2018 was the year of outraged fans discovering their power

It’s a tradition now at GamesBeat to try to look back and sum up the year as a single defining trend. This started out as a fun exercise to spot similar elements across multiple games — like the year of the bow in 2012. More recently, however, this trend is shifting to reflect the wider culture of gaming. We named 2016 the year of the loot box. And 2017 was the year of gamer-rage opportunists.

Now, it’s time to figure out 2018, and a lot of trends are worthy of consideration here. Developer unionization is picking up momentum. Affordable cloud infrastructure is making it more viable for big companies to leave or challenge Steam. Fortnite — you could definitely argue it was the year of Fortnite. But while those are all important, ongoing stories that are changing the industry, we went with a continuation of last year’s trend instead.