Welcome back to your monthly report of game news, where I do my best to compile everything into one convenient ad-free place, so you don’t have to worry about the pesky cracks that info can fall through at other publications!
Thanks and credit for the banner image as always goes to the Avocado’s one and only Space Robot!
The Game Awards 2023 (and the big pre-TGA stuff)
December 4th: After new gameplay footage leaks and ultimately the entire trailer leaking early, Rockstar went ahead and officially released the debut Grand Theft Auto VI trailer a day early. GTA6 is now officially scheduled for a 2025* launch window for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S|X, with the PC port officially confirmed to be releasing at a delay as is Rockstar’s tradition. The trailer, which has already outperformed all previous series reveal trailers on Youtube, showcases a luxurious current-gen rendering of Vice City and outer Leonida, dual protagonists and romantic couple Lucia and Jason, and the attempt to better thread the needle between Rockstar’s anarchic fun side and the capital t Tragedy storytelling of GTA4 or Red Dead Redemption 2. Bonnie and Clyde within a Jason Mendoza Simulator if you will.
*Previously internally understood to be Early/Q1 2025 , but launch window bet-hedging is inevitable.
Additionally, Mark Darrah and co. at Bioware published a new blog post and a new trailer for Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, promising a full game reveal and launch announcement will arrive in Summer 2024. This year’s trailer focused on the series’ setting, as seen below, revealing at least three more previously unexplored corners of Thedas will be seen for the first time in the game on top of Tevinter: Rivain, Antiva, and the Anderfels.
December 5th/6th: Several studios saw further layoffs. Embracer Group fired an indefinite number of people at New World Interactive, which develops the ongoing multiplayer shooter Insurgency: Sandstorm. Despite initial reporting, New World was not closed entirely.
Indie Tinybuild, who I previously covered for their horrific worker surveillance plans, fired 30% of workers and completely shuttered in-house development team Hakjak.
Australian indie League of Geeks saw the most severe action with over half of its staff laid off, including the entire team for early access space management sim Jumplight Odyssey, resulting in an indefinite pause for that game’s development. Its three cofounders insist their hands have been forced by conditions of rapidly rising costs, poor early access sales for Jumplight, and “the unprecedented withdrawal of funding opportunities across the industry,” with two major investment deals both falling through just in the span of November. They “had”to either “pause development on Jumplight Odyssey so we can release Solium Infernum as planned, or cancel both games immediately and shut down LoG for good.”
December 6th: Rebekah Valentine at IGN issued a new report on the state of Bungie from various firsthand sources. Valentine revealed that the company’s recent turmoil is rooted not only in a major financial downturn for Destiny’s live service offerings this year, but also in the absolute panic of leadership from the looming threat of Bungie losing its independent and limited integration status within PlayStation, being completely taken over. When Bungie’s acquisition by PlayStation was first completed mid-2022, PlayStation installed multiple new Board of Directors members like PlayStation Studios head Hermen Hulst, turning the Board into a 50/50 split with Bungie CEO Pete Parsons as the tiebreaker, but with the understanding between leaders that this structure is dependent on Bungie’s continued financial success.
Destiny’s 2023 underperformance and the delays of The Final Shape and Marathon put Bungie at direct risk of this takeover, which led to October’s layoffs happening without Sony’s prompting. Bungie leadership has only now warned the rest of employees of the takeover in the midst of not only the previous layoffs but also “numerous other cost-cutting measures recently, including a studio-wide hiring freeze, reduced travel budgets, elimination of holiday bonuses” and reducing performance bonuses, among many, many others. Leaders are also explicitly threatening more layoffs depending on the success of The Final Shape later this year. Worker morale at Bungie is utterly devastated by these conditions.
TGA Day of the Devs: Tim Schafer’s regular show for smaller indies had another new installment. Here are some highlights. Drag Her!, a 2D fighting game themed around drag starring real life drag artists, got a wider post-crowdfunding reveal and public beta announced from developer Fighting Chance. Boyfriend Dungeon developer Kitfox Games* revealed their new game Loose Leaf, a mystical tea brewing simulator. Snipperclips dev SFB Games revealed the latest entry in their mystery series, The Mermaid’s Tongue. A sequel to Genesis Noir, Nirvana Noir, was announced for PC and Xbox Series. Digital Eclipse showcased the second of their Gold Master games after The Making of Karateka, Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story for all platforms, featuring 42 games from across the iconic psychedelic gay artist’s gaming career.
Lastly, three years after a Game Awards reveal, the troubled narrative adventure Open Roads finally returned for its final trailer, which announced a February 2024 launch and newly added Game Pass and Switch to its launch platforms on top of PC and cross-gen PlayStation/Xbox. Starring Keri Russell and Kaitlyn Dever in a family road trip and mystery, this game was plagued by delays and departures rooted in the abusive leadership from Fullbright cofounder Steve Gaynor. That came to an unprecedented conclusion earlier this year when the development team went fully independent and left the creator of Gone Home as a one-man studio.
December 7th: Nintendo unexpectedly cancelled the January 2024 Nintendo Live physical event in Tokyo, in turn delaying many competitive events, due to persistent threats made against event staff and other employees.
And now, the big day.
Much like last year, Sydnee Goodman’s Opening Act section brought a lot of the most interesting news, thanks to a tremendous indies lineup with a lot of major returning devs. The very first reveal was leaked ahead of time, the Unreal 5 Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake, coming February 28th 2024 to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X, developed by Avantgarden and published by owner 505 Games in a faithful take on the debut of It Takes Two’s Josef Fares. The original game was based around one player controlling both characters simultaneously, and that’s preserved here, but a local co op option in the spirit of Fares’ later games is newly added as well. I don’t like Brothers, but next up was Inscryption’s Daniel Mullins returning to his own debut game, revealing that off that game’s success, he and his crew are creating Pony Island 2: Panda Circus set to launch in 2025. The trailer featured SungWon Cho and switching between very different game styles much like Inscryption.
Color Gray Games unexpectedly revealed Rise of the Golden Idol coming in 2024, a full blown sequel to their acclaimed detective adventure Case of the Golden Idol, this time leaping from the 1700s to the 1970s and leaping to PlayStation, Xbox, and mobile via etflix in addition to PC and Switch, where the first game resides. Overland developer and self-publisher Finji revealed their next game Usual June, a coming of age 3D action game coming in 2025 to PC and Netflix. After playing their debut The Misadventures of PB Winterbottom on my Xbox at launch almost 14 years ago, I was delighted to see The Odd Gentlemen return from their forays into Homestuck and King’s Quest with Harmonium: The Musical coming to etflix and PC Game Pass, a narrative adventure based around American Sign Language about a deaf Filipina girl with a love of music. Dead Cells creators Motion Twin revealed their next project Windblown, an isometric 3D action game coming to PC Early Access in 2024.
2023 also-ran Arknights unexpectedly had a strategy-based spinoff, Arknights: Endfield, announced for PS5. Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader was fully shadowdropped for PC and consoles, a CRPG considerably overshadowed by the GOTY winner and CRPG to end all CRPGs Baldur’s Gate 3. Dave the Diver was announced to receive a free crossover DLC with Dredge on December 15th. Developers 2D Boy and Corporate Entertainment, the latter being where all the original creators are now, unexpectedly revealed World of Goo 2, scheduled for a 2024 launch. The end of the Opening Act was marked by Atlus with another Persona 3 Reload trailer, showing off its English dub, and the second/gameplay reveal trailer for Metaphor Re Fantazio, which continues to look very cool but also 100% ripped off Three Houses’ Fodlan Winds in its music.
The opening reveal of the main show was introduced by starring actor Matthew McConaughey as Exodus, a story driven sci fi RPG developed and published by new studio Archetype Entertainment under parent company Wizards of the Coast. The game is coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X as made by many Bioware veterans including James Ohlen, who discussed its theme of time dilation and changes across time, and its debut trailer showed off cinematics and third person shooter gameplay. PlayStation Studios and Sony Santa Monica arrived to unexpectedly reveal a free major DLC for God of War: Ragnarok, Valhalla, a major story epilogue and a roguelike action game which released December 12th on PS4 and PS5. House House, developers of Untitled Goose Game, revealed their very unexpected third game, Big Walk. It’s a first person 3D co op social and puzzle game, set in an open world inspired by the Australian bushland, and it’s coming to PC in 2025.
Another notable indie debut was Ikumi Nakamura giving a stylish brief reveal teaser for her new studio’s game Kemuri, which is better explained by its website: “Kemuri’s world is a blend of traditional Japanese folklore, modern culture, anime aesthetics and international flair where supernatural wonders exist just beyond the vision of ordinary people. This world challenges yokai hunters to confront existential themes and moral dilemmas as they track and fight their prey in fast paced combat. Collect a wide range of yokai – some malevolent, some friendly – to transform your appearance and access their paranormal abilities.” Kemuri is in early development with no publisher or platform signed on yet. Ori creators Moon Studios, whose studio heads were revealed as unregulated nightmares in reporting almost two years ago, delivered the official reveal trailer for their third game which they informally announced back in 2019, the edgy fantasy action RPG No Rest for the Wicked, which will release in PC Early Access in Early 2024 and 1.0 launch on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X later, published by Take-Two’s Private Division label.
Sega went all out with its “new era, new energy” trailer, officially confirming major new entries in five classic series all in a row: Shinobi, Crazy Taxi, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, and yes, Jet Set Radio. These reboots were first leaked in a Bloomberg report in 2022, where they were described as big budget live service Super Games. Footage from the new Jet Set Radio then leaked earlier in 2023. Sega’s marketing so far has leaned into the retro/throwback and cult classic elements here, suggesting the possibility of a merciful reboot from what Bloomberg leaked. Ubisoft shadowdropped a demo for Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown while Lego Fortnite had a gameplay trailer right before its release. Xbox brought out the fourth main trailer for its main blockbuster of 2024, Hellblade 2: Senua’s Saga by Ninja Theory, giving its first taste of combat and no elaboration on the general 2024 release window announced back in June. They might as well just say Fall 2024 until they have an exact date, to not get hopes up. After an informal announcement earlier in 2023, Bandai Namco here offered the debut trailer for the return of their Budokai Tenkaichi fighting game series, Dragon Ball Z: Sparking! ZERO, which canonizes the series’ Japanese title worldwide and will release in the future for PC, Xbox Series, and PS5.
Until Dawn creators Supermassive offered a cinematic reveal for their other upcoming game besides Little Nightmares 3, a narrative horror Dead by Daylight spinoff coming in 2024 to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X, The Casting of Frank Stone. As promised off the success of the Trials of Mana Remake several years ago, Square Enix officially revealed the brand new decades in the making 3D entry in the cult classic JRPG series, Visions of Mana coming to PC, PS5, Xbox Series S|X (and very likely Switch 2) later in 2024. Koei Tecmo’s PS5 exclusive action game Rise of the Ronin returned from a 2022 State of Play with a March 22nd 2024 launch date. As had just leaked, the 1.0 and console launch for a multiplayer entry in the Outlast first person horror series, The Outlast Trials, was set for March 5th 2024. I’ll rattle some quick ones off here: another new Fortnite mode trailer, another new Warframe trailer, another new Suicide Squad trailer. Black Myth: Wukong‘s launch date was announced as August 20th 2024. That incredibly upsetting SWAT shooter Ready or Not set a December 13th 1.0 launch, just a week later.
Xbox and Kojima Productions delivered the first proper trailer for their xCloud streaming exclusive collaboration, OD, renamed from the leaked Overdose. The video mainly just showed off the latest in motion capture tech as applied to Hideo’s latest lineup of collaborators, actors Sophia Lillis of It, Hunter Schafer of Euphoria, Udo Kier of my dreams and nightmares, and Jordan Peele himself on the narrative team. Elsewhere, an Alien Isolation style first person stealth horror game, Jurassic Park: Survival, was announced. Don’t Nod brought back their fantasy action RPG Banishers one more time before its February 2024 launch. And the developers also revealed another brand new title! They returned to their roots with a musical coming of age narrative adventure, a legally not Life is Strange, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage coming Late 2024 to PC, PS5, and Xbox. Sydnee Goodman offhandedly announced onstage that narrative adventure As Dusk Falls will be coming to PS4 and PS5 in March 2024, after almost two years as a timed Xbox exclusive. Ubisoft showcased our old friend Skull & Bones with its first ever actual specific release date, we’ll see if it sticks: February 16th 2024. The second of three games from Korean publisher Nexon was The First Berserker: Khazan by Dungeon Fighter Online dev Neople, a hardcore edgy action RPG spinoff in the same universe as Dungeon Fighter and DNF Duel.
Tencent’s new Western AAA developer Lightspeed LA announced their debut game, a dystopian open world action game called Last Sentinel. I might be the only person that actually needed to be specifically told that this wasn’t the Lightspeed studio at Nvidia branching out in a very weird way. Alright, back to some really cool stuff for a minute. Actor Abubakar Salim, Bayek in Assassin’s Creed Origins, also in Raised by Wolves on HBO, unexpectedly announced that he founded a game studio to make a sidescrolling Metroidvania steeped in the Bantu culture of central and southern Africa, as a tribute to his late father, a Kenyan immigrant. Salim plays the lead role of Zau in Tales of Kenzera: ZAU, which will be published by EA Originals on April 23rd 2024 for PC, Switch, Xbox, and PS5. Two years after the launch of Deathloop, Arkane Lyon officially announced their next game in very early development, and first party Xbox made their next but definitely not last move in the AAA licensed realm: Marvel’s Blade, a single player immersive sim action game set in Paris France, and third person in a first for Arkane. A lot of online drama came of this game’s cinematic teaser not featuring any specific platforms despite being first party Xbox. But it’s not some concession to Sony, it’s because the game probably won’t be done until the next Xbox generation after Series S|X has already begun.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth…had a crossover event in Apex Legends announced. Mihoyo showed Zenless Zone Zero again. PlayStation and Arrowhead brought Helldivers 2 back again before its February 2024 launch. Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2 saw a new trailer with the promised post-delay launch date, September 9th 2024. Nexon’s shooter The First Descendant also got an update after being abruptly delayed out of late 2023, updated to a Summer 2024 window. Indie developer 10 Chambers, who made GTFO and feature some of the original Payday developers, announced their next game: Den of Wolves, a co op heist shooter like Payday with a sci fi twist. Sharkmob revealed their next title from the ashes of their Vampire the Masquerade battle royale: Exoborne, an open world multiplayer survival shooter. Hello Games briefly teased another year’s worth of updates for No Man’s Sky, but they mainly appeared to reveal their next big game, five years in the making so far: Light No Fire, a multiplayer fantasy open world with dragon riding, which was immediately plagued by Sean Murray over-promising yet again.
Voice actor Matt Mercer introduced Asgard’s Wrath 2, a VR-exclusive AAA action RPG launching that month as the pack-in game for Meta Quest 3. Blizzard refugee RTS Stormgate saw new gameplay footage introduced by Simu Liu, who acts in the game, and a Summer 2024 Early Access release was announced. The first character for the third DLC season of Guilty Gear Strive was announced alongside a brand new 3 on 3 mode. The FTP viral hit multiplayer shooter featured in that last Xbox partners event, The Finals, shadowdropped its full launch. Square Enix shadowdropped the first of the two paid story expansions for Final Fantasy 16, Echoes of the Fallen, with the second set to release Spring 2024. The very final trailer was for properly unveiling none other than Capcom’s Monster Hunter Wilds, coming in 2025 with more news Summer 2024, the blockbuster series’ first mainline entry since Rise in 2021 and World in 2018, and its very first fully open world, where the first biome shown is a gorgeous savannah and desert. And lastly, during the acceptance speech for Game of the Year, Larian did indeed digitally shadowdrop Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox Series S and X, they just forgot to mention it on-screen when they were rushed off.
…What’s there still to say about the 2023 Game Awards, a month later? I loved James Stephanie Sterling’s “The Game Awards will never do better” video. I loved RockPaperShotgun’s “People Should Remember Where The Game Awards Came From” article. I’d rather recommend the best commentaries I’ve seen at this point then worry too much about measuring up to them. We criticize Keighley and TGAs every year, but the ratings still go up every year. And as upsetting as specific choices made are, of course the ratings are going up when they can get fucking Monster Hunter 6! That shouldn’t overshadow the problems, but of course it does in a capitalist society. This neglect of the human element has always, always been there, and this isn’t even the actual worst it has been, just ask RPS. Constantly cutting off developers’ acceptance speeches, and failing to acknowledge 2023’s mass layoffs or the crisis Gaza, are still especially egregious. But the twisted symbiosis that is the games industry and press and customers will still keep it afloat, just like we did for E3 until E3 alienated all the partners that are happier with Keighley than we are.
Xbox Updates
November 30th: Activision ordered hundreds of QA contractors to end hybrid/remote work and fully return to office by the end of January 2024. The ABK Workers Alliance revealed this in mid-December and responded critically, highlighting how this disproportionately affects workers who had requested permanent work from home accommodations due to disability and commute/moving expenses.
December 15th: Two years and five months ago, the California state government* officially sued Activision Blizzard King for systemic gender discrimination and abuse, forever changing the publisher’s image and beginning a domino effect that has reshaped the industry through the Xbox absorption of ABK. On Friday, Kirsten Grind and Sarah E. Needleman at the Wall Street Journal broke that this case has just been settled for $54 million and signed by both ABK and the California Civil Rights Department. Only pay discrimination is addressed in the final document, with charges of widespread harassment formally retracted and the bulk of the payment (45 million) going directly to a fund for compensating women who worked at ABK between 2015 and 2020. The rest will go to the CRD’s legal fees and PR charities. Per WSJ reporting, the liability initially sought in this case was nearly $1 billion. Once again, the system doesn’t work.
*The lawsuit was filed under the name Department of Fair Employment and Housing before that name was changed.
December 20th: Bobby Kotick issued a goodbye letter and marked his official last day at ABK as December 29th, inspiring commentary from former employees. At the same time, Xbox proceeded with further leadership reorganization and confirmations of several more departures from ABK. Kotick will officially not be ABK’s only problematic figure to exit: chief communications officer Lulu Meservey will leave in January 2024 while Brian Bulatao will leave in March, joined by Humam Sakhnini, Thomas Tippl, Julie Hodges, Grant Dixton, and Armin Zerza. Blizzard president Mike Ybarra will remain, both he and Rob Kostich will answer directly to Xbox’s Matt Booty. Additionally, Jill Braff is now the new head of ZeniMax Studios where Todd Howard answers directly to her. Braff will remain Xbox’s Casual Games Manager while serving in this new position, after previously working at Sega and Nintendo, and being lead organizer for ZeniMax’s limited integration into Xbox in 2021.
December 25th: Chinese news site 36Kr has alleged that as part of the transition into Microsoft, Blizzard is attempting a return to the Chinese market by opening talks with its main game publishers, including returning to the table with NetEase despite the acrimonious end to that partnership last year. We’ll see how this story progresses.
Everything Else
November 30th: Electronic Arts reached a settlement regarding its use of college athletes’ likenesses, clearing EA Sports College Football to launch as is next year as planned.
December 4th: With Payday 3 struggling since launch, developer Starbreeze rushed into announcing their next project, scheduled for 2026 on “all major platforms” with crossplay: a cooperative live service Dungeons and Dragons action game, Project Baxter.
Retro focused game publisher Inin Games announced that it’s supporting Xbox for the very first time with multiple waves of releases, starting with Pocky & Rocky Reshrined, Clockwork Aquario, Ultracore, Panorama Cotton, Cotton 100%, and Irem Collection all releasing December 7th.
December 5th: Nintendo and Universal released a new CGI trailer for Super Nintendo World Japan’s Donkey Kong Country expansion, officially revealing its contents and setting it to open in Spring 2024 . The new area will expand the theme park’s size by 70%, adding a mine cart ride roller coaster based on 2010’s DKC Returns with special elevated sections to recreate jumping over gaps, plus a Funky Kong store, a Donkey Konga minigame, and a new restaurant. A Pokémon attraction is confirmed to be in development, reportedly a Snap-themed dark ride, and Zelda and Kirby expansions are also planned.
After launching earlier this year to a period of Switch, console exclusivity, Have a Nice Death officially released for cross-gen PlayStation and Xbox.
December 7th: Embracer Group’s Alone in the Dark Remake had its launch delayed again to March 20th 2024.
Outside of but during the Game Awards, Nintendo elected to release three Nintendo 64 games to NSO all at once, Jet Force Gemini, Harvest Moon 64, and 1080 Snowboarding.
December 8th: As first reported at Bloomberg, Microsoft agreed to add 77 additional devs/QA contractors to being represented by the Zenimax Workers United union during their ongoing collective bargaining. All of them are now Microsoft employees with varying salary raise and new benefits like paid time off, 54 temps and 23 immediately promoted to permanent positions.
December 11th: Following The Day Before’s launch just four days earlier in which it was widely lambasted and refunded as a ripoff not remotely resembling the game promoted for the past two years, developer Fntastic announced an immediate studio shutdown, game delisting, and full refunds opened on Steam. A conspiracy theory that Fntastic changed its name in the aftermath was proven false; Fntastic outright sold its debut game The Wild Eight to publisher Hypetrain six whole years ago, and Hypetrain changed the developer credit to avoid being review bombed for a long-severed association with Fntastic.
December 12th: After four weeks of jury-and-judge trial, by successfully proving a greater degree of illicit activities by Google and its parent company Alphabet than it could with Apple in that previous trial, Epic Games did officially win in court against Google by jury ruling. Judge James Donato has yet to make any specific court orders as the ‘sentencing’ of the case.
Epic made a variety of arguments throughout the trial and still fell flat on some of them, such as the matter of sideloading and the accusation of collusion between Apple and Google. They did still fail to prove the furthest extents of their more successful arguments. However, they did prove that Google does not treat all app developers equally, that Google systematically suppressed and potentially destroyed legal evidence, they did prove the previous accusation that Google had methods to block major mobile publishers and developers like Riot Games from creating their own app stores and keep them committed to the Google Play store, among other ways to pressure partners and dominate the mobile market well beyond the bounds of moderating its own store.
After efforts to begin arranging a comeback fell through yet again, the Entertainment Software Association finally admitted what we all already knew for one last time: E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo which debuted in 1995 and was once known as the face of gaming publicity and conventions, is officially dead for good. Its demise was steep, losing key partner PlayStation just one year before its last ever physical event. COVID of course exacerbated things, but the all-digital E3 2021 was what managed to permanently burn bridges with returning partners, paying extra to put the E3 banner on digital presentations they would’ve made anyway, with no ROI, only poor organization, poor promotion, and poor security. I have E3 moments to directly credit as ultimately leading to me becoming an independent game journalist, and I was also an E3 skeptic from the jump. E3 2019 in Review jumpstarted this career and it was also the last real E3 ever. So my professional experiences truly embody the duality of E3 as a huge success and huge failure all at once, emblematic of both the best and worst in the video gaming world.
Viral hit indie horror series Poppy Playtime, which if you have seen anywhere, was probably at a Spirit Halloween or bootleg toy section, saw its final chapter delayed again into Early 2024 in the wake of creative differences and managerial issues which prompted the departures of several developers from the small team of Mob Entertainment.
Freedom Planet 2 saw all console ports delayed out of 2023 to Spring 2024 following its PC launch earlier this fall.
December 14th: After its second reassessment this same year and four whole years of development which first began with spinning off from The Last of Us Part 2 in 2019, Naughty Dog officially canceled its multiplayer project The Last of Us Online, confirming that it’s one of the several that were recently canned or postponed. Live service development is so expensive and complex that the developer, which made Last of Us 2 for around $200 million, had to finally accept that it would have to drop single player games entirely in order to support this one game. Predictably, it stuck with what has been it bread and butter these past decades, leaving behind all that time, money, and hard work spent on it these past years. With the previously alluded “single player experience” Last of Us Remastered now out the door, Naughty Dog confirmed that it has two separate full-scale single player games in the early works, which to my understanding are The Last of Us Part 3 and a new original IP. The next Uncharted game is also in the works and has exchanged dev hands multiple times in the past several years as Naughty Dog micromanaged it from afar without ever just making it themselves.
Solo developer Tomas Sala and publisher Wired Productions announced Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles, a sequel to 2020’s timed Xbox Series exclusive The Falconeer, coming to PC and cross-gen Xbox/PlayStation in 2024.
Due to both license expirations and server shutdown, Ubisoft abruptly digitally delisted The Crew, the debut entry in its racing series which had a new entry just this year, and confirmed the game will shutdown entirely on March 31st 2024.
December 15th: Square Enix officially scheduled the launch date of RPG SaGa: Emerald Beyond as April 25th 2024 on all platforms.
December 18th: Tencent was revealed to have shut down developer Studio Kaiju and canceled their AAA multiplayer project earlier this year. Tencent and the other major Chinese game publishers have lost billions in market value after the government announced new regulations on microtransactions and digital spending. The CCP has since already suggested it will relax the hard-line rules and philosophy behind them, saying the rules will be improved by looking at public opinion.
Max Payne voice actor James McCaffrey passed away at the age of 65 after being diagnosed with cancer. McCaffrey had most recently appeared in Alan Wake 2, the latest in a lifelong partnership with Remedy.
December 19th:
Just shortly after the last cyberattack suffered by PlayStation this year, Insomniac Games has been revealed to have also been hacked, with the ransomware group Rhysida going public December 12th, putting stolen data up for auction in bitcoin, sharing an initial small portion to prove legitimacy, and ultimately following through on a threat to publish the entire 1.67 terabytes of data across millions of files one week later on December 19th. The first release of info featured Wolverine screenshots and many pieces of current and former employee personal data, including photos of passports. Employees have been provided the IDWatchdog service to combat this. Rhysida have been active since May 2023, acting purely in pursuit of money and seeing a federal warning about them last month.
Unfortunately, the website which got to this story first only made matters worse, republishing the photos with shoddy censorship. The full leak across the two separate releases featured many major reveals, but most fans and press failed to apply enough scrutiny to fully contextualize and understand the information shared, overlooking important factors like the dates of documents and the difference between what’s pitched and what has active development resources allotted, except Ethan Gach at Kotaku and Jason Schreier at Bloomberg.
What’s actually shown as in active development as of September 2023 is Wolverine and the inevitable Spider-Man 3, with a brand new original IP and the next Ratchet and Clank in pre-production. The Venom game discovered that many fans are salivating over is clearly shown to have been just a recently made pitch with no further progress at this time, it was never greenlit and mid-budget pitches are generally not being received well right now by Sony execs, seen as just extra cost despite their larger profit margins. The multiplayer live service game Spider-Verse or Spider-Man: The Great Web was in active development but was canceled alongside the decision to reunite Spider-Man 3 as one full-scale project instead of the briefly considered two smaller games. Spider-Verse was canceled well before the snowball effect really hit the other entries in Sony’s oversized live service catalog.
Spider-Man 3 is now set to launch in 2028 as a full-scale project and one of the PlayStation 5’s last games with PlayStation 6 current planned for Holiday 2028. Due to developmental difficulties in 2023, Wolverine was delayed from 2025 to 2026, it was never planned for 2024 despite the inexplicable rumors. Wolverine’s year delay was in conjunction with Spider-Man 2 needing more time, delayed from September to October. The Venom spinoff pitch was made after those delays to fill the longer gap between releases. The next Ratchet & Clank is scheduled for 2029 and the aforementioned original IP is set to launch in the early 2030s. Extensive materials from Wolverine including gameplay footage and the full terms of the original Sony-Marvel contract for Wolverine are all in the leak, alongside concept art for the later projects. The Wolverine team is also shown to be working with an early PS5 Pro devkit with materials indicating that the hardware revision will indeed feature new proprietary advanced AI upscaling software to compete with DLSS3 on PC and Switch 2, after Jeff Grubb broke that story very recently.
As seen here, the terms for the Wolverine contract are staggering (and are likely equal to the contract for Spider-Man from 2014): pre-existing games are unaffected and X-Men characters can appear in other games, but through the end of 2035, Marvel can only make new dedicated X-Men games with PlayStation, and cannot use X-Men characters as platform exclusive features for PS’ competition. Marvel and Sony committed upfront to three games within the contract, Wolverine, and two broader X-Men universe follow-ups prospectively set to launch in 2030 and 2033, with multiplayer support for Wolverine and X-Men also optioned though likely abandoned for now. Don’t be surprised if the contract’s options to terminate or extend the contract and slate have to be used in order to give the third game a longer runway.
Upsettingly, the hack leaks have also revealed something that ground level Insomniac developers very much didn’t know about, that Sony leadership throughout Fall 2023 has been pressuring first party studios including Insomniac into drastic cost-cutting, including the possibility of as many as 50 to 75 layoffs, as well as downscaling the Ratchet & Clank sequel and canceling the original IP. Insomniac leadership made no attempt to communicate these concerns to employees during the launch of Spider-Man 2, in part because no final decision has been made and Ted Price is trying to head off the firings by arguing that more workers will leave in the ensuing panic and that the employees on the chopping block are too valuable to lose. Once the hack brought this info to the workers, a meeting to discuss was scheduled for December 21st and then delayed to January, after this publishes. The contrast between Bungie and Insomniac here is sharp and painful. It’s stirring to see efforts by some gaming leadership to protect workers in the face of just how much that’s evidently the minority action.
The economics of AAA development are laid bare throughout the leaked materials, with Spider-Man 2 ultimately going over budget to around $300 million compared to only $130 million for the 2018 game, $90 million for Miles Morales, and $80 million for Rift Apart. A vast majority of that is going directly into graphics production and the salaries of those behind it. There are numerous development strategies more nuanced than raw cost-cutting on the table to prevent budgets from ballooning further, such as centralized story-design pipelines with “line stops” for addressing issues faster, all put towards the current foremost goal of keeping Wolverine’s budget under control, with a hard ceiling around the $300 million mark for all future projects. Cinematics are a particular concern with Spider-Man 2’s costing over $40 million for a little over five hours of total footage, so their length will be more strictly maintained going forward.
Insomniac’s official statement about all these events was published on December 22nd and included the following as part of a larger text: “We’re both saddened and angered about the recent criminal cyberattack on our studio and the emotional toll it’s taken on our dev team. We have focused inwardly for the last several days to support each other. We are aware that the stolen data includes personal information belonging to our employees, former employees, and independent contractors. It also includes early development details about Marvel’s Wolverine for PlayStation 5. We continue working quickly to determine what data was impacted. Marvel’s Wolverine continues as planned. The game is in early production and will no doubt greatly evolve throughout development, as do all our plans.While we appreciate everyone’s enthusiasm, we will share official information about Marvel’s Wolverine when the time is right. On behalf of everyone at Insomniac, thank you for your ongoing support during this challenging time.”
Also on December 19th, indie developer Demagog announced that their narrative sidescroller The Cub will launch January 19th 2024 for PC, Switch, and PS4/5, while previously announced Xbox One/Series versions have been indefinitely delayed for the sake of resource management.
December 21st: Due to the difficulties facing the VR market and the underperformance of their PSVR2 game Firewall Ultra, dedicated VR developer and Sony partner studio First Contact Entertainment will be shutting down after seven years. As First Contact were a separate and private partner rather than a first party, it is unlikely to be the planned single subsidiary shutdown from PlayStation’s mass cost-cutting initiative as revealed in the previously discussed Insomniac hack.
The trial of two Lapsuss hackers is over with both found guilty and receiving confinement sentences. For their cyberattacks on companies like Nvidia and Rockstar, one of the teenagers will see 18 months in a youth rehab center. The other was unfit for traditional and prison due to his acute autism, but he has explicitly said he will keep hacking at all costs out of sheer obsession, so he has been sentenced to an indefinite secured hospital stay with attempted therapy to make him no longer a danger to society.
PlayStation almost deleted thousands of Discovery TV shows and all digital purchases of their shows, but after negotiating a renewal for the licensing deal with WBD, this has been prevented.
December 22nd: Tinybuild has announced the shutdown of its subsidiary, the indie publisher Versus Evil, laying everyone off right before Christmas despite Tinybuild receiving $2 million in funding from Atari just one day before. Versus Evil had lasted a decade, supporting games like The Banner Saga and Pillars of Eternity, until Tinybuild bought them two years ago.
After their debut Stray Souls launched in October only to become one of 2023’s worst reviewed video games, and right after losing Versus Evil as their publisher for the above reasons, Jukai Studio announced it has shut down.
FromSoft announced that the online servers for the original Dark Souls 2 on PS3 and Xbox 360 will close in March 2024 after ten years. The original version will remain playable and available, and Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin Edition on Xbox One and PS4 will still support online.
January 2nd: Three whole years after the legal battle began between developer Frogwares and publisher Nacon, it has finally ended with Frogwares successfully gaining full control and sole publishing rights of their game The Sinking City. As a result, it will be republished on PC by the developer without the ability to carry existing saves from Steam or Epic.
January 4th: South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission has fined Nexon more than 11 billion won, roughly $9 million, for selling loot boxes in MapleStory with deceptive marketing and intentionally lowered odds. Besides MapleStory, the company published both The Finals and Dave the Diver last year, the latter from in-house developer Mintrocket.
January 5th: Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread developer Bossa Studios fired around one third of its staff, 19 people, in response to struggling to find more funding this past fall as an indie, just like League of Geeks earlier in this Roundup. Bossa is currently developing a co op survival game, Lost Skies.
Platinum Games ended support for its Apple Arcade exclusive World of Demons, delisting it on January 18th.
The famous fan server keeping MMO City of Heroes alive for more than a decade has now received official licensing and support from publisher NCSoft.
It’s a new year in gaming and that means a new year of predictions from your favorite outsider insider! You might have seen my rough draft of this in last week’s Games Thread. And of course you already saw my Switch 2 predictions last year, so I’ll leave that subject alone here except for two quick things: the consensus remains that we’re first seeing it in March, and no, they’re not going to suddenly start charging $70 for everything. Most publishers aren’t doing that! Nintendo sure isn’t when WarioWare is $50 and Everybody 1-2-Switch is $30. Period. Moving on.
I think in general 2024 is going to do a good job of maintaining 2023’s momentum, but it is still looking a fair bit smaller than 2023. GTA6 and Monster Hunter Wilds have already been delayed out of it and some other major stuff is susceptible to delays or just kinda flopping. Suicide Squad and Star Wars Outlaws could easily fall in the latter. Metal Gear Solid Delta and Silent Hill 2 Remake both just got confirmed for 2024 by Sony though, that’s handy.
Sony this year really is mostly riding on the first two of their surviving live services, Helldivers 2 and especially Firewalk’s Concord. I think Ghost of Tsushima 2/Ghost of 2-Shima could be revealed this year, but I’m very skeptical it could actually launch. I understand it to have expanded on the multiplayer from that DLC and be one of the remaining new live services. I’m guessing 2025 for 2-Shima and Death Stranding 2.
Xbox’s main attraction is obviously Hellblade 2 and they’re going to be beating that drum all year, just like Starfield last year, but they have a lot of smaller games to fill out the year that have a lot of potential too, on top of the obvious easy fanservice of Activisioning Game Pass. We already know Indiana Jones by MachineGames is getting its big reveal this year, and that will 2025’s main attraction, but I do expect Contraband and South of Midnight to return and join it in that spotlight for next year. Blizzard’s survival game might see its first trailer, too. Oh, and Xbox Developer Direct should return very soon.
It’s also another new year for me and the Game News Roundups. I’ve been a games writer for The Avocado for five whole years now, and it’s meant a lot to me. Y’all have meant a lot to me. I thought 2023 might be make or break for me, and it ended up with actually losing quite a bit of Patreon support. That’s the economy for you. But this was also a year that brought me back to Mid Aughts Meltdown like I’ve wanted for so long, and a year that’s produced some of my best writing yet. I’m simply too proud of my record to stop now. And I have very loving partners in my life supporting me every step of the way. So I ain’t going away anytime soon. And I’m more grateful than ever for each and every one of you.
Thank you, my readers, and friends.
A whole lot of time and effort goes into making my work here possible. Please show your support however you can to help keep this going, whether that means sharing these articles wherever and to whomever there might be interest, or for those able to, donating to my Patreon dedicated specifically to these writings, which is linked here: https://www.patreon.com/lilytina