour, for their services to the economy.
Also in the U.K., worrying news for players buying pre owned games as retailer Game will be phasing out trade-in items over the first months of 2024.
A film adaptation of Until Dawn is in the pipeline, with David F. Sandberg (Shazam! and Lights Out) set to direct.
