This is Volume 2, Issue 7 of Early Access for Friday, December 15, 2023. If you enjoy Early Access, please help VSG grow and share this post with your friends and family. And if you’d prefer reading Early Access in your email via newsletter, consider subscribing via Substack (you’ll also get it three days earlier, on Wednesdays!). Let’s get right into the news.

One thing to note, before we begin. With the holidays around the corner and things in the gaming world slowing down, this is going to be the final Early Access for 2023. Early Access will return with Volume 3, Issue 1 on January 10, 2024. Happy holidays!

The Big Picture

1. E3 IS DEAD, LONG LIVE SUMMER GAMES FEST

The Entertainment Software Association announced that its flagship event, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), is officially dead. The ESA cited a variety of reasons for the decision – a mix of new competitors, more cost effective ways to communicate to consumers, sponsor and partner withdrawals, as well as pandemic-era disruptions. “We know it’s difficult to say goodbye to such a beloved event, but it’s the right thing to do given the new opportunities our industry has to reach fans and partners,” said Stanley Pierre-Louis, president and CEO of the ESA. Pierre-Louis stressed that major game companies have, and will continue, to create their own individual showcases, saying that “that’s exciting for our industry, and it means it’s an opportunity for them to explore how to engage new audiences in different ways.”

+ Own Worst Enemy: Geoff Keighley, host of The Game Awards and Summer Game Fest, the event that has been seen as the E3 replacement, is often blamed for E3’s demise. But Keighley believes E3 was dying long before he came onto the scene, and said recently that E3 killed itself: “For two decades, E3 was part of my life since I was a 15-year-old kid. [From] the first E3 in 1995, I went to every show. I loved it and it defined my summer. It was so exciting to me, and it was heartbreaking to see that start to fall apart. I think they had a relevancy problem, and then they also had a participation problem over the final years.”

+ A Relevancy Problem: E3’s attendance record stands at 70,000 attendees, set back in 2005, a record set without any need to sell tickets to the public. In 2017, the ESA began selling tickets, rather than restricting the event to “industry insiders,’ in a gambit to boost its relevance. It didn’t work, and over the next years, more and more game companies decided to forego E3 in favor of hosting their own events. The pandemic exacerbated the problem, leading to E3’s cancellation in 2020, something it was never able to recover from, canceling the events in 2021, 2022, and 2023.

2. THE GAME AWARDS 2023

The Game Awards happened last week. Here are the 8 biggest stories from the event:

• Baldur’s Gate 3 cleaned up at the show, taking home Game of the Year and five other awards. Oh, and it’s now out on Xbox. Somewhat surprisingly, Spider-Man 2 got zero awards, despite being nominated for seven.
• A free DLC for God of War Ragnarök, titled Valhalla, was announced at the show (and subsequently released yesterday), adding a roguelike mode to the game where Kratos and Mimir battle through dungeons filled with enemies.
• The Finals was shadow-dropped during the show, with Season 1 beginning immediately.
• Sean Murray (No Man’s Sky) revealed his next ambitious project, Light No Fire. Murray says the game is something that his development company, Hello Games, has been working on for the last five years, and describes the project as “the first real open world” with no boundaries.
• Hideo Kojima showed up and teased a new game – not Death Stranding 2, but a new Xbox game called OD. The game features a strong cast and is being billed as something of a cross between a game and a movie. Jordan Peele is also involved in some unknown capacity, and describes the game as “immersive and terrifying.”
• Developer Arkane Lyon announced that it is making a game based on Marvel’s Blade franchise. Studio director Dinga Bakaba described the upcoming game as an “immersive third-person action adventure.”
• Moon Studios, the developers behind Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps, announced No Rest for the Wicked. The game, which is described as “a mature, precision action adventure,” looked stunning.

+ A Letdown: The show was an entertaining spectacle, with a ton of announcements and other reveals, but it was also a bit of a letdown. It’s becoming abundantly clear that The Game Awards just isn’t an awards show – it’s an E3 replacement in December where publishers and developers can deliver marketing speeches to hype consumers, with the actual awards playing second fiddle and getting scant attention.

+ VSG Awards: The Game Awards may be over, but it’s still awards season at VSG. Over the last two days, we announced eight genre awards: Best Action (Hi-Fi Rush), Best Strategy/Puzzle (The Talos Principle II), Best Indie (Sea of Stars), Best Action Adventure (The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom), Best Sports/Racing (F1 23), Best Platformer (Super Mario Bros Wonder), Best Shooter (Alan Wake II), and Best RPG (Baldur’s Gate 3). Platform awards were announced on Wednesday, and next week we turn our attention to Game of the Year, so give VSG a follow!

3. THE DAY BEFORE

Mytona, the publisher of The Day Before, issued an official apology for the game and announced that it is working with Steam to refund players. “We are sorry for the fact that the game didn’t meet expectations of the majority of the players,” reads a statement from Mytona. In the statement, Mytona was careful to distance itself from the game’s developer Fntastic, which has been accused of misleading consumers and orchestrating an elaborate bait-and-switch campaign, noting that it was “the investor” behind the game. “Today we will work with Steam to open up refunds for any players who choose to make a refund.”

+ A Scam: Developer Fntastic announced the closure of the studio on December 11, just days after The Day Before’s disastrous launch into Steam early access. Fantastic wrote that it worked “tirelessly for five years” and “did everything within our power, but unfortunately, we miscalculated our capabilities.” So was it all smoke and mirrors from the get-go? It might have been better if it had been.

+ Refund Status: Fntastic also issued a statement on the topic of refunds, saying that they are also “working with Steam to allow refunds for any player who chooses to request one, regardless of game time.” The developer added that it’s “received $0 and will receive nothing from The Day Before sales.”

+ Brutal Reviews: VSG removed The Day Before from our website. But we’ve still been keeping an eye on reviews, which have been absolutely brutal. Here’s a snippet from Gamesradar: “The Day Before isn’t quite the worst game I’ve ever played, but it might just be the emptiest. Empty of interesting things to do, but also empty of artistic merit. The bafflingly anticipated ‘Zombie survival MMO’ from developer Fntastic is a game with nothing to say. There are no meaningful ideas, no distinctive mechanics, no creative stylistic choices, and certainly no compelling characters. It’s a reductive, insipid take on the extraction shooter in which you fight boring people in a boring city to collect boring loot to take back to a boring base.”

4. THE END OF LINEARITY

Eiji Aonuma, Legend of Zelda series producer, told IGN that he believes games “where you need to follow a specific set of steps or complete tasks in a very set order” are “kind of games of the past.” Aonuma said that developing games in a manner that gives players the “freedom to flexibly proceed through the game” adds “additional development costs,” but that the added benefit to the player is worth it.

Aonuma called requests from some fans to return to a more linear storytelling style “nostalgia” reflective of a “grass is greener mentality.” He questioned, “Why do you want to go back to a type of game where you’re more limited or more restricted in the types of things or ways you can play?”

5. AN EPIC WIN VERSUS GOOGLE

Epic Games has prevailed in its lawsuit against Google, with a jury in San Francisco determining that Google turned its Google Play store and Google Play Billing service into an illegal monopoly. Epic Games called the verdict “a win for all app developers and consumers around the world.” Google affairs and public policy VP Wilson White said the company plans to appeal the verdict.

+ Compared to Apple: Epic’s case against Google was a very different beast than the one it unsuccessfully fought against Apple, where Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers decided that the dispute had nothing to do with apps. Here, however, substantial evidence was provided that Google negotiated secret revenue sharing deals with smartphone makers and game developers (dubbed Project Hug), specifically designed to suppress the market share of rival app stores. In one deal, for example, Google reduced its commission to 4% if users signed up for Spotify through Google – significantly smaller than the 15% other apps are charged – and permitted Spotify to bypass the commission entirely if people paid using Spotify’s payment option.

+ Remedy: So what is going to come of this verdict? Epic did not request monetary damages in this case. Instead, it asked the court to order Google to give app developers freedom to introduce their own app stores and billing systems on Android. But what remedy the judge orders is still uncertain.

6. BOTTOM OF THE NEWS

+ Insomniac Attack: Insomniac Games has suffered a ransomware attack, with employee personal information and future game plans being targeted, reports indicate. Sony Interactive Entertainment issued the following statement to IGN: “We are aware of reports that Insomniac Games has been the victim of a cyber security attack. We are currently investigating the situation. We have no reason to believe that any other SIE or Sony divisions have been impacted.”

+ Layoff Updates: Game developer Farhan Noor has been tracking industry job cuts dating back to the start of 2023, and estimates that approximately 9,000 industry employees have been laid off so far this year. Free Radical (Timesplitters) is the latest studio to close this year. As of December 10, the five companies that have laid off the most employees this year includes: Unity (1,165), ByteDance (1,000), Embracer Group (964), Epic (830), and Amazon (715).

+ Lethal Company: Cooperative horror game Lethal Company introduced a hilarious arachnophobia mode as part of its Frosty Update. Players can now replace the infamous Bunker Spider with a 3D model of the word “spider” that turns upside down when killed.

+ Knights of the Old Republic: Disney has signaled its commitment to the beloved RPG, acknowledging that “there’s still a lot of demand for” KOTOR. As of November, developer Saber Interactive was reportedly still working on the remake in some capacity.

Read the Reviews

Here are some highlights from the past week in review aggregation. Check out…

• Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is currently at 46% recommended, with 41 reviews, and is rated SKIP IT. VSG’s Verdict: “A solid implementation of the Far Cry formula and beautiful open-world can’t make up for a dull story and combat and gameplay that leave a lot to be desired.”

• Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader is currently at 76% recommended, with 17 reviews, and is rated PLAY IT. VSG’s Verdict: “Underneath it’s buggy exterior and general lack of polish is one of the best CRPGs in the Warhammer series. Engaging turn-based tactical combat, good freedom of choice, and a great atmosphere make this game a few patches away from being exceptional.”

• Plus a ton of updates to existing games in the database.

Since launching in 2018, VSG has covered hundreds of games and aggregated almost tens of thousands of critic reviews. Read more stats about VSG, and how the aggregator, called the MetaMeter, works.

New Game Releases – 12/13 to 1/3/24

Upcoming games calendar:

• Pioneers of Pagonia [PC] – December 13
• House Flipper 2 [PC] – December 14
• My Little Blood Cult [PC] – December 14
• Raccoo Venture [PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO, Switch] – December 14
• SeaOrama: World of Shipping [PC] – December 14
• Towers & Powers [PC VR, PSVR 2, Quest] – December 15
• Trinity Fusion [XSX, XBO] – December 15

View all of the upcoming video game release dates (including DLC) for PS5, Xbox Series X, PC, Nintendo Switch, and more, over on VSG’s release calendar. Early Access is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts via email and support VSG, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber via Substack.