Valve Crowned the Winner of March Mayhem 2014

March Mayhem 2014 has come to a close. There was only one winner and fifteen losers, see how your favorite developers fared.

March Mayhem 2014 has drawn to a close. We asked you, the reader, to choose which developers should be involved in the competion. You gave us eight independent, and eight AAA developers to pit against each other. You then had the opportunity to make your predictions and possibly get a fancy badge and a year-long subscription to our own Publisher’s Club. It was finally time for the main attraction, voting on which developer deserved to move on to the next round. You made this competition happen and for that we say “Thank you!” Ultimately it came down to Valve and Firaxis, two giants in the industry, to fight it out. This was just the culmination of weeks of tension, many had fallen but these two companies weren’t going down without a fight.

In the first round, Firaxis met against Nintendo, not the easiest way to start out. This may have waylaid many other developers, but Firaxis wasn’t having it as they came out on top. Nintendo did put up a fight but not enough to topple the creator of 2013’s wildly popular XCOM: Enemy Within. Firaxis brought Nintendo to its knees, and then beheaded it by garnering 57% of the vote. Valve, on the other hand, met now defunct Irrational Games in the first round. This battle would have been more spectacular if only Irrational Games still existed, but alas it did not.

Round two brought Valve against the only other company in the competition to have won March Mayhem twice, BioWare. This didn’t go as expected as Valve just rolled over BioWare with 65% of the vote. Many expected this to be a closer competition but Valve wanted a decisive victory against their bitter rival. Round two was not much of competition for Firaxis. They met against the creator of Saints Row, Volition. Volition had created what many considered to be the game of 2013 with Saints Row IV but that wasn’t enough to defeat this contender. Firaxis defeated Volition by a healthy margin.

The third round didn’t look good for Firaxis. They were against the sleeper of the competition in Lucas Pope. Pope had already defeated GameFreak and Galactic Cafe, it looked like the creator of Papers, Please was on a roll. Firaxis was the one company that said no to Lucas Pope and his impending victory. Firaxis ended up getting 60% of the vote, leaving Lucas Pope in the dust. Valve was experiencing the same in their match-up with Telltale Games. Telltale was a number one contender for a reason, their Walking Dead series and The Wolf Among Us were critically acclaimed and quite popular with the kids. Valve ended up barely defeating Telltale Games in one of the nail-biters of March Mayhem 2014.

The final round between Valve and Firaxis was a heated one. These two behemoths of the industry finally meeting up in the finals, it felt like it was meant to be. The competition was stiff but Valve came out ahead in the end. Valve has now become the one and only three-time winner of March Mayhem.

We mentioned earlier that everyone was able to create a bracket, and the top ten users that had the most correct predictions of the tournament would receive a year of Publisher’s Club, and a fancy badge of honor.

Here we give you the top ten March Mayhem 2014 predictors:

• Browncoatsftw
• Ov3rdose
• Section Crow
• Ravshan Ergashev
• Comrade_Beric
• Andy Shandy
• Rituro
• ArcossG
• MiradorRyu
• guyliam103