After 12 months of massive hitters reminiscent of Helldivers 2, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, Dune: Half 2 and Shogun, it’s not unreasonable to think about 2024 an excellent yr for popular culture. However the clean all the time comes with the tough, and the previous yr actually has been a rocky one for the issues we love and the individuals who make them.
From layoffs and studio closures to pricey consoles, underwhelming variations and struggling sequels, these are the most important disappointments in 2024.
Gaming Trade Layoffs and Closures
The video games business discovered itself going through a disaster in 2023 as many publishers and studios, each massive and small, made scores of employees redundant in an effort to chop prices. However the pains of that yr can be repeated in 2024, which has seen an estimated 14,600 job losses – a 39% enhance year-on-year. The cuts have seen 1000’s of proficient studio employees thrown into probably the most tough job market the video games business has ever seen, with builders looking for new roles in a panorama the place firms are slimming down.
Among the many main firms slicing employees free have been Riot, Microsoft, Bungie, Unity, TakeTwo Interactive, EA, and PlayStation. Such companies have decreased their employees numbers for a range of causes and components, be that rising growth prices, shifting participant habits within the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, and the worldwide impression of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Regardless of the causes, remaining employees at these publishers and studios should proceed to work in unsure occasions with out the help of their former colleagues.
That’s if their studio nonetheless exists. Including to the dismal image are a number of studio closures. Maybe probably the most outstanding amongst them is Arkane Austin, Bethesda’s immersive sim specialist accountable for the acclaimed Prey. Sadly its most up-to-date launch, Redfall, was a vital and business bomb – a scenario that seemingly sealed its destiny. Arkane Austin was shuttered by guardian firm Microsoft, together with Alpha Canine Video games, Roundhouse Video games, and Hello-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks. Considerably miraculously, Tango was rescued by Krafton in a last-minute flip of destiny, however such excellent news is uncommon. Additionally struggling closure this yr was PlayStation’s London Studio, Galvanic Video games, Avalanche Studio Group’s New York and Montreal studios, in addition to others. To say it has been a tricky yr is an understatement.
Development-chasing Failures
One other developer closed for good is Firewalk Studios, the workforce behind what’s actually PlayStation’s largest catastrophe of the technology: Harmony. A PvP hero shooter, its lengthy and expensive growth meant it arrived lengthy after the style had peaked in reputation. However, regardless of being developed by many FPS veterans hailing from the likes of Bungie and Activision, what may have been PlayStation’s subsequent massive multiplayer phenomenon struggled to face out from the likes of Overwatch and Apex Legends because of its lacklustre character kits and commonplace fare goal design. From the surface Harmony merely appeared like one other typical hero shooter, which meant few wished to see what was happening inside.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that nearly nobody turned up for its August launch – it achieved a excessive of simply 697 concurrent gamers on Steam throughout its first week. Lower than two weeks later, Sony pulled Harmony from sale, refunded gamers, and shut the sport down. By the top of October, Firewalk Studios was closed for enterprise. All of it sadly means Harmony is gone and not using a hint. Effectively, nearly – an episode of Amazon’s Secret Stage animated sequence serves as a prequel to the continuing Harmony in-game story that by no means occurred.
An identical, fortunately much less tragic story additionally occurred earlier this yr with Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League. After months of poorly-received advertising, Sucide Squad launched as a vital and business bomb. As with Harmony, a lot of Kill The Justice League’s failings have been attributable to chasing tendencies that gamers have lengthy since largely drained of – on this case, the Future-style live-service shooter grind. It didn’t assist that Suicide Squad resembled Crystal Dynamics’ ill-fated Avengers recreation from a couple of years again, which equally irritated gamers for being a repetitive multiplayer PvE recreation. In Suicide Squad’s case, it was a shattering fall from grace for a studio that beforehand made beloved single-player Batman video games. Many of us simply wished extra of that best-in-class superhero motion with a villainous twist, however sadly Warner Bros’ chase of live-service income seemingly obtained in the best way. Not that it paid off – an preliminary lack of gross sales and dwindling gamers has contributed to a big income decline for the corporate.
{Hardware} Hiccups
The time-compressing impact of the pandemic years has disguised the truth that, sure, we’re already on the midpoint of the present console technology. Proper on cue, Sony delivered its mid-cycle refresh PlayStation 5 Professional, and it’s protected to say that virtually nobody was happy by its $700 price ticket. That’s not simply all the way down to the associated fee of residing squeezing everybody’s wallets – Mark Cerny’s presentation that apparently showcased the console’s potential to render The Final of Us Half 2 Remastered so a lot better than the bottom console was mainly the “They’re the identical image” meme from The Workplace in motion.
Whereas there’s undoubtedly time for the PS5 Professional to show why it prices $200 greater than the common PS5, the preliminary outcomes have been fairly disappointing. Somewhat than get rid of the necessity to determine between high quality and efficiency modes, builders have added much more choices to Professional-patched video games, with complicated names reminiscent of ‘Constancy Professional’ and ‘Versatility’. Keep in mind whenever you simply plugged in a console and it labored? Halcyon days. Plus, all of the Professional’s further energy can’t even make Bloodborne look any higher.
At the least Sony followers obtained a console, although. After months of rumours that Nintendo was attributable to announce its successor to the Change, the corporate introduced a model new piece of {hardware}: an alarm clock. Sure, the Alarmo is a $100 clock with game-themed alarms and a movement sensor that may detect whenever you’ve obtained out of mattress. It’s hardly the Change 2 we have been hoping for. And even relating to Nintendo’s historical past of bizarre {hardware}, Alarmo is much from probably the most fascinating or weird. A real disappointment from the home of Mario.
Unreliable Reliables
Over within the realm of tv, issues have largely been brilliant because of the likes of Arcane, Shogun, and Fallout. However 2024 additionally noticed some historically dependable exhibits battle to keep up their high quality. Season 3 of The Bear actually wasn’t unhealthy – it as soon as once more supplied some strong character drama and beautifully-shot kitchen nightmares. However, in comparison with the unbelievable highs of the primary two seasons, this third chapter fell considerably quick. Its frustratingly gradual tempo clashed with the lightning pace of earlier years, and the main target being nearly totally on Carmy’s inside disaster pressured worthwhile characters like Sydney into the sidelines.
Equally, we noticed this yr’s Star Wars mission battle to hit the highs of The Mandalorian and Andor. The Acolyte was constructed on an enchanting premise that delved into the galaxy’s previous, exploring the late Excessive Republic period. It was full of Jedi and featured one of the good lightsaber battles in your complete franchise, however even that couldn’t save the sequence from its sloppy and infrequently infuriating storytelling.
The Acolyte’s saving grace may have been Manny Jacinto’s Sith lord The Stranger, who sports activities one of probably the most menacing helmets in all of Star Wars. However whereas deeper exploration of his character may have resulted in a much-improved season two, we’ll by no means get to see that because of Disney axing the present totally. This isn’t only a Disney drawback – Netflix has additionally continued its behavior of cancelling exhibits after barely giving them an opportunity to understand their full potential. 2024’s Netflix cull included Kaos and Lifeless Boy Detectives, which be a part of final yr’s Lockwood & Co within the “cancelled after a single season” membership.
Terrible Variations
This yr’s Fallout was a stellar train of tips on how to adapt a online game for tv, with Amazon’s wasteland present being amongst our TV highlights of 2024. However it looks like Fallout’s success isn’t a assured indicator that each Amazon online game present will likely be improbable, as confirmed by the dreadful Like a Dragon: Yakuza present that landed on the service a number of months later. That includes no karaoke, far too little Majima, and much an excessive amount of melodrama, Like a Dragon completely did not seize the stark distinction between critical and foolish that the Yakuza video games thrive on.
It wasn’t simply Japanese RPGs that have been handled poorly for TV this yr, although. Famed Japanese manga Uzumaki additionally obtained its long-awaited animated adaptation, and the outcomes couldn’t have gone any worse. The four-part Grownup Swim present turned Junji Ito’s monochrome horror right into a rushed mess that sprinted to the finale, undermining plot factors, character arcs, and scares on the best way. The largest disappointment, although, was the extreme drop in animation high quality following a visually wealthy episode one. Uzumaki reworked from fantastically chilling right into a low-budget nightmare within the area of per week – it was a rug-pull scarier than something Junji Ito may write.
Field Workplace Bombs
Sadly, horrible variations weren’t restricted to the small display screen. One of the most important field workplace bombs of the yr got here within the type of Borderlands. Gearbox’s wacky looter shooter was reworked right into a hideously miscast Guardians of the Galaxy rip-off for its live-action massive display screen journey. Many of the video games’ best-know qualities, reminiscent of its sweary sense of humour and love of turning people into piles of goopy gore, have been toned all the way down to the purpose of vanishing fully. The end result was bland, recycled MCU-ish concepts geared towards mass marketability. Briefly: a whole catastrophe. Unsurprisingly it died an unceremonious dying when it launched in cinemas – with Lionsgate’s CEO saying “practically the whole lot that would go unsuitable did go unsuitable.”
It’s controversial that an FPS like Borderlands was by no means going to outlive the transition to cinema. A sequel to probably the most worthwhile comedian ebook film of all time and the primary R-rated movie to go a billion-dollars on the field workplace, although? Certainly a second Joker was going to be a simple win. Not a lot. Joker: Folie à Deux turned out to be a miserably boring follow-up, with director Todd Phillips undoing nearly all the great he established within the first movie. When not even Girl Gaga can save your kinda-sorta musical from its snoozefest courtroom drama scenes, you recognize you’re in hassle.
For the classic-mould film buff, although, nearly actually the most important disappointment of the yr is Megalopolis. The years-in-the-making, self-financed magnum-opus from The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola was (maybe, if we’re trustworthy, considerably predictably) an indulgent disaster. Some folks have seen methodology within the insanity (together with our personal reviewer, who gave it a 9/10) however for a lot of this opulent fable set in a futuristic, Rome-like New York Metropolis was a bloated, pretentious, boring mess. Fairly how the creator of the quintessential Mafia film obtained right here might show to be one of the universe’s biggest mysteries.
From studio closures to field workplace catastrophes, 2024 has had some actual low factors. It’s onerous to discover a silver lining in some of them, and we proceed to hope that the industries that make our favorite issues will flip a greater nook in 2025. However in different cases it’s the downs that make the ups shine brightly – and you will discover many of these brilliant stars in our roundup of the most effective reviewed video games of 2025.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s Senior Options Editor.