It's been a complete mess of a year. I think there's a lot of tension about the state the world will be in in the future, and I think we've all been on edge as we question whether the world will get better any time soon. Me personally? I just don’t know… I’m keeping my eyes on signs of further decline.

But at the very least, There's still some good things that have happened, and I'm here to talk about them for one reason that's crossed my mind.

I've noticed that in some of the past years there's been a post late in the year counting the past victories we've seen, and I was kind of excited to see this year's edition of the post mention Concord/Dustborn/Whatnot - but the post never happened. so while we are at it, I feel I could do an unofficial edition counting all the things I've noticed.

• Sweet Baby Inc. Of course, it wouldn't be a post recapping both years if I didn't bring this company up! We all know the story now: Curator starts tracking their games, SBI tries to get it removed only to get blasted off twitter, more people are now aware of consultancy firms. And I will say that one thing I have noticed is that nobody who isn't directly involved in the company unironically defends them at all. Even a lot of people who contest the notion that diversity is bad for games will generally try to say that they aren't as big a deal as we say they are rather than say they aren't bad, as they seem (at least subconsciously) aware at least that nobody can defend Sweet Baby Inc without looking like a shill.

• Concord. This game may have been forgotten soon after launch were it not for the fact that it lasted only two weeks. It went from being hyped as the future of Playstation to something sony wants you to forget - especially since many have noted the bad character designs, lack of improvement on the hero shooter genre, and stories about toxic positivity at the studio, while also keeping eyes and ears out for the people who were responsible for the mess being involved in other projects.

• Dustborn. The embodiment of the "Modern audience" garbage (made even dumber by how they try to play a lot of it without any irony), this game is probably only anywhere near successful due to getting government grants. Having done even worse than Concord, it's highly unlikely we will be seeing a sequel any time soon or even ever.

• Unknown 9 Awakening. Not as greatly remembered as the previous two examples, though much like Concord it had an entire multimedia franchise planned out for it that got cancelled after extremely bad sales killed the developer. What little has been seen of the game and commonly talked about has not been promising, complete with a generic girlboss as the protagonist and the unpolished technical aspects.

• Dragon Age: The Veilguard. An underwhelming return to an old franchise after almost a decade in development, many people have panned the character of taash, the inconsistent tone and art design, the extremely limited roleplaying options and importable choices from previous games, the linear levels and combat, and the ending of the game. Perhaps one of the most well known stories of a developer putting on a front, many on this sub remember Jason Scherier hyping up the game as a success only to delete his posts on the matter and later making an article about the failure. While it hasn't killed Bioware (and even then the next Mass Effect is probably a do or die thing for them), it looks like it has killed the Dragon Age franchise.

• Ghost of Yotei. I don't know much about this game as much as other stories I have heard about, but from what I know, it seems that there have been several shitty devs linked to this game, and the reception is far below that of Ghost of Tsushima. I don't think there's been as much evidence to suggest it didn't do as well as it's claimed in the same vein as Failguard, but some people are still on high alert. EDIT: People have mentioned that a lead dev of the game got fired after the release, so there's that too.

• Assassin's Creed Shadows. Possibly the biggest story we've seen in 2025, Assassin's Creed We Wuz Samurai has been causing heat not just for it's hamfisted insertion of the myth of Yasuke and other blatant diversity shit, despite claiming to be historically accurate, but also the lack of care put towards the handling of Japanese culture and history (to the point actual Japanese people have spoken about how much they dislike it) and just feeling like more Ubisoft open world garbage. Despite Ubisoft claiming it did well, there have been several tells that things are not going well for them in the time since, including the freezing of Stock and the founding of Vantage Studios to hold all their major IPs, leading some to suspect that the Guillemot family is preparing a golden parachute. Also fun was that on the very same day it launched, some guy released a game called Yasuke Simulator which did the myth of Yasuke much better and is a much better game overall, even if I think it won't be remembered as much after the year ends.

• EA going Private. I don't think this is as big a win as usual, but people have seemed somewhat hopeful that there’s a chance that EA will clean itself up. I won’t hold my breath, but maybe this could be used as proof that private companies are less beholden to the whims of investment firms.

• The Nintendo Palworld Lawsuit. Really, I am mostly trying to focus on the good here, since the dawn of the Switch 2 has marked what many people believe to be Nintendo’s decline from the last remotely respectable AAA company to the Asian equivalent of modern Disney. But the good news is that the Palworld Lawsuit seems like it’s on track to fail, and it might have cost them a lot of money in the process. I especially hope this knocks some sense into them after Pokemon Legends ZA proved that Game Freak is no longer capable of making worthwhile games or designing interesting mega evolutions. It’s also made me dig up Palworld for another go, especially since the game has grown a lot in the time since it launched.

• Honorable mentions would likely go to Avowed ‘s underwhelming sales, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet already looking pretty crummy out the gate, rumors about Elon Musk buying D&D (which would be good for a laugh, at least) and Expedition 33 seemingly blowing the entire AAA industry out of the water.

Do you know any other notable wins that have occured this year? Feel free to put them in the comments below.