Game of the Year Social Media Account Starts Countdown 33 Days Ahead of Awards Ceremony
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is likely to be favorite to win GOTY 2025
- Silksong and Hades II among top contenders for the top trophy
- Multiplayer game has not won GOTY since 2016
- AAA-titles left out of the discussion on social media for various reasons
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Thread Speculating About Hinting The Winner Already By Mentioning 33
This year has been a spectacular year for video games with plenty of big and small titles ending up in the limelight for all the right and wrong reasons. With Game of the Year (GOTY) around the corner, social media is already declaring winners.
The 33 reference, for those who have been hiding under a rock this year, is an obvious nod to Sandfall Interactive’s debut title Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 which launched on April 24 this year. Fans and critics alike have embraced this game with unilateral praise for its gameplay, visuals, narrative, voice acting, soundtrack and more.
Most of the comments in the thread on The Game Awards verified X (formerly Twitter) account are calling it for Expedition 33 already before the official nominees have declared:
“Clear reference to the GOTY winner: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33,” “Already hinting at the winner I see,” “Expedition 33 GOTY confirmed,” “I see what you did there… Expedition 33,” are only a few of the comments leaning in the same direction
Still, a poll on social media suggests that only a third of the responders believe it will win while more than half ticked “no, but it deserved to win,” suggesting that even though Expedition 33 is a great game, the Game of the Year award will somehow be “stolen” by another contender.
Biggest Contenders For Game of the Year 2025
The Game Awards is the biggest event every year in the gaming industry. It has been hosted by the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles since 2021. This year it will take place on Dec. 11 and dish out the most coveted accolades ranging from Best Audio Design to the most sought-after Game of the Year.
This year there are plenty of strong contenders with the aforementioned Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as the most likely favorite to win. Closely followed by a titles equally deserving on the Award based on different criteria
The closest contender broke several industry norms when it was released early September. Indie game Hollow Knight: Silksong took 7 years to materialize across multiple platforms as a sequel to Hollow Knight.
Silksong was largely developed and published by Team Cherry, an Australian trio, and upon release it overwhelmed storefront servers across the globe to the point where players had to wait for hours for the shops, including Steam, to come back online.
This was mainly due to the short heads-up given by Team Cherry, announcing the release only two weeks before launch, causing chaos in the market that made hundreds of publishers push their release dates as they would have been eclipsed by Silksong.
Another reason for the run on the storefronts was the retail price set at a meager $19.99, going against the industry norm of hiking prices, set by Nintendo’s release of the Switch 2 with Mario Kart World as a bundle back in June, while the game on its own would cost $80.
The next big contender for the highest honor of 2025 is Hades II by Supergiant Games. Also released in September, Hades II spent more than a year from May 2024 in Early Access with regular updates based on player feedback, a strategy that worked well for Hades, its predecessor.
It is the strong collaboration between the developers and players showing what can be accomplished by working together to release a polished product that puts this game high on the list of the ultimate winners at the Peacock Theater.
Rounding off the favorites to win is the brainchild of gaming industry legend Hideo Kojima – Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. This sequel is primarily set in Australia and Mexico 11 months after the events of the first game.
Norman Reedus (Boondock Saints, Walking Dead) reprizes his role as the main character, Sam Porter Bridges, on a mission to extend the chiral network to Mexico in exchange for a UCA pardon for himself and his adopted daughter Lou.
Possible Shooter Favorites To Win
Though only released on Oct 31 this year, ARC Raiders by Embark Studios has been put forward on X by the gaming community, including living FPS shooter legend Shroud, as a serious Game of the Year-contender, despite admitting that he has ever played Expedition 33.
Shroud posted on X that it would be about time that a multiplayer game won GOTY as the last one to do it was Overwatch back in 2016. Since 2015, Overwatch is the only multiplayer GOTY winner and it is the only one to have been discontinued.
Still, the cancellation of Overwatch contributed to the Stop Killing Games movement and a broader discussion about studios and publishers’ responsibilities towards players who have invested years and millions of dollars in playing their games.
There are also advocates for Battlefield 6 to snag the top gaming trophy. The game was released on Oct. 10 and has been labeled the “Call of Duty killer.” Even the former Blizzard President Mike Ybarra went on record this year in August with a tweet that read: “Battlefield will boot stomp CoD this year.”
However, it is more likely for these shooters to fight for the Multiplayer of the Year award rather than the main prize.
Unlikely Contenders In The Wake Of Backlash
AAA-titles released earlier this year left out of the discussion in the thread on X include Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Shadows and Ghost of Yōtei by Sucker Punch Productions. Both games faced tsunamis of backlash for different reasons.
Ubisoft was accused of cultural insensitivity to the point where the Japanese government got involved and discussed the game in the Parliament. Following the turmoil, the game was patched and hotfixed to turn down the heat. The main complaint from the government was the treatment of historical sites and temples in Japan featured in the game. Players could break the environment in these locations which was called “the desecration of historical sights” by the government.
Sucker Punch Productions came under fire twice in connection with the release of Ghost of Yōtei. First up was when a long-time employee of the company openly supported the assassination of political commentator Charlie Kirk in September.
The second PR disaster was when old pictures of Erika Ishii, who played the lead character Atsu in Ghost of Yōtei, surfaced on social media, where she declared that she and her wife are both proud members of Antifa, a designated local terrorist organization in the United States.
Still, the worst of the big releases this year, bar none, and most likely to be left out of the conversation completely at this year’s Game Awards unless for comedic effect is Football Manager 2026.
The latest game in the franchise was Football Manager 2024 with the 2025 iteration skipped as the studio behind it, Sports Interactive, refused to release it because they did not want to upset players and let them spend money on a poor product.
Even so, the extra year of development did little to prevent players from refunding the game before it was even released, citing game crashes, bugs, and poor user interface.
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