In the video game industry, 2022 saw the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the industry, slowing hardware sales for most of the year as well as development delays for major titles. The industry continued its trend of acquisitions and mergers, highlighted by Acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, Microsoft announcing its plan to acquire Activision Blizzard for nearly $69 billion. The industry as a whole still dealt with issues such as workplace harassment and discrimination, as well as crunch periods, leading to at least the quality assurance staff at three separate studios to vote to unionize. Production of the ninth generation consoles, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, remained constrained for the first part of the year, but eased up later in the year. New hardware trends included the widespread availability of graphics cards with real-time ray tracing, increasing realism fidelity in some games, and the release of the Steam Deck by Valve Corporation, Valve, a handheld personal computing device capable of playing most games available on Steam (service), Steam. The gaming community remained cautious on the metaverse and blockchain games, though leading publishers expressed their desires to move more into that space.

Top-rated games

Major awards

Critically acclaimed games

Metacritic is an aggregator of video game journalism reviews. It generally considers Expansion pack, expansions and re-releases as separate entities.

Financial performance

According to market research firm Newton, the global video game industry had total revenues of $184.4 billion, about a 4% decline year-to-year. Half of that was from mobile games, while console games, computer games, and browser games made up 28%, 21%, and 1% of the market, respectively.

Major events

Other events

Ukrainian support

During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine launched in February that year, several video game developers and publishers with ties to Eastern Europe provided support for Ukrainian aid. On February 24, 11 bit studios pledged to donate all profits earned over the following seven days from ''This War of Mine'' (2014) and its downloadable content to the Ukrainian Red Cross. CD Projekt Red donated 1 million zloty (about ) to the Polish Humanitarian Action group. Embracer Group donated to Red Cross, SOS Children's Villages, and ACT Alliance, among other charities. SCS Software donated over to "multiple charities", and released new DLC for ''American Truck Simulator'' and ''Euro Truck Simulator 2'' to raise funds for Ukrainian charities. The Pokémon Company and Niantic (company), Niantic announced they would donate $200K each, alongside an addition $75K raised by Niantic employees, to organisations such as GlobalGiving to provide humanitarian relief in Ukraine. In addition, Niantic announced the suspended availability of ''Pokémon Go'', ''Pikmin Bloom'', and ''Ingress (video game), Ingress'' in both 2022 boycott of Russia and Belarus#Video games and esports, Russia and Belarus. Electronic Arts, Microsoft, and Activision Blizzard, among others, halted sales of physical and digital products into Russia during the conflict. Electronic Arts announced on March 2 that it had started the process to remove the Russia national football team and Russian football clubs from its ''FIFA (video game series), FIFA'' series as well as removing the Belarus men's national ice hockey team, Belarusian and Russia men's national ice hockey team, Russian national teams and their club teams from ''NHL 22''. In addition to preventing purchase of their games in Russia, Nintendo announced on March 9 that ''Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp'', a tactical war game with a faction based on Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Soviet-era Russia, would be indefinitely delayed due to "recent world events". Two game bundles offered by itch.io and Humble Bundle raised over and for Ukraine aid support, respectively. Epic Games made all proceeds from ''Fortnite'' during the last two weeks of March 2022 go to charitable aid for Ukraine, and raised over . In total nearly was donated to Ukrainian humanitarian relief efforts by gaming companies.

Abortion rights support

After the June 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in ''Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization'', which overturned ''Roe v. Wade'' and eliminated the protected right to abortion, several video game companies affirmed they would offer their employees abortion benefits, including the ability to travel to states with protected abortion rights if necessary. Such companies include Microsoft, Bethesda, Ubisoft, Devolver Digital, Daybreak Games, Naughty Dog, Insomniac, Electronic Arts, and Bungie.

Notable deaths

* January 4 – Russell Lees, 60, narrative writer for Ubisoft and the ''Assassin's Creed'', ''Far Cry'', and ''Watch Dogs'' series. * January 5 – Stewart Gilray, 51, founder of Just Add Water (company), Just Add Water, developer of the ''Oddworld'' series. * February 28 – Kim Jung-ju, 54, founder of Nexon. * March 27 – Mohammad Fahmi, 32, creator of ''Coffee Talk (video game), Coffee Talk'' * March 29 – Scott Bennie, 61, developer writer for multiple role-playing games including the ''Fallout (series), Fallout'' series * April 26 – Robert "Razerguy" Krakoff, 81, co-founder of Razer Inc. * May 9 – David Ward, 75, co-founder of Ocean Software * May – Rieko Kodama, 59, developer for Sega, including lead developer on ''Phantasy Star'' and ''Skies of Arcadia'' * June 22 – Bernie Stolar, 75, former president of Sega of America, founder of Sony Computer Entertainment of America * June – Technoblade, 23, ''Minecraft'' YouTuber * July 15 – Robert Alan Koeneke, 62, creator of ''Moria (1983 video game), Moria'' * August 30 – Mitsuhiro Yoshida, 61, developer of ''River City Ransom'' * September 3 – Mike Fahey, 49, writer and editor of the website ''Kotaku'' * October 1/2 – Rob Smith, editor and writer for ''PC Gamer'', ''Official Xbox Magazine, OXM'', and ''PlayStation: The Official Magazine, PSM''. * October 12 – Tony "RSGloryAndGold" Winchester, 69, ''RuneScape'' player on Twitch (service), Twitch * October 14 – Jan Rabson, 68, voice actor most notable as the voice of Larry Laffer in the ''Leisure Suit Larry'' series * October 15 – Ferret Baudoin, lead/senior game designer for multiple action-RPG games including ''Neverwinter Nights 2'', ''Dragon Age 2'', ''Fallout 4'', and ''Fallout 76'' * October 29 – Ryan Karazija, 40, front man and lead singer of Low Roar, and composer of the soundtrack to ''Death Stranding'' * November 10 – Kevin Conroy, 66, voice actor best known as the voice of Batman * December 17 – Archer Maclean, 60, developer of Commodore 64 games including ''Dropzone'' and ''International Karate''

Hardware releases

Game releases

Series with new entries

Series with new installments include ''2064: Read Only Memories'', ''AI: The Somnium Files'', ''Atelier (video game series), Atelier'', ''Azure Striker Gunvolt'', ''List of Batman video games, Batman'', ''Bayonetta'', ''Bendy (franchise), Bendy'', ''Borderlands (series), Borderlands'', ''Call of Duty'', ''The Dark Pictures Anthology'', ''Daymare: 1998'', ''List of Digimon video games, Digimon'', ''List of Doraemon video games, Doraemon'', ''List of Dragon Ball video games, Dragon Ball'', ''Dungeon Fighter Online'', ''Dying Light'', ''Earth Defense Force'', ''ELEX'', ''Evil Dead: The Game'', ''Freedom Planet'', ''Getsu Fūma Den'', ''God of War (franchise), God of War'', ''Gran Turismo (series), Gran Turismo'', ''Grid (series), Grid'', ''Gungrave'', ''Hello Neighbor'', ''Horizon Zero Dawn, Horizon'', ''Horizon Chase'', ''Joe & Mac'', ''List of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure video games, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure'', ''Kao the Kangaroo'', ''Kirby (series), Kirby'', ''Kunio-kun'', ''The King of Fighters'', ''Lego Star Wars (video game series), Lego Star Wars'', ''Let It Die (video game), Let It Die'', ''Middle-earth in video games, The Lord of the Rings'', ''Mana (series), Mana'', ''Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, Mario + Rabbids'', ''Mario Strikers (series), Mario Strikers'', ''Monkey Island'', ''Mystery Dungeon'', ''Need for Speed'', ''Nobunaga's Ambition'', ''OlliOlli'', ''Outlast'', ''Overlord (novel series), Overlord'', ''PGA Tour 2K'', ''Pocky and Rocky'', ''Pokémon (video game series), Pokémon'', ''Postal (franchise), Postal'', ''Redout (video game), Redout'', ''Reigns (video game), Reigns'', ''River City Girls'', ''RWBY'', ''Saints Row'', ''Science Adventure'', ''Shadow Warrior'', ''Shovel Knight'', ''Sniper Elite'', ''List of Sonic the Hedgehog video games, Sonic the Hedgehog'', ''Splatoon'', ''Star Ocean'', ''Star Trek'', ''Tactics Ogre'', ''Taiko no Tatsujin'', ''List of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles video games, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'', ''Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six'', ''Total War (video game series), Total War'', ''Vampire: The Masquerade'', ''Warhammer 40,000'', ''WWE 2K'', ''Xenoblade Chronicles'', and ''List of Yu-Gi-Oh! video games, Yu-Gi-Oh!''.

January–March

April–June

July–September

October–December

Video game-based film and television releases

Cancelled games

* ''The Callisto Protocol'' (PlayStation 4, PS4, PlayStation 5, PS5, Windows, Win, Xbox One, XBO, and Xbox Series X/S, XSX; Japan only) * ''Metal Max: Wild West'' (Nintendo Switch, NS, PS4)

Notes

References

{{History of video games 2022 in video gaming Video games by year