The Noteworthy 50

Twelve games that were seriously considered and did not make the final fifty. Several of them will next year.

• DayZ — The original survival sim and still the most atmospheric. Rough, slow and hostile — it lost its slot to Rust on population and update cadence alone.
• Teamfight Tactics — Riot's auto-battler is enormous in its own right and a genuine strategy game. Kept off on the grounds that League already represents Riot's ecosystem here.
• Hearthstone — Still the most approachable digital card game, still monetised like a collectible one. A decade of power creep has thinned the audience.
• Marvel Snap — The best-designed card game on mobile — twelve-second turns, brilliant compression. Its currency economy and the 2024 TikTok ban scare cost it momentum.
• Throne and Liberty — NCSoft's western-facing MMO landed better than expected with Amazon publishing, but has not held a population to rival the genre's incumbents.
• Black Desert Online — The best combat animation in any MMO, wrapped in one of the genre's most aggressive cash shops. A near miss on the monetisation alone.
• Lost Ark — Spectacular raid design undermined by a punishing enhancement economy and severe bot problems in the western release.
• New World: Aeternum — Amazon's MMO has improved enormously since its 2021 launch, but the population never recovered from the first year.
• Delta Force — A strong free-to-play alternative in the extraction and large-scale shooter space, growing steadily. One to watch for next year's list.
• Monster Hunter Wilds — Capcom's co-op hunting is superb, but it is a premium session game rather than a persistent online world — a category judgment, not a quality one.
• Stumble Guys — The mobile Fall Guys clone that outgrew the joke, with an enormous young audience. Kept off for its heavier monetisation and thinner design.
• Deadlock — Valve's MOBA-shooter has enormous potential and a devoted testing community, but it is not a finished, generally available product yet.