2016 Video Games Recap and Happy New Year
2016 WAS A BIG YEAR FOR VIDEO GAMES AND Versus Player
Welcome to the 2016 Video Games Recap. We hope you have all had a fantastic year and played some amazing games.
2016 saw the creation of Versus Player by Jono, Joe and Jase as well as our bi-weekly cast PODCAST VS. PLAYER. VP is first and foremost a passion project for the three of us where the name of the game is fun and we sure are having a lot of it. We would like to thank our loyal readers and listeners for being part of our little startup and are looking forward to an even bigger year in 2017. Below we’ve included a 2016 recap in gaming from Wikpedia.
From all of us at Versus Player, we love you.
Game on!
EVENTS
| Month | Day(s) | Event |
|---|---|---|
| January | 4 | Activision Blizzard announced that they had acquired Major League Gaming.[2] |
| 6 | Square Enix closed cloud gaming subsidiary Shinra Technologies.[3] | |
| 8 | Marc Laidlaw, lead writer of the Half-Life series, retired from Valve Corporation.[4] | |
| David Brevik, the CEO of Gazillion Entertainment, left the company.[5] | ||
| 12 | Electronic Arts introduced Origin Access, a new subscription service for Microsoft Windows.[6] | |
| 13 | Leslie Benzies, producer and president of Rockstar North, left the company after a 16-month sabbatical. His positions were taken up by Aaron Garbut and Rob Nelson.[7] | |
| 16 | Brian Horton, director of Rise of the Tomb Raider, left Crystal Dynamics for Infinity Ward.[8] | |
| 22 | David Gaider, lead writer of Dragon Age, left BioWare.[9] | |
| 28 | Bungie announced that Pete Parsons had replaced Harold Ryan as the company’s president.[10] | |
| GOG.com launched Games in Development, their own early access program.[11] | ||
| Sumo Digital announced their plan of establishing a new studio in Nottingham.[12] | ||
| 29–31 | PAX South 2016 held at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center.[13] | |
| February | 8 | Blizzard Entertainment celebrated its 25th anniversary.[14] |
| GameTrailers video game website was closed.[15] | ||
| 27 | The Pokémon franchise celebrated its 20th anniversary.[16] | |
| Unknown | Ryan Barnard, game director of Tom Clancy’s The Division, left Massive Entertainment for IO Interactive.[17] | |
| March | 7 | Press Play, the developer of Max: The Curse of Brotherhood and Kalimba was closed by Microsoft Studios.[18] |
| 9 | Nexon acquired Big Huge Games, the developer of DomiNations.[19] | |
| Riot Games acquired Radiant Entertainment, the developer of Rising Thunder.[20] | ||
| 14–18 | Game Developers Conference 2016 held in San Francisco, California.[21] | |
| 15 | Jagex was acquired by Chinese mining company Shandong Honda.[22] | |
| 22 | Bigpoint Games was acquired by Youzu Interactive.[23] | |
| Evolution Studios, the developer of MotorStorm and Driveclub, was shut down by Sony Computer Entertainment.[24] | ||
| The Resident Evil franchise celebrated its 20th anniversary.[25] | ||
| 24 | Sony Computer Entertainment announced that they had founded a new studio, ForwardWorks to develop mobile games.[26] | |
| 31 | n-Space, the developer of Sword Coast Legends, was closed.[27] | |
| Sega completed its acquisition of Atlus. Future Atlus-developed titles localized for America will be published by Sega.[28] | ||
| April | 1 | Sony Computer Entertainment was merged with Sony Network Entertainment to form Sony Interactive Entertainment.[29] |
| 5 | Karthik and Guha Bala, founders of Vicarious Visions, left the company.[30] | |
| 11 | Codemasters announced the company had employed the majority of Evolution Studios‘ employees.[31] | |
| 14 | Leonard Boyarsky left Blizzard Entertainment to join Obsidian Entertainment.[32] | |
| 18 | GameStop announced GameTrust, a new publishing division.[33] | |
| 20 | Microsoft announced the discontinuation of the production of Xbox 360.[34] | |
| 22 | Tatsuya Minami, president of PlatinumGames, left the company.[35] | |
| 22–24 | PAX East 2016 held at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.[36] | |
| 25 | Patrice Desilets gained back the rights to 1666 Amsterdam and settled the lawsuit with Ubisoft.[37] | |
| 26 | NIS America announced that they had cut ties with Atlus after Sega’s acquisition of Atlus.[38] | |
| SNK Playmore was restructured to form SNK.[39] | ||
| 29 | Lionhead Studios was closed by Microsoft Studios.[40] | |
| May | 10 | Avalanche Software was shut down by parent company Disney Interactive Studios. Disney decided they would not self-publish any titles in the future, and instead rely on external partners.[41] |
| 13 | Yahoo! Games was shut down by Yahoo!.[42] | |
| 18 | Electronic Arts announced that they had formed a new studio called Frostbite Lab.[43] | |
| The creator of the Madden NFL series, Rich Hilleman, left Electronic Arts.[44] | ||
| IGN purchased assets of GameTrailers from Defy Media.[45] | ||
| 30 | Starbreeze Studios acquired the Payday franchise from 505 Games.[46] | |
| June | 1 | Vivendi succeeded in Gameloft‘s hostile takeover, seizing control from the Guillemot brothers.[47] |
| 2 | Techland established a new publishing label called Techland Publishing.[48] | |
| 3 | Aaron Linde, the writer of Battleborn, left Gearbox Software.[49] | |
| 6 | Future Publishing purchased Imagine Publishing, the owner of GamesTM.[50] | |
| 10 | Ubisoft Casablanca was closed by Ubisoft.[51] | |
| 12-14 | Electronic Arts held their first fan-orientated public event named EA Play.[52] | |
| 14–16 | E3 2016 was held at the Los Angeles Convention Center.[53] | |
| 21 | Supercell, the developer of Clash of Clans, was acquired by Tencent for $8.6 billion.[54] | |
| 23 | The Sonic the Hedgehog franchise celebrated its 25th anniversary. | |
| July | 1 | Josh Mosqueira, the director of Diablo III, announced that he had left Blizzard Entertainment.[55] |
| 5 | Sega announced that they had acquired Endless Space developer Amplitude Studios.[56] | |
| 8 | Adam Boyes, VP of third party relations & developer technology group of Sony Interactive Entertainment, departed from the company.[57] | |
| 11 | Splash Damage, the developer of the two Enemy Territory games, was acquired by Chinese chicken meat company Leyou.[58] | |
| 19 | Dino Patti, co-founder of Playdead, departed the company.[59] | |
| August | 3–13 | The International 2016, the highest paying eSports tournament in history, was held at the KeyArena in Seattle.[60] |
| 4–7 | QuakeCon 2016 was held in Hilton Anatole in Dallas.[61] | |
| 5 | Relentless Software, the developer of the Buzz! series, shut down.[62] | |
| 12 | Nordic Games, the company that acquired most THQ‘s franchises, rebranded to THQ Nordic.[63] | |
| 15–16 | Game Developers Conference Europe 2016 was held in Cologne, Germany. | |
| 17–21 | Gamescom 2016 held in Cologne, Germany.[64] | |
| 29 | Independent developer Renegade Kid was replaced by two companies: Atooi (who owns all of Renegade Kid’s 2D IPs) and Infinitizmo (which owns all of Renegade Kid’s 3D IPs).[65] | |
| September | 2–5 | PAX West 2016 held at the Washington State Convention Center. |
| 13 | Microsoft Studios launched Xbox Play Anywhere, a cross-play program between Windows 10 and Xbox One.[66] | |
| Chris Metzen announced his departure from Blizzard Entertainment.[67] | ||
| 15-18 | Tokyo Game Show was held and celebrated its 20th Anniversary | |
| 21 | Blizzard Entertainment announced that they would be phrasing out their online system Battle.net.[68] | |
| 28 | Ubisoft acquired Ketchapp, the developer of 2048.[69] | |
| October | 12-13 | Steam Dev Days held in Seattle, Washington.[70] |
| 17 | United Front Games, the developer of Sleeping Dogs, shut down.[71] | |
| 25 | The Tomb Raider franchise celebrated its 20th anniversary. | |
| November | 4-5 | BlizzCon 2016 held in Anaheim, California.[72] |
| December | 1 | Annapurna Pictures establish gaming division Annapurna Interactive.[73] |
| The Game Awards 2016 held in Los Angeles, California. | ||
| 3–4 | PlayStation Experience 2016 held in Anaheim, California. | |
| 16 | Shinji Hirano, the former president of Konami Europe, became the CEO of Kojima Productions.[74] | |
| 20 | Atlus formed a new development studio called Studio Zero.[75] | |
| Crytek closed its studio in Bulgaria, Hungary, Turkey, South Korea, and China.[76] |
GAME RELEASES