Game of the Year 2025 – Biggest Disappointments

The yearly awards season is all the time a good time to look again and replicate on the highs of the video video games trade of the earlier twelve months, and there actually have been loads of highlights! There’s been surprising hits within the likes of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, there’s been long-awaited sequels like Hole Knight: Silksong that really handle to stay as much as the expectations… however to focus solely on the highs is to miss the troubles and main failings that proceed to plague the trade by means of the previous half decade.

As soon as once more it’s studio closures and layoffs which might be the most important disappointment of our 12 months, and whereas job losses have been nowhere close to the extent of what we noticed in 2024, they have been nonetheless massively impactful.

One of many greatest examples of this was Warner Bros. Video games Studios closing Monolith, Player First Games and WB Games San Diego in one fell swoop, cancelling the long-in-development Marvel Lady recreation within the course of. It was one other tremendous hero recreation concerned when EA cancelled their Black Panther game and closed Cliffhanger Games, we additionally noticed Ubisoft Leamington closing its doorways, Avalanche’s Liverpool studio, Microsoft’s The Initiative, and job losses at King of Meat developer Glowmade, Folks Can Fly, Jagex, Don’t Nod, Crytek, and so many extra.

It definitely feels tougher than ever to handle to carry a recreation to launch after which get it the discover and a focus that it must survive (not least when a stay service is deliberate round it), however there’s too many situations the place very worthwhile firms are making cuts with some handwaving about AI to sweeten their investor, or the place a point of mismanagement has led to a recreation’s growth drifting and sliding to the purpose it’s unsalvageable.

Right here’s hoping that 2026 can see us turning a nook.

EA’s Saudi-funded Buyout – Additionally Disappointing

It’s not simply monetary chapter that now we have to fret about within the video games trade, however an ethical chapter as nicely. With Electronic Arts announcing that they had agreed to sell their company completely to personal funding, with the money coming from Silver Lake Administration, which is Saudi Arabia’s Public Funding Fund, and a a lot smaller stake going to Affinity Companions, the corporate of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner’s… which can be backed by the PIF.

Saudi cash has been flooding out of the oil-rich nation and its fellow Gulf states for a very long time, mostly seen as numerous acts of “sports activities washing” to distract from and diminish the impression of issues just like the nation’s stance on girls’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, the assassination of outspoken Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and different human rights violations. PIF cash has gone in the direction of shopping for up soccer groups, founding golf tournaments, securing motorsports races, and extra. Nonetheless, it’s additionally been part of gaming for a very long time, and the Public Funding Fund already owned 10% of Digital Arts and all of Niantic., It additionally has stakes in Riot Video games, Activision Blizzard, Nintendo, Take Two, Capcom, Embracer, Nexon, and Koei Tecmo. They’ve additionally taken possession of SNK and the Esports World Cup.

Shopping for up EA is their greatest transfer but for the video games trade, and it’s deeply regarding on so many ranges for the way that is inevitably getting the inexperienced gentle from the US authorities, for what this implies for EA’s workforce when there’s discuss of widespread use of generative AI, and clearly on an ethical and cultural stage. Will this see LGBTQ+ optimistic campaigns be sidelined in EA’s soccer video games, and extra considerably, the impression this can have on The Sims potential to signify its neighborhood.

No matter it’s that Xbox is doing… – Additionally Disappointing

Having spent so lengthy rebuilding and increasing their gaming enterprise by means of the making an attempt occasions of the Xbox One technology, to see Microsoft meander and slide by means of the 2020s has simply been a bit unhappy. Unhappy and complicated.

2025 was one other 12 months by which we felt the best way that the Xbox enterprise is shifting away from being a direct competitor to Sony and Nintendo and in the direction of simply being one other writer on their platforms. Extra Microsoft-published video games have been confirmed and launched for PS5, and that has led to important deadlines the place the vast majority of the best-selling video games on PlayStation have been Microsoft video games – Forza Horizon 5’s port was an enormous success, for instance, and there’s the Halo remake announcement too.

And that cross-platform shift could possibly be a strong course for Microsoft to take, if didn’t additionally really feel like they have been sacrificing the whole lot else that they had constructed up. The Xbox Sequence consoles have become ludicrously expensive through more price hikes, virtually as in the event that they’re being priced to fail, there’s the massive price increases for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate thinly veiled behind added companies and content material that I doubt many individuals need.

In fact there have been additionally the mass layoffs in the middle of the year that noticed The Initiative shutdown and its Excellent Darkish reboot cancelled, the cancellation of Uncommon’s Everwild, the end of support for the Forza Motorsport franchise (in favour of Forza Horizon), and extra.

A part of the undercurrent to all of this are Microsoft’s two greatest bets of the final couple years. The corporate is all-in on generative AI, needing to point out a rising set up base, and wanting its workers to be dogfooding whereas growing, and there’s Activision needing to maintain churning out Name of Obligation video games each single 12 months, which has led to Black Ops 7 fumbling the FPS crown to Battlefield for the primary time.

The place will Xbox find yourself in a couple of years time? It’s tough to say, however we wish to see it nonetheless be related exterior of being a 3rd get together writer and an more and more costly subscription service.

We’ll be again to the lighter and brighter aspect of gaming tomorrow with our total Sport of the 12 months winner, however within the meantime, let’s atone for all of the awards thus far.