The Game Awards 2025

• 1. Introduction

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  Before The Game Awards 2025 went live at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on the 11th of December 2025, one seat in the audience was left empty on purpose. It sat beside the mother of host Geoff Keighley. He had dedicated the night to his father, who died in August. This was Keighley's twelfth time hosting the show, and it carried a weight that no trophy count could measure.

  The evening promised prizes for the best video games of the year, a crowd of celebrity presenters, and a long run of surprise reveals. Which game would walk away with the top honor? How much of a three-hour broadcast would actually belong to the awards? And would the millions watching at home leave feeling celebrated, or sold to?

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• 2. Building The Night

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  Kimmie Kim shared the executive producer title with Keighley, and Michael E. Peter served as co-executive producer. Richard Preuss directed again, and LeRoy Bennett returned as creative director. Sydnee Goodman, back for another year, hosted the 30-minute preshow, which carried the name Opening Act. Public tickets went on sale on the 1st of November.

  TikTok, Twitch, Twitter, and YouTube carried the live stream, and Amazon Prime Video joined that list for the first time. In China, a record number of platforms picked up the show, including Bilibili, Huya Live, and Weibo. The Twitch feed ran in 1440p resolution for the first time. Amazon also became a partner, building a dedicated store for merchandise, deals, and new reveals.

  That partnership shaped the guest list. Cast members from the second season of Fallout were set to present, as part of the new tie-up with Amazon. Dan Houser handed out the award for Best Narrative. Todd Howard presented Best Game Direction, and Lenny Kravitz presented Best Score and Music. David Harbour introduced the reveal trailer for Total War: Warhammer 40,000. Nicolas Doucet presented Game of the Year. Keighley or Goodman presented every award not given to a guest.

  Lorne Balfe, who conducted the Game Awards Orchestra, began thinking about music before the nominees were even announced. He researched the year's releases with his son to guess which games might be nominated. His aim was to pick music that players actually loved, rather than simply each game's theme. The show opened with music from Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which some journalists read as a hint of what was coming.

  The musical program ranged widely. Evanescence performed "Afterlife," a song tied to Devil May Cry. Miss Piggy sang "The Game Awards Will Never Let You Down," joined by Rowlf the Dog. The orchestra played "Dr. Wily Stage 1" from Mega Man 2, a nod to the newly announced Mega Man: Dual Override. A closing medley covered six Game of the Year nominees, running from Donkey Kong Bananza to Kingdom Come: Deliverance II.

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• 3. Trailers Over Trophies

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  Only about 17 minutes of the three-hour broadcast went to handing out awards. Keighley said he wanted to satisfy both halves of his audience. He believed the reveals pulled in new viewers and raised attention for the winners. His team worked directly with developers on trailers and placed them at chosen points to give the evening an emotional arc.

  The slots carried real value. According to Kotaku, a three-minute trailer slot cost more than $1 million. Forbes writer Paul Tassi reported that the developer of Highguard paid nothing for its reveal. The producers simply scheduled it as the last trailer of the night.

  The buildup began days earlier. Wholesome Games held a broadcast on the 9th of December. Day of the Devs, the Latin American Games Showcase, and the Women-Led Games Showcase followed on the 10th of December. In late November, a statue appeared in the Mojave Desert as a tease, and speculation spread widely. Journalists traced trademark registrations and concluded it pointed to a new entry in the Divinity series. The statue was later moved to the Peacock Theater.

  Some reveals were staged as theater. The Control Resonant and Divinity trailers included performers on wires. Preparation for Control Resonant started in March 2025. The show also carried new footage from the films Street Fighter and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. Among the new games shown were Tomb Raider: Catalyst, Mega Man: Dual Override, and Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic.

  The public response was easy to measure. Total War: Warhammer 40,000 drew 54,000 Steam followers, about the same as the next three new games combined. Those were Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis at 20,000, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve at 18,000, and Control Resonant at 16,000. Within a week, Resident Evil Requiem drew roughly 1,740 articles, ahead of Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic at 1,605 and Divinity at 1,357. On YouTube, the 2XKO trailer led with 8 million views, then Resident Evil Requiem with almost 6.5 million and Marvel Rivals with 5.2 million.

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• 4. Counting The Votes

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  The nominees were announced on the 17th of November 2025, though the Game of the Year list leaked a few hours earlier. Any game released to the public by the 21st of November was eligible. That included downloadable add-ons, expansions, remakes, remasters, and seasonal updates. A jury drawn from 154 media outlets around the world picked the nominees, up 14% from 134 the year before, with growth especially in Europe and Latin America. Specialized juries handled categories such as accessibility, adaptation, and esports.

  Winners came from a blend of jury votes at 90 percent and public votes at 10 percent. Fans could vote on the official website and the Discord server until the 10th of December. The Players' Voice award worked differently, since it was decided by the public alone, with voting opening on the 1st of December. Millions of votes arrived within hours and slowed the website. Keighley called the surge "unprecedented." In total, 123 million votes were cast, a 10% rise from 2024.

  Fortnite got its own ballot. A hub world built by Nighttimes and Evil Eye Pictures let players and jury members vote, from the 21st of November, among ten user-made islands. The winner was named during the ceremony.

  The nominee list made history in its own way. For the first time, more than one Game of the Year nominee was independent, an even 50-50 split. The six nominees sold a combined 22.3 million copies, and each saw sales rise after being nominated. Three games earned nominations in all five major craft awards: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, and Ghost of Yōtei. Expedition 33 also became only the second game to land three nominations in Best Performance, after Uncharted 4: A Thief's End in 2016.

  One nomination did not survive. On the 18th of November, Megabonk lost its Best Debut Indie Game nomination at its developer's request, because it was not his first game. No developer had ever withdrawn a nomination willingly before. The game was later nominated in the 30-game first round of Players' Voice.

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• 5. The Expedition 33 Sweep

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  Thirteen nominations made Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 the most-nominated game in the show's history, and the night then gave it nine wins, another record. It was the only game to win more than one award. Its publisher, Kepler Interactive, shared the nine wins. Among them was Game of the Year, along with four of the major craft awards.

  The record had limits. Battlefield 6 beat it for Best Audio Design, and Wuthering Waves took the fan-voted Players' Voice. Even so, it became the first debut game and the first French-developed game to win Game of the Year. It was also the first to be nominated in, and win, the indie categories.

  Most of Sandfall Interactive's 30-person team flew in from France and bought their own tickets. Each one wore a traditional French marinière with a red beret. The fans responded quickly. The game's engagement tripled after the show, and it had its biggest sales day since May. Its cumulative Steam players reached 57,000, the most since June. More than 300,000 copies sold in the following five days. On the 13th of December, weekly player numbers rose 160%, and 17% of those players were new.

  The night was harder on the biggest nominee count among publishers. Sony Interactive Entertainment led all publishers with 19 nominations and won none. Kepler Interactive stood second with 14 nominations. French president Emmanuel Macron then congratulated the developers, calling the win "a great pride" for Montpellier and France.

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• 6. Records And Returning Winners

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  Baldur's Gate 3 took Best Community Support, its eighth award overall, and briefly held the show's record before Expedition 33's ninth win passed it. The Larian Studios game had won six awards in 2023 and one in 2024. That made this its third straight year on the winners' list.

  Nintendo collected two awards, one for Donkey Kong Bananza and one for Mario Kart World. That raised its lifetime total at the show to 24. Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles gave Square Enix its twelfth award and the Final Fantasy series its tenth. Doom: The Dark Ages and Hades II each earned a third award for their studios. Doom had won twice for id Software in 2016, and Hades had won twice for Supergiant Games in 2020.

  Several studios won for the first time. Compulsion Games won for South of Midnight, which was its very first nomination. Team Cherry won for Hollow Knight: Silksong. KOF Studio and SNK were honored for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, and Kuro Games for Wuthering Waves. The following weekend, South of Midnight saw a 32% rise in daily active users and No Man's Sky a 14% rise.

  Some winners were repeat names. No Man's Sky won Best Ongoing Game for a second time, after its first win in 2020. Grand Theft Auto VI became the second game to win Most Anticipated Game twice in a row, after Elden Ring in 2020 and 2021. The Last of Us became the first two-time Best Adaptation winner, having won for its first season in 2023.

  The Game Changer award, presented by Felicia Day, went to the organization Girls Make Games, which supports young girls pursuing careers in the video game industry. Ellie Freeman and Monica Paredes accepted it.

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• 7. A Divided Verdict

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  The Future Class, a list of 50 industry figures that began in 2020, was missing again in 2025, as it had been in 2024. The list of past inductees was also removed from the show's website. Several alumni said they felt abandoned after Keighley and organizer Emily Weir did not answer them. Some suspected the decision was payback for an open letter they wrote to Keighley in 2023.

  Polygon's writers took aim at the categories. Austin Manchester argued that the word indie was misapplied, calling Expedition 33 double-A and Dispatch triple-I. Paulo Kawanishi found Best Role Playing Game too broad. Giovanni Colantonio proposed smaller, more knowledgeable juries for categories like Best Mobile Game. Some Expedition 33 cast members asked for a category for motion capture actors. Charlie Cox credited his own nomination to the motion capture performer behind his character, Maxence Cazorla.

  Nominee snubs drew complaints too. Journalists noted that Blue Prince, Ghost of Yōtei, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Silent Hill f, and Split Fiction missed the Game of the Year list. They blamed the strength of the field. Streamer Shroud called the awards "rigged" after ARC Raiders was left out, though journalists called the claim unfounded.

  Keighley's own post-show poll on Twitter drew over 404,000 votes, and almost 39% graded the show "D or below." Kotaku's Alyssa Mercante criticized ticket prices. Nominees received two tickets and had to buy more, at prices from $58 in the upper mezzanine to $1,000 in the rear orchestra. Dozens of members of the United Videogame Workers protested outside the theater over industry layoffs. Some aimed their message at Phil Spencer of Microsoft Gaming and Strauss Zelnick of Take-Two Interactive.

  The sweep itself split commentators. Polygon's Oli Welsh likened it to Everything Everywhere All at Once and Oppenheimer leading the Academy Awards in 2023 and 2024. Kotaku's Ethan Gach called the record "overblown." Bloomberg News's Jason Schreier felt the clean sweep drained tension from the evening. The Washington Post's Gene Park found the night more entertaining than earlier years. Polygon's Claire Lewis wrote, "Yes, it was a three-and-a-half-hour commercial. But it was a good three-and-a-half-hour commercial."

  Opinions of the reveals varied too. Critics praised smaller announcements such as Bradley the Badger and Coven of the Chicken Foot, along with the Resident Evil Requiem and Tomb Raider trailers. Highguard, a free-to-play first-person shooter from a new studio, drew questions. Some viewers had expected an established series or a different genre, while others found it intriguing anyway.

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• 8. Counting The Audience

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  An estimated 171 million viewers watched, an 11% increase over the previous year and the largest audience the show has had. That figure leaves out Prime Video viewers. According to Streams Charts, the ceremony peaked at 4.4 million concurrent viewers, up 9% from 2024. Of those, 1.4 million watched the official YouTube broadcast, an 8% increase, and 1.8 million watched on Twitch.

  Co-streaming, where creators host their own live reaction, grew sharply. On YouTube, the ceremony peaked at 2.4 million total concurrent viewers, up 9%, with a record 8,600 co-streams. More than 16,500 creators co-streamed on Twitch, a record and a 50% jump from the year before. Unique viewers and hours watched on Twitch each rose 5% from 2024.

  On Twitter, posts about the show rose 12%, with more than 1.79 million between the 10th and the 12th of December. The broadcast and related videos drew over 60 million views. Eurogamer's Connor Makar noted that these numbers "overshadowed" the 97th Academy Awards, which drew 19.7 million viewers in the United States.

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