You say "this year releases" when in reality this is something that has been happening for years. If I had to point the exact moment when, it would be around the time Feminist Frequency and Sarkeesian became popular and all that "GamerGame" stuff happened.
Thoes people got more and more influence with the passing of time, to the point of now journalists exposing developers publicly on social media and news websites to pressure them to change their games to suit their demands
Mind you, this is not "encouraging" developers to add minorities to their games.
This is about shaming and exposing developers, even if you have to lie and blow things out of proportion just so that you convince people that the developers in question are racist, sexist, transphobic, nazi or whatever the hell you want them to think.
Even if it means ruining a person or developer's reputation and force investors to pull the plug from those developers, basically leading them towards bankrupcy and an unfinished project.
After that, almost all big western companies started this push towards more female characters, which evolved to the entire LBGT+ spectrum and also race.
Western indie developers are too afraid to go against the flow, and most try to avoid adding any content that could possibly trigger those people (e.g. making a game with only white characters)
To add salt to their wound, journos don't even promote games that don't fit to their agenda, unless if it's to say bad things about them (award cerimonies too)