The Gaming Industry 2024 Review: Highlights & Lowlights

Over the last couple of weeks, we've discussed two of the three pillars that define our website – remarkable 3D projects and animations and the most significant 3D software releases – meaning it's time to cover the final pillar – the video game industry itself. So, without further ado, let's take a deep dive into our 80 Level Yearly Review, detailing the good, the bad, and the ugly of gaming in 2024.

Industry-Wide Layoffs

Right off the bat, let's discuss "the ugly" of 2024 and turn our attention to what is perhaps the most widespread and notorious issue in game development at the moment – which began in 2023 but somehow got even worse over the past 12 months – industry-wide layoffs.

If you need a refresher, the wave of job losses started hitting game development studios in early 2023, when Microsoft cut 10,000 employees as part of its cost-reduction campaign. After that, companies across the globe began firing workers left and right for various reasons, with the most agreed-upon explanation being the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic; game studios had expanded their workforces to meet the surge in demand caused by government-issued lockdowns, but as people returned to their normal lives, many companies found themselves unable to support these larger teams.

What many assumed would remain a 2023 issue, unfortunately, carried over into 2024 and became even more pressing than the year before, turning into one of the industry's most discussed topics that seems to have affected virtually everyone. The total number of fired game studio employees surpassed that of the previous year, with estimates suggesting that by the end of 2024, 14,600 workers will have been terminated – 4,000 more than in 2023.

As with last year, it's impossible to list every indie and AAA company affected, but some of the most notable include Activision Blizzard, EA, Bethesda, Take-Two Interactive, Riot Games, Ubisoft, Microsoft, Intel, Unity, Bungie, SEGA, DON'T NOD, Cloud Imperium Games, People Can Fly, and hundreds of others. While I'm by no means an oracle and can't predict the future, given what has happened with the AAA industry in 2024 – a topic we'll cover later in this list – it seems likely that 2025 will continue this troubling trend and we'll have to endure even more headlines about game studios terminating their workers.

Humans vs. AI: The Battle Continues

Sticking with "the ugly" theme and having just covered layoffs, let's segue into an equally unpleasant topic and one of the reasons behind the aforementioned firings – generative artificial intelligence.

With AI being all the rage among investors and big tech CEOs since mid-2022, the movement of creators speaking out against the controversial technology – which we can roughly trace back to December 2022's massive anti-AI protests on ArtStation – has only grown louder in response, entering the mainstream and gaining significant attention even beyond the game development and digital art industries. What started as a cold war in 2023 has entered its hot phase this year, with numerous controversies and protests sparking regularly, and multiple companies and organizations having to choose between supporting either humans or machines.

Some examples of companies that chose to bet on the "next big thing" in 2024 – disappointing a sizable portion of their customers in the process – include Adobe, which, as many of you know, has included generative AI tools across all of its software, receiving a lot of backlash as a result; Autodesk, which upset Digital Artists in May by introducing a new AI for generating 3D models; Windows, whose Recall feature, which makes screenshots of everything you do, frightened many when it was announced, causing concern among users that their data would get stolen and used for AI training; and Sony, which in September announced its plans to embrace artificial intelligence and machine learning to "help maximize IP value" going forward.

The list also has some unexpected entrants, such as The Terminator director James Cameron, who, despite being staunchly anti-AI in 2023, joined Stability AI's board of directors earlier this year; CGTrader, a once-beloved 3D model marketplace that started prioritizing generative AI over flesh-and-blood artists and even unveiled its own AI tool; and even the legendary music band Pink Floyd, which enraged many of its fans this Spring by choosing an AI-generated video as one of the winners of their The Dark Side of The Moon 50th anniversary competition, mere days after it was discovered that Suno, an AI that allows users to generate music tracks using text prompts, was almost definitely trained on copyrighted materials.

While the situation may seem dire, the human side of the conflict has also scored some major wins in 2024 through lawsuits and online campaigns, to the point that the first anti-AI laws began to pass, regulating the field and attracting the attention of politicians, many of whom had previously adopted a "sit and wait" approach in 2023.

Some key moments I'd like to highlight include major gaming studios Nintendo, Riot Games, and Blizzard showing their support for humans, online game stores Steam and itch.io introducing rules that require developers to disclose their use of AI, and the emergence of Cara, a pro-human portfolio and social platform for Digital Artists that allows users to easily protect their works from style mimicry by generative AI models via Glaze, an anti-scraping software that OpenAI seems to be afraid of.

A special shout-out goes to all the artists on Twitter/X who voiced their displeasure when the platform unveiled its updated Terms of Service in October, which essentially allowed Twitter to utilize all user posts for AI training without offering an opt-out option. The backlash was so intense that X actually reversed this policy shortly after, reinstating the provision about respecting users' choice to limit the distribution of their content through Twitter's built-in functions and allowing them to once again prohibit the platform's algorithms from using their content for AI training.

As it stands, the future of the AI vs. humanity conflict remains shrouded in mystery, but overall, I'd say that while it can be viewed as a stalemate, humans have still come out ahead more often than not in 2024, with lawsuits getting filed, laws getting passed, cases of questionable AI-training being exposed, and reports indicating that the rapid progress of artificial intelligence models is slowing down with each subsequent update. Even marketing experts, who are typically no strangers to filling their statements with heaps of trending buzzwords, now see the very term "AI" as a dirty word – the silver lining of this year's AI debacle, which is bound to continue in 2025.

The Rise of Indie and the Decline of AAA

Having addressed the gaming industry's black-and-white issues, let's shift to a more nuanced topic that can be seen as either a positive or a negative, depending on one's perspective and worldview – the state of AAA and indie game development in 2024.

While it's rare for a year to pass without a major studio releasing a sloppily made title that gets slammed by the community and shows disappointing financial results, the passing year appears to have seen an unusually high number of video games, DLCs, and content expansions that missed the mark, and nowhere is this more evident than in the AAA segment of the industry.

Skull and Bones, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Star Wars Outlaws, XDefiant, Starfield: Shattered Space, Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns, Life is Strange: Double Exposure, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred, Alan Wake II: The Lake House Expansion – the list of titles with big studios behind them that underperformed profits-wise and/or have mixed-to-negative user scores on Metacritic goes on and on. Even some of the games that did manage to win over audiences, like the recently released Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, struggle to translate critical acclaim into player numbers and don't seem to be performing that well, at least if SteamDB charts are anything to go by.

Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Concord – without question, the absolute worst AAA video game of 2024 – in this chapter of the review, for even in this divided world of ours, it somehow managed to unite gamers from all walks of life – with different opinions, views, and preferences – in a unanimous hatred towards itself.

After costing its developer, Firewalk Studios, eight years of hard work and $200-$400 million, Concord was shut down just two weeks after its launch, with Firewalk offering full refunds to the poor souls who actually bought the game, before getting closed by Sony shortly after. While it certainly won't be remembered for its mind-blowing player numbers or the money it made, Concord has undeniably entered the history of video games as the shining example of what not to do if you want your title to succeed.

Meanwhile, as AAA studios continued churning out flop after flop, indie and AA developers have found their stride, consistently delighting the community with acclaimed titles like Palworld, Helldivers 2, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, Thank Goodness You're Here, Pacific Drive, Another Crab's Treasure, Neva, Manor Lords, Enshrouded, Content Warning, the latest talk of the town MiSide, and, of course, 80 Level's personal indie GOAT of 2024, Tiny Glade, just to name a few.

The most sensational of them all, however, was LocalThunk's Balatro, a poker-themed deck-building roguelike that recently hit a major milestone of 3.5 million copies sold and made history during The Game Awards 2024 by becoming a contender for this year's Game of the Year award, with many believing that it wasn't just filler but had a real shot at winning the title.

While, of course, indies weren't immune to the industry-wide challenges like the aforementioned layoffs, and did suffer some setbacks, the overall performance of smaller studios improved marginally compared to previous years, with data to back it up. According to an earlier report by VGI, indie games accounted for 58% of all games sold on Steam in 2024, up from 49% in 2023, and represented 48% of the revenue from sold copies, compared to just 31% the year before. While we could debate for hours about why exactly AAA studios performed so poorly this year, my only hope is that bigger developers view these results not with discouragement, but as a motivator to improve in 2025, learn from their mistakes, and finally show us that the extra "A" in the term used to describe them actually means something.

A Studio So Faulty, It Gets Its Own Chapter

Look, we all mistakes, right? Sometimes, they stem from simple misunderstandings, other times from a lack of knowledge about the issue at hand, occasionally you read the data wrong and end up getting embarrassed by Bethesda of all things – to err is human, and generally, if you admit you were wrong and share a sincere apology – whether you're an individual or a large organization – others will forgive you sooner or later.

But in 2024, there was one studio that made more missteps – owning up to only a few of them – than any other developer you can think of, a studio so faulty, it was barely mentioned in the previous chapter about the decline of AAA gaming and instead got its very own dedicated section, a once universally beloved creator of Far Cry, Assassin's Creed, and countless other acclaimed franchises that, in just one year, managed to lose all goodwill from the gaming community, the one and only, Ubisoft.

Gaming historians of the future would probably struggle to pinpoint the exact moment that marked the beginning of Ubisoft's fall from grace, but it is safe to say that a statement made by Ubisoft's Director of Subscriptions Philippe Tremblay back in January about players being comfortable with not owning their games would be a strong contender. Somehow, even by early 2024, some top executives still hadn't realized that limiting people's ownership rights – or even making it seem like their rights are being limited – doesn't sit well with anyone, and unfortunately for Ubisoft, they had to learn this the hard way, with the community still mocking the studio for this statement to this day.

The full list of controversies Ubisoft found itself at the epicenter of this year would probably be too extensive to cover in full, but some of the most notable lowlights include Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown underperforming financially to such an extent that its developer, Ubisoft Montpellier, was disbanded and its devs reassigned to other projects; Skull and Bones – the studio's infamous AAAA game they allegedly spent $650 to $850 million on – being forgotten almost immediately after its launch; Star Wars Outlaws failing to capture the community's interest despite having "Star Wars" in its name; "Call of Duty killer" XDefiant getting shut down despite its Executive Producer's earlier claims that it wouldn't; and Assassin's Creed Shadows being postponed to 2025 amidst numerous reports of bugs, cultural and historical inaccuracies, half the development team being new to game projects, and the PC version of the game featuring Denuvo and mandatory Ubisoft account linking.

On top of that, the company also got sued a couple of times by gamers and its own developers and further tarnished its reputation by continuing to push the universally disliked trend of NFT/Web3 gaming, quietly launching not just one, but two blockchain games in October and December. As a result, Ubisoft suffered a 20% drop in sales and revenue in the first half of the year compared to 2023, with the decline being even steeper in the second quarter of 2024-25, as sales hit €348.4 million, a 36.3% decrease from the €547.1 million earned during the same period last year.

Despite all these kerfuffles and financial setbacks, the studio's executives somehow remain optimistic, reportedly planning to release 9 new Assassin's Creed games within the next 5 years, having Year 2 plans for Skull and Bones, and even expressing their desire to retain control over the company if the acquisition by Tencent does take place. While it's undoubtedly a good thing to stay upbeat no matter what life throws at you, the studio's big plans don't seem to correlate with their poor results and appear to be a consequence of "toxic positivity" – a term mentioned by some game developers over the year to describe a company culture where pushback, negative feedback, and criticism aren't appreciated and are ignored.

At the moment, it's impossible to predict what awaits Ubisoft in 2025 and beyond – with options ranging from total bankruptcy to the company rising from the ashes and getting its No Man's Sky-style redemption arc – but one thing we can probably all agree on is this: if the studio doesn't change its course and rethink its entire business strategy to start appealing to the gaming community, rather than just milking the last pennies from its remaining fans, getting absorbed by Tencent may end up being the least of its problems.

Denuvo Rebuilding Its Reputation Challenge (Impossible)

As an intermission of sorts, let's switch from the more serious topics to something a bit more lighthearted, which nonetheless felt a bit too important not to include in this list given the attention it was garnering in news articles and online discussions throughout the year, Denuvo.

While Irdeto's controversial DRM first gained the gaming community's widespread attention in 2023, when tests showed it negatively impacted loading times and framerate in games that used it, this year, Denuvo's reputation took an even bigger dive, with it becoming one of, if not the most disliked video-game-related programs out there. For developers, removing the DRM from their projects or publicly announcing it wouldn't be included became an easy way to gain favor with gamers, while revealing its inclusion often caused the opposite effect and sparked backlash.

Perhaps no game exemplifies this trend better than Warhorse Studios' upcoming Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, a long-awaited continuation of the beloved medieval RPG that, despite having a dedicated and loyal fanbase, still got criticized online when reports indicated it would feature Denuvo at launch.

For a time, the game became the community's punching bag, with fans setting the game's forums and its Discussions page on Steam aflame, canceling their pre-orders, removing the sequel from their wishlists, and encouraging others to do the same. While there was little proof of the DRM actually being in the game – aside from Deep Silver's policy from five years ago and a screenshot where a supposed customer support representative from Plaion, the parent company of both Deep Silver and Warhorse, confirmed its inclusion – the circumstantial evidence alone was enough for even some of KCD's most die-hard fans to distance themselves from the game, highlighting just how strongly the software in question is loathed by gamers.

Luckily for them, Warhorse's Global PR Manager, Tobias Stolz-Zwilling, a.k.a. Sir Tobi, issued a statement a couple of weeks later, putting the rumor to rest by officially announcing that Kingdom Come: Deliverance II would not include Denuvo and asking the community to "close the case already," thus immediately restoring all of the studio's lost reputation. While it's still unclear whether the screenshot that sparked the controversy was fake, or if Warhorse decided to remove the DRM in response to the overwhelming backlash, the only thing that mattered in the end for many was that Denuvo wouldn't be present in the sequel, and all's well that ends well.

Two more instances where Denuvo stole the spotlight and became the laughingstock of the gaming industry both took place in October, just a few days apart from one another. First, Irdeto restricted players' speaking rights on its Discord server just two days after opening it, claiming that the sheer amount of "inappropriate content" – which, as you can probably guess, mainly consisted of criticism and memes – was too much for them to handle.

The second instance occurred when Irdeto followed through on its promise to "stop letting every claim about our product go unanswered" and joined Rock Paper Shotgun for an interview, where they blamed Denuvo's poor reputation on video game pirates, who, in Irdeto's view, resent the DRM simply because it works so well, and on gamers, who supposedly fail to recognize the benefits game developers receive from using Denuvo. The phrase "I'm a gamer myself, and therefore I know what I'm talking about," said by the company's Product Manager Andreas Ullmann during the interview, quickly became a meme and was ridiculed by actual gamers, who, for some inexplicable reason, didn't find Ullmann's arguments convincing.

Since then, Irdeto's PR campaign to cleanse the reputation of its flagship software in the eyes of the community appears to have come to a halt, with no new interviews or controversies worth discussing. One can only hope it will be revived in 2025, and who knows, maybe we'll get a few more laughs from the company that seems to believe you can win over gamers' hearts and minds by blaming them and questioning their intelligence.

Asian Games FTW

Having covered that, let's move on to a far more positive topic and highlight the increased representation of video games from Asian developers on the global market throughout 2024. While Japanese studios like Sony, Nintendo, and FromSoftware have always had popularity abroad, this year saw a rise in the number of titles from the Asian region that were lovingly embraced by Western gamers, with notable examples including Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Metaphor: ReFantazio, Stellar Blade, Rise of the Rōnin, and Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree. Even Chinese developers, traditionally known for mobile and gacha games, made their mark this year with a fully-fledged AAA action-adventure Black Myth: Wukong, which won the Players' Voice Award at this year's TGA – a title that, in the eyes of many, is a more accurate representation of the community's opinion than the GOTY itself.

Speaking of the 2024 GOTY, a special mention goes to Team Asobi's Astro Bot, a 3D platformer for PlayStation 5 that, despite its relatively simple premise, easily won over both players and critics and got praised for its engaging gameplay mechanics, well-designed levels, and a wealth of characters referencing iconic figures from other universes.

In total, Astro Bot brought home four The Game Awards prizes – more than any other title this year – sparking hope that its success could help the 3D platformer genre regain its footing in the coming years. It also demonstrated that creating a solid and fun gaming experience without chasing trends or making risky bets in terms of a project's gameplay or story is still a perfectly viable strategy for producing a universally acclaimed game.

Valve, Rockstar & Why On Earth Do Those Two Share a Chapter?

Replying to the strawman question posed in this section's title, there's actually a valid reason to group these two studios together, rooted in the similarities Valve and Rockstar have shared in 2024 – two of the most renowned, celebrated, and, most importantly in our case, secretive game developers who, despite their relative lack of activity, remained in the limelight throughout the entire year.

Let's start with Rockstar, a company that, aside from releasing a PC port of the original Red Dead Redemption two months ago, did nothing publicly in 2024, keeping the production of its next title – arguably the most anticipated video game right now, Grand Theft Auto VI – shrouded in total secrecy. While other yearly reviews may lament the fact that we didn't hear anything about GTA 6 during the year or get a new trailer, which some fans speculated was teased by Rockstar with a screenshot of a moon, I can't help but find it impressive and commendable that even in this hush-hush atmosphere, the game still manages to generate drama and draw attention to itself.

The biggest GTA 6-related news story of the year is undoubtedly the ongoing "will-they-won't-they" surrounding the game's release date, with some sources claiming Rockstar won't finish the game by Fall 2025 and will have to delay its release until 2026, other reports dismissing these claims as hogwash and stating that the game won't be delayed, and the third group contributing to the discussion with a "too early to know for sure" take. "Why does that matter, let Rockstar cook," I can hear you saying, however, it seems to matter a great deal to many in the gaming industry – particularly other developers – who, according to some reports, are withholding the release dates of their 2025 titles until Rockstar announces one for GTA 6, aiming to avoid direct competition.

So far, the only info we've got about the impending release comes from rumors and articles shared by insiders, which suggest GTA 6's engine will feature procedural object generation, something that could bring new mechanics to expand the realism of Vice City, and hint that the project may become the most expensive video game in history, with production costs ranging from $1 to $2 billion. For now, all we can do is wait and hope that Obbe Vermeij's earlier prediction that some fans may end up disappointed by the new chapter turns out to be wrong.

When it comes to Valve, unlike Rockstar, they actually did release a brand-new game – their competitive third-person hero shooter Deadlock, which, prior to its official announcement, had been generating significant buzz across the industry, with rumors about hundreds of people playtesting it in alpha and new details about the characters and gameplay surfacing almost every week. Available now in early access, Deadlock is yet to become a massive hit like Valve's other multiplayer games such as Counter-Strike or Dota 2, but nonetheless, it has still managed to build a dedicated community of fans and now performs better than some of the new releases mentioned earlier in this review, peaking at around 17-20 thousand concurrent players each day.

That being said, with Valve, it's not what they released this year that makes them so interesting, but rather what they didn't. Whether Gaben used some dark magic to pull this off is still up for debate, but in 2024, Half-Life 3 – a game with almost mythical status that, let's be honest here, not that many people are still actively waiting for – somehow became the center of attention once again, thanks to a flood of rumors and coincidences that point to one thing: Valve is working on something huge.

The valve that opened the flood of HL3 speculations was turned in late August by YouTuber Tyler McVicker, who, after studying the code and files from Valve's titles, concluded that the developer is working on two new Half-Life games, with one of them starring the legendary protagonist of the original duology, Gordon Freeman, as the main character.

The flame of speculation grew even hotter when, just days before Half-Life 2 turned 20, it was discovered that Valve had added a new "test" branch for the game on Steam and had been actively yet quietly working on it, updating it up to several times a day. The hype reached its peak when Gabe Follower, one of the biggest Valve enthusiasts, revealed the results of his investigation, which uncovered that, among other things, the studio had been hiring droves of developers and renaming variables in the code from "hlvr" to "hlx" – a particularly noteworthy discovery, considering Valve had previously used the letter "X" to conceal the number "3" during the development of the canceled Left 4 Dead 3.

As a result of all this, one of the most discussed topics surrounding The Game Awards 2024 was a rumor about Valve planning to announce HL3 during the presentation, and while it turned out not to be true, the mere fact that it attracted so much attention is noteworthy in and of itself, given that even the memes about Half-Life 3 never being released have been dead for almost a decade. That, however, doesn't change the fact that the gaming giant seems to actually have something under the hood, and whether or not it's the continuation of the HL series, we'll likely only find out for sure when Valve itself wants us to know.

Ella-strious Game Adaptations

Continuing the trend set last year by the beloved TV and film adaptations of The Last of Us and Super Mario Bros., 2024 also treated the community to two particularly noteworthy releases – Amazon's Fallout and Fortiche Productions' Arcane series – and like the aforementioned duo from 2023, these two also came in both live-action and CG animated formats, giving us the opportunity to draw comparisons between the pairs.

When it comes to Arcane Season 2, much like the Mario movie, it knew its target audience well and delivered accordingly, delighting fans with even more mind-blowing 3D visuals and animations while offering a conclusion to the story of the original that, though criticized by some, satisfied most viewers, currently boasting an 89% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The showrunners themselves also seemed to enjoy the community's reception, hinting that even though Arcane is over and won't get a third season, there might be more shows based on the LoL universe coming in the future, as they have even more stories to tell.

By far, the biggest debacle surrounding Arcane Season 2 revolved around the show's budget, as shortly before the premiere, it was revealed that the production and promotion costs totaled approximately $250 million, making it the most expensive animated TV series of all time. While the showrunners defended their spending by noting that, compared to animated films, they are "dirt cheap," a later report pointed out that the show wasn't able to recoup the costs directly.

Nevertheless, the controversy ultimately resolved in Arcane's favor when Riot's spokesperson noted that "while the show itself wasn't profitable, it added to the business in other ways," and Riot Games Co-Founder Marc Merrill responded to headlines calling the show a "financial miss" by stating that they don't "make things like Arcane to sell skins" but instead "sell skins to make things like Arcane."

Out of the four adaptations mentioned earlier in this chapter, Amazon's Fallout is arguably the most interesting one simply because of how debatable it turned out to be. While Arcane and The Last of Us were liked by an overwhelming majority of viewers, and the Mario movie was loved by everyone except critics (and honestly, in 2024, who cares about their opinions anymore?), the Fallout TV series sticks out as a sore thumb due to Bethesda's and the showrunners' decision to focus on appealing to fans of the later titles and new viewers – many of whom had only a surface-level understanding of the series, if at all – putting admirers of non-Bethesda Fallout games on the back burner, something the show's director openly admitted.

While it's undeniable that the strategy did pay off in the end, and Amazon's Fallout succeeded both financially and critically – with Season 2 getting announced almost immediately after Season 1 concluded – the series faced backlash from fans of the original Fallout games and New Vegas throughout its entire run and afterward due to numerous inconsistencies, retcons, and altered lore elements introduced in the show, such as the ghoul serum, the nuking of Shady Sands and its relocation on the map, the state of the West Coast in general – which was supposed to be a thriving civilization more concerned about taxes than radiation, not the stereotypical post-apocalyptic wasteland portrayed in the show – and other changes beyond count.

As if that wasn't enough, the show's success gave Bethesda more freedom to interpret the franchise's lore as they see fit, so much so that Todd Howard proclaimed the series' events would be viewed as canon, and the studio's Design Director Emil Pagliarulo at one point declared the Fallout 4 protagonist a war criminal – a decision he quickly retracted after facing a wave of criticism. While you can spend hours lambasting Bethesda and showrunners for everything they did wrong with the series, perhaps the most fitting critique of Amazon's adaptation came from Chris Avellone, the Writer and Designer of Fallout 2 and Fallout: New Vegas and the author of the Fallout Bible, who back in May shared an extensive two-part review highlighting the show's strengths and where it fell short.

Right now, Amazon is hard at work producing Season 2, with its cast recently joined by Macaulay Culkin, known for his role as Kevin McCallister in the 1990 Christmas movie Home Alone. As hinted at in the first season's finale, the sequel is set to take place in the Mojave Wasteland, the main setting of Fallout: New Vegas, and given just how strongly FNV fans feel about FNV and Bethesda's tendency to rewrite the franchise's history, it certainly feels like we've got a time bomb on our hands, set to detonate five minutes after the second season hits the screens.

"The Game Commercials With Award Interruptions"

At last, let's finally address the topic that's been referenced throughout this entire review and undeniably deserves its own dedicated section by virtue of being by far the biggest video game event of the year and, if you think about it, the successor of the late E3 conference – in spirit, if not in scale – The Game Awards 2024.

As per the tradition, even before the show began, it managed to spark numerous heated discussions online, with the two main ones being Geoff Keighley's attempts to trademark the term "The Game Awards" and the event's updated rules, which made expansion packs, new game seasons, DLCs, remakes, and remasters eligible in all categories – including Game of the Year – resulting in Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree DLC and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, the second installment in a planned trilogy remaking the original 1997 Final Fantasy VII, becoming contenders for the industry's most prestigious award.

The GOTY itself deserves a special mention, as it too became a point of contention within the community when it was revealed that the event's system for choosing the Game of the Year winner gives 90% of the voting power to a selected jury, leaving only 10% to public voting and minimizing the audience's influence on the final outcome. Moreover, players also criticized the jury for being composed mainly of representatives from major video game websites, along with publications with no direct ties to gaming, such as The Atlantic, The Guardian, NPR, Variety, Discussing Film, and others – a fact many took issue with because of the media's views on games and gaming-related matters often differing significantly from those of everyday gamers.

Contrary to what you might expect given such a chaotic pre-show, the actual ceremony exceeded all expectations and went incredibly smoothly, with fewer annoying ads than there was a year ago, more time dedicated to the actual awards, some genuinely exciting announcements like The Witcher 4, Elden Ring: Nightreign, and the Okami sequel, and, for the most part, well-deserved winners. Even The Muppets – usually one of the cringiest parts of the ceremony – turned out to be its most hilarious, which is yet another testament to how The Game Awards continues to learn from past mistakes and improve year by year, so kudos to them! And the numbers back this up too, with the show hitting a record 154 million global livestreams this year, a 31% increase from the prevrious record of 118 million, set in 2023.

One aspect of The Game Awards most of the community believed to be lacking this year, however, was its vetting process, explicitly due to a single title that you probably have already heard of. Dubbed Catly, the game immediately made thousands of gamers question how it even made it to TGA in the first place, all thanks to its peculiar AI-looking graphics and the shady developer SuperAuthenti behind it, whose Co-Founder had previously been involved in blockchain gaming, a serious red flag for many.

The drama intensified when a representative from SuperAuthenti appeared on IGN – an outlet that had faced heavy backlash on Twitter for promoting Catly – to claim that generative AI was not used to create either the trailer or the game itself, which may or may not be true, and state that the studio had never been involved with "blockchain technology," which seems to be an outright lie, as a simple search on an obscure Chinese website revealed that SuperAuthenti was the sole shareholder (i.e., owner) of Shanghai Binmao Technology, the creator of the "botanical experience" Plantly: Mindful Gardening, which did include "digital tokens" before being removed from the internet.

Shortly after that, SuperAuthenti shared a "gameplay trailer" for Catly – which you have probably missed since it was only shared on Steam and not on YouTube – and while it did show that, even if there are AI elements in the game, it's not entirely AI-generated, the trailer itself looked like a chaotic 10 FPS amalgamation of store-bought Unreal Engine 5 assets and animations and the Fur Displacement Test from 2010, thus failing to convince the majority of players that Catly is an experience worth spending time and money on. Although the trailer wasn't officially released on YouTube, it was, naturally, reuploaded there, so as always, feel free to check it out and draw your own conclusions:

And there you have it, folks – the complete overview of the gaming industry in 2024, full of highs, lows, and in-betweens that kept us buzzing all year long. If you made it through all of this, a big thank you for your dedication, and even if you didn't, we still deeply appreciate you being here with us today. What topics did we miss? What events should we have mentioned? Let us know in the comments!

And the biggest thank you of all goes out to all the artists, game developers, gamers, and everyone interested in all things video games who have been with us throughout the year, without you, 80 Level would still be level 1 at best. Next year, our website is celebrating its 10th anniversary, so stay tuned for exciting updates, contests, and other fun activities throughout the entire year. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Happy Holidays to all of you, and we'll see you in 2025!