2024 Gaming Odyssey: Unveiling the Peaks and Pits of the Year

In the meantime, while AAA studios continued to roll out disappointments, indie and AA creators have discovered their groove, consistently pleasing the audience with praised titles such as Palworld, Helldivers 2, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, Thank Goodness You’re Here, Pacific Drive, Another Crab’s Treasure, Neva, Manor Lords, Enshrouded, Content Warning, the recent buzz of the community MiSide, and, naturally, 80 Level’s personal indie champion of 2024, Tiny Glade, just to mention a few.

However, the most remarkable of them all was LocalThunk’s Balatro, a poker-themed deck-building roguelike that recently achieved a significant milestone of 3.5 million copies sold, making history at The Game Awards 2024 by becoming a nominee for this year’s Game of the Year award, with many believing it wasn’t merely filler but had a legitimate chance at securing the title.

While indies were not entirely shielded from the industry-wide obstacles like the previously mentioned layoffs, and indeed faced some challenges, the overall performance of smaller studios showed slight improvement compared to prior years, backed up by data. According to an earlier analysis by VGI, indie titles comprised 58% of all games sold on Steam in 2024, rising from 49% in 2023, and made up 48% of the revenue from sold units, in contrast to just 31% the previous year. While we could argue for hours about the reasons for AAA studios’ underperformance this year, my only wish is that larger developers view these outcomes not as discouragement but as an inspiration to enhance in 2025, learn from their missteps, and ultimately demonstrate that the additional “A” in the term used to identify them truly signifies something.