Update Patch | March 2024
A quarter of the way into 2024 and the world is still full of darkness. Thank goodness for March’s raft of games and their fantasies, whether it be Unicorns having Overlords, Dragons having Dogmas once again but with a micro-transactional twist, and a Ronin rising from something or other. Personally, I’ve been getting stuck into last year’s entries this month, going between Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew and Alan Wake 2. At least the news continues, so here’s some.
1. GDC 2024 Highlights And Awards
GDC 2024 took place this month with just under 30,000 attendees descending on San Francisco to show off games, make deals and do other things that people do in San Francisco.
The event hosted plenty of business dealings and reveals, with the hosting of workshops galore for developers and big industry players making announcements. Epic Games held its annual event for Unreal Engine which included details of a preview of version 5.4 launching, and improved memory efficiency for the Nanite material features, alongside other major features. Microsoft also unveiled DirectSR, a new API to facilitate integration of super-resolution through upscaling techniques, such as Nvidia’s DLSS Super Resolution, much more easily for developers.
AI and layoffs dominated talk at the conference, with some companies unveiling AI-facilitated tech including Roblox’s AI-Powered Avatar Auto Setup and Texture Generator. Ubisoft also unveiled NEO NPCs who are made up entirely via AI, with an example being an NPC called Bloom with dialogue that uses the phrase “dynamic duo” as naturally as Adam West did in the 60s.
The conference also saw the yearly awards ceremony with Baldur’s Gate 3 taking home awards for Game of the Year, Best Narrative, Best Design and the audience vote award. Other winners included Alan Wake 2, Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Hi-Fi Rush and Venba.
2. Layoffs Again
Layoffs continued across the industry because of course they did. Firstly, the PlayStation-backed studio Deviation Games has been closed this month. The studio was formed in 2020 and signed a deal with PlayStation in 2021 to produce a new IP for PlayStation. The company suffered from approximately 90 layoffs in 2023 before this closure. According to Deviation Games’ chief HR and Operations officer Kriste Stull, the company will be hosting a “networking event” for employees.
Meanwhile, Sega announced 240 layoffs across their European divisions as well as confirming that Relic Entertainment will be going independent from the publisher. The losses affect Creative Assembly, whose live-service FPS game Hyenas was cancelled last year despite being playable at Gamescom, and also Sega Hardlight (Sonic Dream Team) to a lesser extent.
During GDC, Xbox chief Phil Spencer spoke about the industry’s issues with layoffs. Spencer is familiar with this topic following the 1900 job cuts at the start of the year at Microsoft and Activision Blizzard. In an interview with Polygon, Spencer pointed to the massively increased budgets for large studios resulting in reduced risk on new IP which “impinges on the creativity of this industry”, exclusives being increasingly “prohibitive” due to their lack of reach and that these costs aren’t accounting for flat console growth in the last financial year.
3. BAFTA Game Award Nominations
Awards season continues as the BAFTA Games Awards confirmed its nominations. Unsurprisingly, Baldur’s Gate 3, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and Alan Wake 2 have the most nominations with ten, nine and eight respectively.
Alongside the usual nominations, BAFTA has a few bespoke categories. The first is the British Game category, with the nominees being Cassette Beasts, Dead Island 2, Disney Illusion Island, Football Manager 2024, Viewfinder, and Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin. Additionally, the awards have separate categories for Performer in a Leading Role and Performer In a Supporting Role, with performers from Baldur’s Gate 3 nabbing five of those nominations between the two categories.
The ceremony itself will take place on the 11th April from 19:00 BST and will be hosted by comedian Phil Wang.
4. Xbox Partner Preview
Xbox provided a Partner Preview presentation this month with trailers and details on third-party games coming to the platform.
The biggest headlines were the confirmation of a release date for MMO Final Fantasy XIV on the console, arriving on the 21st of March, and GSC Game World’s S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Legends of the Zone Trilogy, containing the three games prior to the upcoming S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2, releasing the same day as the preview on Xbox, PlayStation and Steam.
Other interesting trailers include cinematic outings for Sleight of Hand, a noir stealth game from RiffRaff Games, and Frogwares’ The Sinking City 2 which is taking a more horror-themed approach. Capcom were also on hand with a gameplay trailer for its action-strategy game Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess showing the day and night cycles and the varying gameplay for each.
5. Apex Legends Tournament Drama
Drama in the ol’ Esports/esports/E-Sports (don’t get mad at me, its one of those) community this month as an NA Tournament final of Apex Legends had to be stopped after players were hacked and cheating tools were installed on their devices.
During the game, players Genburten and ImperialHal found they were given wallhack and aimbot abilities respectively. Both players noticed and alerted other players so the game could be stopped. The hacks were done by Destroyer2009, who took responsibility and in an interview with TechCrunch, saying they had performed the hacks “for fun” and to show issues in security to a large audience.
Respawn has since provided a series of updates to the “game and player security” but the event did raise concern over the Easy Anti-Cheat software and its security. In a statement, Easy Anti-Cheat said “At this time - we are confident that there is no RCE [remote code execution] vulnerability within EAC being exploited. We will continue to work closely with our partners for any follow-up support needed”.
6. Akira Toriyama Passes Away
One of the biggest and saddest pieces of entertainment news was the passing of legendary Japanese artist and designer Akira Toriyama at the age of 68.
Toriyama had a remarkable impact on Japanese manga, anime, video games and pop culture. His most famous creation was that of Dragon Ball with the first manga releasing in November 1984 and going on in countless adaptations all forged with Toriyama’s designs at heart. He would go on to design characters and stories for Dragon Ball adaptations as well as various series, including Sand Land which has a game adaptation coming out in April.
Toriyama excelled in the gaming space with credits for character designs on numerous franchises, including the Blue Dragon and Dragon Ball games, the 1995 classic Chrono Trigger and the Dragon Quest franchise for its entire lifespan, including the design of the famous Slime that became a staple of the series.
Toriyama passed away from an acute subdural haematoma according to Bird Studio and Capsule Corporation Tokyo. The NHS describe a subdural haematoma as an injury where “blood collects between the skull and the surface of the brain” and it is typically caused by a “head injury”. An acute subdural haematoma is “the most serious type” of this injury.
7. Studios Going Independent
The consolidation and excessive mergers & acquisitions have been well documented throughout the last few years. However, this month has notably seen some studios going independent following recent acquisitions.
The Embracer Group has confirmed the sales of companies under its umbrella as a part of its long-running restructuring program. The company announced the sale of Saber Interactive for $247 million to Beacon Interactive, a company founded by Saber Interactive founder Matthew Karch. All straightforward then. In a statement, the Swedish group confirmed that Saber Interactive will retain Zen Studios’ back catalogue and upcoming titles (Operencia: The Stolen Sun), Aspyr (Tomb Raider I - III Remastered) which have had trouble recently with the poor launch of the Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection, and Tripwire Interactive (Killing Floor). Saber also has an option to acquire 4A Games (Metro franchise). Of the sale, Embracer Group CEO Lars Wingefors described it as a “win-win solution” for both companies. Karch affirmed that the move was “jointly… the right decision” and the move “safeguards the livelihoods of hundreds of professionals”.
The Embracer Group has also agreed to the sale of Gearbox Entertainment to Rockstar Games’ owners Take-Two Interactive for $460 million. The statement confirms that Gearbox’s development studios as well as rights to the Borderlands, Homeworld, Risk of Rain, Brothers in Arms and Duke Nukem franchises will be sold. Wingefors said the sale would “lower business risk and improve profitability. Gearbox Entertainment CEO, Randy Pitchford, said the sale will “ensure that the experiences we have in development at Gearbox will be the best they can possibly be”.
As part of Sega’s aforementioned restructuring, the company has sold off Relic Entertainment (Company of Heroes, Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War, Age of Empires IV) which has now become an independent studio. Head of Sega Europe, Jurgen Post, said Sega would “work closely” with Relic on its move. Relic has confirmed in a statement that support for their titles will continue and said the companies would “remain friends and colleagues”.
Patch Notes:
Arkane co-founder Raphaël Colantonio has teased his next game at Wolfeye Studios after Weird West, with plans for a sci-fi RPG.
Another game that was revealed around GDC included a teaser trailer for Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra from Skydance New Media, the games division of the film studio with Amy Hennig (Uncharted, Jak and Daxter, Forspoken) as the new studio’s co-president.
A game that’s returned to sale is another genre RPG in Obsidian’s Alpha Protocol, with the game now available on GOG following licensing issues forcing the game off of digital storefronts.
Following his departure from Tango Gameworks, Resident Evil director Shinji Mikami has seemingly confirmed his new studio KAMUY Inc..
Steam broke its record for the most concurrent users this month with 34,649,583 players all logged in on Sunday 3rd March with just over 11 million of those playing a game at the time.
Remedy announced that critical darling Alan Wake 2 has sold 1.3 million copies as of February 2024.
Underrated indie side-scrolling adventure Planet of Lana will get a PS5 release on the 16th of April, following its Xbox exclusivity last year.
Speaking of indies going to other platforms, the TV adaptation of Among Us continues to gather pace, with Ashley Johnson (The Last of Us) and Elijah Wood (Lord of the Rings franchise) joining the cast.
Discord will soon be allowing developers to embed games and apps within the platform.
Actors union SAG-AFTRA may go on strike soon against gaming companies following a breakdown in recent negotiations, with chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Island describing the likelihood of strike action as being “50-50, or more likely”.
Following the incredible, eye-watering success of Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO and President of Global Streaming and Games J.B. Perette has confirmed the company will “double down” on live service games to bring “meaningful growth” for the company going forward.
Ending on good news, Capcom has announced a plan to increase salaries by 5% on average and an increase to starting salaries in this financial year for workers at the company.
