2024 has been quite a lovely year for gamers. Innovative, polished, and thrilling games like Astro Bot, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and Metaphor Refantazio have formed a steady stream of high-quality entertainment, ensuring that audiences always have something impressive to look forward to. But 2024, in many ways, has been a lot like 2023—for better and for worse.
Countless high-quality games have dropped in the past 12 months, but this year has been defined as much by continued industry struggles, major blows to beloved studios, and industry-wide missteps as by its many successes. Some of 2024’s more troubling phenomena, like the ongoing layoffs at major developers, are continuations of last year’s headlines, while others, like the shocking closures of behemoth gaming companies, feel much more surprising and unprecedented. Through everything, both the good and bad, 2024 has proven one thing above all: the video game industry is hardly ever predictable. The following list is alphabetized.
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Akira Toriyama’s Death Sends Shockwaves Through the Gaming Industry
One of 2024’s most difficult moments was the death of Akira Toriyama, the creative mind behind not just the revolutionary Dragon Ball manga, but several seminal JRPGs. He worked as a key designer on several games, with some of the most notable including Chrono Trigger, Blue Dragon, and the Dragon Quest franchise.
While his passing represented a serious loss for the realms of gaming, manga, and anime, it was also a moment of sober reverence and union. It’s no secret that the gaming community is often characterized by strife and conflict, but Toriyma’s death brought a number of video game creators and consumers together to celebrate his life. Both on the internet and in real life, fans and fellow creators expressed an outpouring of grief and respect for a man whose work defined countless childhoods and a sizable chunk of the game industry. Remembering Toriyama’s impact has certainly been a significant part of 2024, and though his death is devastating for many, it’s also a reminder of the power that individual creatives can hold in this space.
Concord’s Release and Shutdown
This year also saw the unprecedented and disastrous launch of Concord, Sony’s Overwatch-like team shooter. Concord was shut down after only two weeks on the market. The cause of this tremendous failure has been debated at length, with arguments blaming everything from poor art design and marketing to the game’s premium price tag. In reality, its unprecedented shutdown was likely a result of all these factors and more. Though the game has been the subject of much ridicule for its historically bad performance, it can also teach the industry valuable lessons about issues like monetization, trend-chasing, and overspending.
Disney Invests $1.5Bn in Epic Games
In February, Disney announced its plan to invest a hefty $1.5 billion in Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite, the Epic Games Store, and Unreal Engine. The union arrived after years of more casual collaboration between the companies, as Fortnite has regularly featured a number of cosmetics and in-game events based on Disney’s properties, especially Marvel and Star Wars. What exactly this partnership will entail will be revealed over the next few years, but the companies describe the alliance as being in service of “an all-new games and entertainment universe,” so one can expect that Disney will be helping Epic Games buttress the rapidly growing metaverse that is Fortnite.
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Game Informer Shuts Down After 33 Years
In one of the most shocking moments of the year, print and web publication Game Informer shuttered its doors in August. This closure seemed to come out of nowhere, as the outlet had always been a beacon of strong reporting, a hub for talented journalists and writers, and an embodiment of the industry and video game media. Indeed, Game Informer was one of the most important gaming outlets in the world for over three decades, and losing it is a major blow to the industry.
The closure is all the more brutal due to how its online content was handled. Many times, when an online publication shuts down, the website itself stays up for some time, being archived either by its controlling powers or by its audience. This was not the case with the Game Informer closure. The Game Informer site was swiftly and unceremoniously wiped this year, and those who visit the URL will be greeted by nothing more than a short, vague message about the outlet being shut down, meaning that all of its web content is lost for good.
Layoffs, Unions, and Strikes
- Game industry layoffs in 2024: 14,600
- Over 150 game companies have laid off employees in 2024.
Layoffs Surpass 14,000 in 2024
Conflict between game companies and their employees has continued to dominate headlines in 2024, just as it did in 2023. Last year was characterized by en masse layoffs, with the industry at large seeing a loss of over 10,000 jobs. Such devastating job losses were, inconceivably, surpassed in 2024, as an estimated 14,600 game industry employees have lost their jobs over the past twelve months. Making matters worse is the fact that this doesn’t seem to be isolated to just one sector of the industry, as smaller, independent studios have seen the same significant staff reductions as giants like Sony and Microsoft.
SAG-AFTRA Strikes Were Reignited
Last year, the Screen Actors Guild went on strike to protest unfair wages and working conditions in Hollywood for actors. This year, the strike has continued, though with a particular emphasis on AI-generated voice work. Over 2,600 video game voice actors are participating in the strike, which began on July 26, and they are currently seeking a contract with a number of game companies to support greater transparency and collaboration relating to AI voice work, including a clause requiring said companies to obtain explicit consent from actors before replicating their voices with the use of AI.
SAG-AFTRA has gained a bit of ground in this fight thus far, reaching an agreement with leading AI voice generation company Ethovox this October. The agreement secures compensation rights for voice actors who consent to have their voice data used to build a “foundational voice model.” At the time of writing, SAG-AFTRA’s negotiations with the relevant gaming entities are ongoing.
Video Game Unions Continue to Push Back on Exploitation, Low Wages, and Workplace Misconduct
News of rampant abuse, exploitation, and generally poor workplace conditions within the game industry these past few years have highlighted the need for action from within, and that’s exactly what many employees are attempting to do with unions. Thankfully, more and more workers in the video game space have been organizing, and 2024 was a significant year for this. Employees at Blizzard, for instance, formed the largest wall-to-wall union in the industry’s history this year, and ZeniMax Online joined the Communication Workers of America—both of these events represent massive progress for people who make essential contributions to video gaming. Hopefully, this trend continues over the next several years, helping to stanch the myriad problems facing game industry workers.
Nintendo Sues Palworld Developer Pocketpair
Burgeoning Japanese developer Pocketpair has been fighting to preserve its global sensation, Palworld. Nintendo, in conjunction with The Pokemon Company, issued a lawsuit against Pocketpair in September, arguing that Palworld infringes on various design patents, including capturing creatures in small balls—a central mechanic of both Palworld (previously) and Pokemon. The companies are seeking damages of 10 million yen, or roughly $64,000 USD, but also an injunction against Palworld‘s final release. In other words, Nintendo claims that Pocketpair must shut down the game and not release it beyond its early access build. Pocketpair currently intends to fight the lawsuit in court.
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PS5 Pro Hits the Market
Sony was the recipient of ridicule, praise, and everything in between when it launched the PlayStation 5 Pro on November 7 of this year. The hardware refresh wasn’t totally unexpected, especially after both Sony and Microsoft issued pro/enthusiast models of the PS4 and Xbox One, but public perception regarding features like 60FPS and 4K has changed dramatically since then. Such features are no longer seen as the cutting-edge developments that they once were. The PS5 Pro has also been criticized for its high price point ($700) and lack of a disc drive and vertical stand.
Regardless, the PS5 Pro is technically the most powerful console on the market right now, offering high resolutions and framerates simultaneously rather than forcing players to choose between them. PSSR, Sony’s new AI upscaling software, has been instrumental in the PS5 Pro’s goal to provide the best performance and image quality possible, but only time will tell how future games look, move, and feel on this more advanced device.
Switch 2 Rumors, Leaks, and Hype Dominate the Year
In other console news, Nintendo is pushing ahead with its currently unnamed successor to the Nintendo Switch. The Switch 2, as it has been referred to colloquially, was confirmed by Nintendo itself this year, with the company stating that an official reveal will come before March 2025. Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa also confirmed that the new device will be backward compatible with the original Switch—something that is sure to come as a relief to Nintendo fans. Aside from this information, though, very little has been revealed about the Switch 2 by Nintendo itself. But a number of rumors and leaks, some more plausible than others, have painted a much more detailed picture.
The Biggest Nintendo Switch 2 Leaks and Rumors of 2024
- Magnetic Joy-Cons
- Mario Kart 9 will be a launch title
- An 8-inch screen
- Two USB-C ports
- 4K, 60FPS capabilities
- Will launch in three different colors
- Will launch in May, with preorders beginning in March
Although the above leaks and rumors are certainly reasonable (with the specification info coming directly from Switch 2 dummy models), they should still be taken with a grain of salt and not wholly accepted as fact.
Xbox’s Closure of Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin
With the deaths of beloved creators and record-breaking layoffs, it would be unreasonable to call the closures of Tango Gameworks and Arcane Austin the most tragic events of the year, but they were perhaps the most unfair in the eyes of many fans. Xbox shuttered Tango just a year after it released the award-winning HiFi Rush—circumstances that just don’t compute for many. The studio is also known for the well-received The Evil Within series and the devilishly stylish Ghostwire: Tokyo. Thankfully, just when all seemed lost, PUBG publisher Krafton purchased Tango Gameworks, offering hope for its future.
Such a happy ending has yet to be realized for Arkane Austin, another storied studio under the Bethesda/Xbox umbrella that shut down this year. Responsible for such classics as the Dishonored duology and the 2017 Prey reboot, the studio stumbled a bit with last year’s poorly received Redfall, which many believe was the impetus for the closure. Whether this is the case or not, Arkane Austin shutting down came as a massive blow to gaming fans across the globe, as it was often considered one of the best AAA developers in the industry, even in Redfall’s wake.
Xbox Games Going Multiplatform
2024 saw Xbox adopt a new strategy where many of its games are going to be multiplatform. While the official billing is still on a case-by-case basis, it seems likely now that there’ll be more multiplat cases than exclusive ones. This past spring, four Xbox exclusives—Pentiment, Sea of Thieves, Grounded, and Hi-Fi Rush—were ported to the PlayStation 5, with Pentiment and Grounded coming to the Nintendo Switch as well. What’s more is that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Xbox’s biggest game of the year, is set to come to PS5 in 2025, as is The Outer Worlds 2, another Xbox-owned property.
While the jury is out on how effective this strategy is for the company, it’s an understandable one with the ballooning costs of game development.