GamesIndustry

The winners of 2023's Steam Awards were announced today, with Baldur's Gate 3 taking home the most awards.

Larian's title won Game of the Year and Outstanding Story-Rich Game, and was the only game to score two wins. Meanwhile, Starfield was awarded Most Innovative Gameplay and Dave the Diver received the Sit Back and Relax accolade.

Red Dead Redemption 2 was recognised as a Labour of Love, while Hogwarts Legacy was deemed to be the Best Game on Steam Deck.

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Hogwarts Legacy ends 2023 as the UK’s biggest physical video game.

It means EA Sports FC 24 was unable to catch Warner Bros' Harry Potter spin-off. Hogwarts Legacy launched in February on PS5, PC and Xbox Series S and X, while EA’s football title landed in September.

It is the first time in a decade that EA’s football game, previously operating under the FIFA licence, isn’t the UK’s top boxed game. The last time this happened was in 2013 when Grand Theft Auto 5 took the top spot.

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Frogwares has announced that it is the sole publisher of The Sinking City.

The developer of the 2019 eldritch horror will be publishing the title on all platforms.

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Last week, a government official was removed from one of China's regulatory agencies following a dip in gaming stocks in response to new game proposals.

As reported by Reuters, per sources familiar with the matter, the withdrawn individual was head of the publishing unit of the Communist Party’s Publicity Department.

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It can be difficult keeping track of the various comings and goings in the games industry, which is why we compile them in semi-regular round-ups.

If you have new appointments or transitions in your company that belong here, please send the names of the appointees, new role and company, and prior role and company to newhires@gamesindustry.biz.

Natalya Tatarchuk has announced that she is Activision's newest chief technology officer.

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It can be difficult keeping track of the various comings and goings in the games industry, which is why we compile them in semi-regular round-ups.

If you have new appointments or transitions in your company that belong here, please send the names of the appointees, new role and company, and prior role and company to newhires@gamesindustry.biz.

Emily Gera has been appointed to the role of senior writer at Baldur's Gate 3 maker, Larain Studios.

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Sony has been fined €13.5 million by French antitrust regulator Autorité de la Concurrence, which has accused the company of "abusing its dominant position in the market" by restricting third-party PlayStation 4 controllers.

Filed by the regulator last month following a referral from French controller manufacturer Subsonic, its investigation found that Sony put counterfeiting measures in place in November 2015 that caused third-party controllers to regularly disconnect from the console during system updates.

The competition regulator also found that third-party manufacturers faced difficulty in joining its licensing program, which it alleged that Sony "refused to communicate" terms and criteria to manufacturers who'd requested it.

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Sega Europe has announced some big changes to its leadership structure, including the return of former president Jurgen Post.

Post rejoins as COO of West Studios and regional managing director as of today. He previously served as president and COO for Sega Europe from 2012 to 2017, during what the publisher described as a "period of exponential growth."

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Rebellion CEO Jason Kingsley and CTO Chris Kingsley have been made 'Commanders of the Order of the British Empire' in the King's New Year's Honours List.

The co-founders of the UK game developer had already received OBEs (Officers of the Order of the British Empire) in 2019 (for Chris) and 2012 (for Jason).

They've both received CBEs for services to the creative industries.

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Square Enix will be actively pushing into the generative AI field, exploring how it can be used in the company's internal games development.

The plans emerge from the Japanese publisher's annual New Year's Letter from its company president – this time penned by Takashi Kiryu, who took over from Yosuke Matsuda after the latter stepped down at the end of his ten-year tenure.

Kiryu observed that, while the potential for artificial intelligence has been debated for a few years, the rise of ChatGPT last year "made it apparent that the applicability of generative AI was by no means limited to text."

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Jukai Studio announced its closure over the holidays, despite launching its horror survival title Stray Souls last October.

In a statement shared to social media on December 22, the developer cited "many reasons" for its decision to shut down, including the closure of its publisher Versus Evil, cyberbullying, poor reception to Stray Souls, and bad sales.

"We did everything in our power to bring the project to completion in the best possible form, but throughout the entire duration we, our publisher staff, other publisher dev teams and our close ones were constantly attacked by a cyber persecutor, and some of you, as our community, were also tormented with unwanted messages and emails," the developer said.

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Versus Evil announced its own closure on social media today.

"Today is a sad day," the company said. "After 10 wonderful years, Versus Evil is shutting its doors. We've loved bringing you the best indie games we could find & sharing so many happy memories with you all, our amazing community! From the bottom of our hearts, THANK YOU for everything!"

In another post today, Versus Evil head of production Lance James confirmed that the indie publisher's entire team had been laid off.

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The Epic Games Store doesn't normally carry games rated Adults Only, it will make an exception for titles that only received the label due to the use of blockchain technology.

An update on Epic's developer site still notes that these games must comply with its blockchain and general guidelines. Games, for example, cannot facilitate gambling and link to NFT marketplaces.

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China today announced a series of planned restrictions on video game monetization and engagement tactics, according to Reuters.

The National Press and Publication Administrations released new draft rules that will ban a swath of common mechanisms in games, including daily log-in rewards, bonuses for first-time spenders, and incentives to spend repeatedly on a game.

Publishers will also be prohibited from offering loot boxes to minors or allowing for in-game items to be auctioned or used as speculative assets. Games will need to impose spending limits on players, while publishers will be required to run all their servers for Chinese games in China.

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Jill Braff has been appointed as head of studio for ZeniMax Online Studios and Bethesda Game Studios.

As reported by The Verge, her appointment was a part of the leadership changes shared with the news of Bobby Kotick's departure next week as CEO of Activision Blizzard.

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This Week in Business is our weekly recap column, a collection of stats and quotes from recent stories presented with a dash of opinion (sometimes more than a dash) and intended to shed light on various trends. Check every Friday for a new entry.

There's a Cantonese saying I've been looking for an excuse to use in one of these columns for months, and with the year drawing to a close, I'm going to drop it here as a little present to myself.

"Sik see sik zoek dau."

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The 18-year-old responsible for last year's Grand Theft Auto 6 hack has been sentenced to an indefinite hospital order.

As BBC News reported, a judge said the GTA 6 hacker posed a "high risk" to the public. A mental health assessment found that they "continued to express the intent to return to cyber-crime as soon as possible."

Rockstar Games claimed that the hack cost the company $5 million in damages.

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First Contact Entertainment has announced its closure.

The Los Angeles-based studio shared a statement on social media, citing a "lack of support for VR within the industry" as the main reason for closing its doors.

"As an AAA VR game developer, we are just not able to justify the expense needed going forward," the studio said. "[We] are extremely proud of the team and grateful to our investors, our partners, and of course our community of dedicated and passionate players."

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Microsoft will be removing Windows Mixed Reality in a future operating system update.

The decision includes the Mixed Reality Portal app, Windows Mixed Reality for SteamVR, and Steam VR Beta.

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Consumer spending on virtual reality content reached $844 million in 2023.

The figure represents a 10% decline year-on-year, according to a new report from analytic firm Omdia.

Omdia attributed the dip to global inflationary pressures and the underperformance of headsets such as Meta Quest 3, PSVR2, and Pico 4.

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PlayStation will no longer be removing over 1,300 Discovery TV shows from its platform next month.

Sony had previously announced that users will not be able to watch Discovery content on PlayStation from December 31, even if they had already purchased it.

However, the firm now says that due to an 'updated licensing agreement' with Warner Bros -- which owns the Discovery brand -- consumers will now be able to access their previously purchased shows 'for at least the next 30 months'.

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EA Sports FC 24 has continued its hold at the top spot, making it the best-selling game in the 2023 UK retail charts heading into Christmas.

According to the latest GfK data, the game experienced a 29% increase in sales after a slight dip last week. Hogwarts Legacy returned to No.2 due to a 17% boost in sales, pushing Super Mario Bros Wonder down to No.3.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 stayed at No.4, while Spider-Man 2 rose from No.7 to round out the Top 5.

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Newzoo has maintained its games market forecast for 2023 to remain at $184 billion in its annual review.

In October, the data firm lowered its games market value forecast predicting a stable growth of 0.6%, which it attributed to challenges in the mobile market.

Earlier this year, Newzoo estimated that the global games market would rise by 2.6% to reach $187 billion in 2023.

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When thinking about AMC's involvement in the industry, you'd be forgiven for immediately picturing how it has licensed its star franchise, The Walking Dead, to several game studios over the years.

But that's not its only foray into games. The company actually also runs an indie publisher, headed by (and composed entirely of) AMC Networks director of games Simon Ferrari.

"I started at AMC seven years ago as a freelancer, working mostly on The Walking Dead mobile games," he tells GamesIndustry.biz. "But a little-known thing about AMC is that their approach to the new media landscape is to become an aggregate of boutiques instead of a big, monolithic service."

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Bobby Kotick will resign after more than 30 years as CEO of Activision Blizzard.

In a formal announcement to employees, the executive said he would be leaving on December 29.

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The games industry moves pretty fast, and there's a tendency for all involved to look constantly to what's next without so much worrying about what came before. That said, even an industry so entrenched in the now can learn from its past. So to refresh our collective memory and perhaps offer some perspective on our field's history, GamesIndustry.biz runs this monthly feature highlighting happenings in gaming from exactly a decade ago.

Looking back on the 10 Years Ago This Month columns covering 2013, there's a recurring theme of companies attempting significant power grabs and hilariously falling flat on their face in the process.

You saw it with the bungled launch of EA's SimCity, with an always-online requirement that was widely assumed (and later confirmed) to be a fig leaf excuse to slap some DRM on a game that didn't need it.

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PlayStation 5 has sold 50 million consoles worldwide, Sony has announced.

It achieved the feat on December 9th, 2023, which means the console is now tracking just one week behind the PlayStation 4. Back in July when the console hit the 40 million mark, it was tracking two months behind PS4.

The PS5's launch was hampered by severe stock issues driven by a worldwide shortage of components, which meant the console was consistently out of stock for its first two years on the market.

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As the holidays draw near, it's the time for us to indulge and feast upon pie… charts. And bar graphs, tables, and other statistics.

I refer to, of course, the annual GamesIndustry.biz Year In Numbers infographic, providing you with a snapshot of where the video games business stands as the year ends (perfect for sounding knowledgeable in any remaining meeting you unfortunately have coming up in the last couple of days before the break).

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Google has agreed to pay $700 million in an antitrust settlement with US state attorney generals.

As reported by The Verge, the case was settled in September and the details have now been made public, including changes being made to its Play store.

The antitrust case was first brought forward in July 2021, where it was argued that Google was unlawfully maintaining a monopoly on Android devices with its Play store.

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During November, Twitch amassed 1.72 billion hours watched in viewership.

The figure represents a 3% dip when compared to October's 1.77 billion, according to Stream Elements and Rainmaker. gg's State of the Stream report. The month of November is a day shorter than October.

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Once upon a time, games veteran Don Daglow gazed into his crystal ball and told GamesIndustry.biz what he expected from the next decade in the video games business.

Ten years later (okay, 11, but Daglow's very busy and so are we), we caught up with him to see how accurate his predictions were and what he believes the future holds for the games industry.

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Remember when the pandemic hit?

Everything sucked, nobody could do anything, and things got weird. Everyone dealt with it in their own way.

For example, we decided that instead of devoting all of our resources to covering the ins and outs of the games industry, it would serve our readers better to address their mental health. By way of showing them pictures of cute pets.

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Activision Blizzard is ending its hybrid work model for QA staffers next month.

The mandate will result in quality assurance employees in Minneapolis, Austin, and El Segundo returning to office work full-time.

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Original Story, Tuesday, December 19: A ransomware group has published 1.67 TB of content from Insomniac Games following a breach last week.

As Cyber Daily reports, the Rhysida ransomware group stole data from the PlayStation studio on December 12.

It put the data on auction for 50 bitcoins (roughly $2 million) with a week's deadline before releasing 1.67 TB of stolen internal data earlier today.

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The New Zealand games industry generated NZD $434.4 million ($270.9 million) in the financial year ended March 2023, according to a survey by the New Zealand Game Developers Association.

This represents a 7% growth year-over-year, compared to an increase of 47% in the previous financial year.

According to the NZGDA, this small growth was attributed to competition from Australian tax incentives and the end of lockdown, as well as skill shortages and a lack of hiring diversity.

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Trade body UKIE has maintained a lovely tradition for several years now: celebrating a UK Game of the Show at Gamescom.

The task of finding a winner has fallen onto GamesIndustry.biz for the past couple of years now, last year leading us to the wonderful Shadows of Doubt.

There were many worthy contenders this year again, but our decision went towards a title that channelled the perspective-shifting cleverness and striking visual identity of a Monument Valley or a Carto: Paper Trail, from Newfangled Games.

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Tencent has shuttered Team Kajiu, a North American subsidiary of the TiMi Studio Group.

The US studio was established back in 2020; it had been working on a AAA multiplayer title and was overseen by former Halo and Battlefield leads Rosi Zagortcheva and Scott Warner.

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3D Realms and Slipgate Ironworks have reportedly seen staff reductions due to Embracer's ongoing restructuring program.

This is according to social media posts from Apogee Entertainment and 3D Realms founder Scott Miller.

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