After 2024, it feels like the games industry is poised for a vibe shift—or maybe a reckoning

Gaming IndustryAfter 2024, it feels like the games industry is poised for a vibe shift—or maybe a reckoningWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Konami)

James Sunderland looks at own face in mirror

2024 has been a year ofincredible videogames. It’s also been bloody: just like 2023 before it, there have beenthousands of layoffs, dozens of studio closures, failures from companies that we once assumed were too big to fail. GameStop shut down Game Informer, the only other surviving gaming magazine in the US, as its CEO honed his corporate strategy to tweeting “TRUMP"700 times in a row. Elon Muskthrew inwith the “games are too woke” crowd. As I reflect on the year and try to hold those two thoughts in my head—it’s been another great year for games, and another terrible year for the games industry—another more nebulous one is floating around the edges, harder to fully grasp.

I’ve never seen so many people more frequently, loudly express some version of the same core feeling: ‘The system is broken.’

It’s something like this: After yet another year of good games but bad times, the mood is changing, reaching an “enough of this shit” threshold that could begin to rumble the status quo.

That’s the rough conclusion I come to after straining to Human Centipede all of these 2024 events, and more, into one monstrously fused thought:

Primed for a shift

I don’t think the games industry is having the kind of epiphany that, were we on the Titanic, would see us spinning the wheel just in the nick of time to avoid the iceberg. I think we already hit the iceberg awhile ago, and more and more people onboard mid-sink are finally like, “Hey, whose fault is it we hit that freaking iceberg? This sucks!!”

I’ve never seen so many people more frequently, loudly express some version of the same core feeling: “The system is broken.” Fifteen years ago I don’t remember a near-unanimous response to layoffs or studio closures or a massive AAA game flop being: “This is the executives' fault. Why don’ttheyget laid off or take a pay cut?” There are even more dramatic echoes of this shift building in our culture beyond games, with alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter Luigi Mangionebecoming a symbolfor an entire country’s frustration with a broken healthcare system.

The torturous, but apt, Game of Sisyphus(Image credit: Cream)

The Game of Sisyphus

A million social media posts declaring the system is broken or that game CEOs should be fired instead of their staff won’t necessarily lead to proactive change, but I’ve never felt like gaming is more fed up and ready for a vibe shift.

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So, 2025

That list could go on and on, back and back to the era of Sega Does What Nintendon’t. Each was dominant in gaming culture until it wasn’t, when a vibe shift came to sweep us along to the new thing.

We wrote about thedangers of the unlimited content churnin 2019 and have expressed our exhaustion with live service games more than a few times; wefelt it at the end of 2023, and still feel it at the end of 2024. You could point to that as proof that 2025 will just be more of the same.

But my gut says that conversation’s finally shifting.

The ‘stupidly simple strategy’

More people than ever are now vocally and angrily drawing the line between the corporate decisions to endlessly develop certain types of games with the layoffs that happen when those games fail; and as more and more of themdofail, spoiling the big bets that executives made years ago, we’ll arrive at a fork in the road.

Either big game companies begin to loudly and publicly start to pivot, changing their marketing strategies to highlight more personal, artistic creations, deliberately invoking inspirations like Baldur’s Gate 3, pushing new ways to monetize their games other than battle passes, promising a less-tiring and more creative alternative to “seasons” as an endless churn of new stuff… or we just keep the rudder locked in place, drilling further and further into that iceberg.

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

Nothinghasto change. The vibe can continue whileUbisoftas we know it dies, megacorps buy up more and more studios and then shut them down after a single failure. We can keep on like this; we’ll lose more talent, sure, but there will always be new bodies for the grist mill. But it seems to me that maybe in 2025, maybe in 2026, enough people are going to be well and truly sick enough of all that to start turning the wheel just a few degrees.

If there’s one single person’s prediction about the next few years in gaming I’d like to believe in, it’s the oneLarian founder Swen Vincke shared at this year’s Game Awards:

Swen Vincke being MVP of gamedev during TGA2024 - YouTubeWatch On

Swen Vincke being MVP of gamedev during TGA2024 - YouTube

If that’s not a vibe worth chasing, I don’t know what is.

Correction: This article initially included Crimson Desert among a list of live service games launching in 2025. It is in fact planned as a singleplayer, non-live service game.

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Primed for a shift#

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals#

So, 2025#

The ‘stupidly simple strategy’#

Primed for a shift

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals

So, 2025

The ‘stupidly simple strategy’