The Long Death of E3 – This Week in Games

If you’re reading this, you’ve survived yet another week in games. Huzzah. Surely, this week was chill in comparison to last week’s hectic Game Awards-centric week. Right? Nah, this week was pretty eventful in its own right. Here’s a look at the biggest stories from this week.

E3 Is Cancelled Forever

After years of trying to make its big comeback only to announce that it’ll try again later, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (colloquially known as E3) is officially dead. E3 was an annual video game trade conference set in Los Angeles, California, where the biggest companies in gaming would share news on new and upcoming titles. The announcement was made on December 12 by the president and CEO of the Entertainment Software Association, Stanley Pierre-Louis via an exclusive interview with The Washington Post.

“We know the entire industry, players and creators alike, have a lot of passion for E3. We share that passion,” Pierre-Louis told The Washington Post. “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.”

E3 suffered a string of cancellations before the event was officially shuttered. E3 2020 was canceled due to the COVID pandemic before making its return in 2021 as a virtual event. The event was subsequently canceled this year until 2025, before being shelved entirely. While chronicling E3’s end has felt like a long time coming for years now, gaming enthusiasts, developers, and journalists alike mourned the event’s cancellation by recounting cherished memories and memes.

In the wake of E3’s absence, Geoff Keighley’s Summer Games Fest and gaming companies like Microsoft and Sony‘s respective State of Play and the Xbox Showcase events have kept E3’s spirit alive. Albeit in bite-sized chunks rather than a weekend-long extravaganza.

“Any one of these major companies can create an individual showcase … [and] also partner with other industry events to showcase the breadth of games,” Pierre-Louis said. “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.”

On December 11, Epic Games‘ ongoing legal battle against Google over anti-competitive practices got a huge win in its favor after a jury reached the verdict that Google was running an illegal app store monopoly.

According to The Verge, the jury unanimously found that Epic Games was “injured” by the “illegal tie” Google has with the Google Play app and its billing services. According to Kotaku, some of the evidence brought up in the trial includes Google’s monopolistic distribution agreements with AAA video game publishers like Ubisoft and Square Enix that were meant to harm competing companies like Epic Games.

What does this all mean? While Epic Games isn’t suing Google for financial compensation, the Fortnite-maker may set a precedence of app developers making their billing system without having Google threatening to boot them from its app store if they don’t let it scrape a huge chunk of the profits. Regardless, folks over at Epic Games are counting this as a huge win.

“Victory over Google!” Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney wrote on Twitter. “After 4 weeks of detailed court testimony, the California jury found against the Google Play monopoly on all counts. The Court’s work on remedies will start in January. Thanks for everyone’s support and faith! Free Fortnite!”

Time will tell whether or not Judge Donato will rule in Epic Games‘ favor.

Sega Accused Of Threatening Recently Unionized Workers With Layoffs

Sega might be currying the favor of gamers with its Game Awards announcement that classic series like Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, and Golden Axe are in development, but things aren’t going so sweet for the company internally. Back in July, more than 140 workers at Sega of America’s Irvine, California location announced their plans to unionize for better wages and work schedules. This rocks. However, the Communications Workers of America recently filed a complaint against Sega for proposing it phase out its temporary workforce by offshoring their jobs to its offices in Japan and Europe.

Wow, what else is SEGA up t–

Oh, management unjustly fired union-organizing employees AND said they’re laying off 40% of newly-unionized workers next year so they can avoid having to pay them more than minimum wage?

Cool! https://t.co/8d0XAUjlkz pic.twitter.com/RvowqTSlVf

— Katrina Leonoudakis #TranslatorsInTheCredits (@katrinaltrnsl8r) December 8, 2023

According to Engadget, the employees that would be laid off make up 40 percent of the union’s bargaining committee alongside its localization and quality assurance team. Now, Sega is being accused of “bad faith bargaining” as retaliation against its workers for unionizing. This sucks.

“Sega will not be allowed to get away with this unlawful behavior,” senior Sega QA tester Elise Willacker told Kotaku. “We call on the company to make all temporary employees permanent and return to the bargaining table in good faith. There is no other just alternative.”

Speaking as a union member who was recently laid off from Kotaku, my heart goes out to those Sega employees, and I hope their fate is different from my own.

Dismal Zombie Game Disappears Off The Face Of The Earth

While I have my qualms with gaming outlets that dish out numerical scores for newly released games (I find numerical scores take the nuance out of online discussions), I can’t fault IGN for giving The Day Before an emphatic 1/10 for being “one of the worst games” ever. The Day Before, by developer Fntastic, was once a highly-anticipated “post-apocalyptic open-world MMO.” However, a week after the game’s overwhelmingly disappointing unrefined, and buggy release, Fntastic announced its shutdown.

“Today, we announce the closure of the Fntastic studio,” the studio wrote. “Unfortunately, The Day Before has failed financially, and we lack the funds to continue. All income received is being used to pay off debts to our partners.”

The discourse surrounding Fntastic’s less-than-stellar grand opening and closing after its five-year development on The Day Before was further fueled by accusations of the game being a scam that pocketed players’ money from the game’s Early Access period and preorders. Fntastic would later refute these accusations in a tweet saying:

“Mytona and we’re currently working with Steam to allow refunds for any player who chooses to request one, regardless of game time. Fntastic received $0 and will receive nothing from The Day Before sales.”

The Day Before may not have lived up to its hype, but it drastically turned the tide away from Skull Island: Rise of Kong, The Walking Dead: Destinies, and The Lord of the Rings: Gollum as the worst game release of 2023.

That’ll do it for this edition of Week in Games. For all our sakes, I hope next week will involve less legal mumbo jumbo and sunsetting gaming traditions and more light-hearted and fun news.