The Game Awards 2025 Winners List: Clair Obscur Just Made History

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 didn’t just win Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2025 – it cleaned up across the board and set a new record for the most wins at the show, with nine trophies in total.

From Hades II to Hollow Knight: Silksong, this year’s line-up was stacked, but the French RPG from Sandfall Interactive kept walking back on stage. If you were asleep in Dubai while everything was happening live (fair enough, it was at 4:30am UAE time), this is your catch-up: all the winners, all the nominees, and a quick look at what it says about the year in games.

Clair Obscur’s record-breaking night

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 didn’t just win; it rewrote The Game Awards stats page.

• 9 wins, including Game of the Year and Best RPG
• Broke the previous 7-award record held by The Last of Us Part II
• Picked up trophies for narrative, art, music and performance
• Led the night with 13 nominations, the most in show history

The result is basically a victory lap for the momentum we’ve been tracking since nominations – Clair Obscur was already the frontrunner when we covered its record-setting nods on Tbreak. With wins in storytelling, art direction, score and performance, plus the big GOTY and RPG categories, it’s now firmly in that “award-season monster” space usually reserved for huge triple-A franchises.

What the results say about 2025’s games

Under all the trailers and ads, the winners tell a neat story about where games are right now.

• Indies (or indie-adjacent) games kept up with big publishers
• Hollow Knight: Silksong and Hades II both walked away with genre wins
• No Man’s Sky and Baldur’s Gate 3 proved long-tail support still matters
• A new Game Changer award highlighted Girls Make Games, not a studio or publisher

On the blockbuster side, PlayStation-adjacent titles like Death Stranding 2, Ghost of Yōtei and The Last of Us Season 2 were all over the nominations, echoing the earlier stat that Sony led the publisher table this year. But when it came time to actually hand trophies out, the spread was surprisingly wide. Outside Clair Obscur, most games walked away with one award at most – from Hades II winning Best Action to Mario Kart World taking Sports/Racing.

For UAE players who stayed up for the reveals – Tomb Raider teases, Saros, that cursed desert statue that’s probably Divinity, and more – the awards side ended up feeling like the calm, structured bit between all the marketing chaos we’ve been covering over on TGA 2025 news at Tbreak.

Full list of The Game Awards 2025 winners and nominees

Winners are in bold. Categories follow the official ballot from VGC’s full winners list.

GAME OF THE YEAR

• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Death Stranding 2: On The Beach
• Donkey Kong Bananza
• Hades II
• Hollow Knight: Silksong
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance II

BEST GAME DIRECTION

• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Death Stranding 2: On The Beach
• Ghost of Yōtei
• Hades II
• Split Fiction

BEST NARRATIVE

• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Death Stranding 2: On The Beach
• Ghost of Yōtei
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
• Silent Hill f

BEST ART DIRECTION

• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Death Stranding 2: On The Beach
• Ghost of Yōtei
• Hades II
• Hollow Knight: Silksong

BEST SCORE AND MUSIC

• Christopher Larkin – Hollow Knight: Silksong
• Darren Korb – Hades II
• Lorien Testard – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Toma Otowa – Ghost of Yōtei
• Woodkid & Ludvig Forssell – Death Stranding 2: On The Beach

BEST AUDIO DESIGN

• Battlefield 6
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Death Stranding 2: On The Beach
• Ghost of Yōtei
• Silent Hill f

BEST PERFORMANCE

• Ben Starr – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Charlie Cox – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Erika Ishii – Ghost of Yōtei
• Jennifer English – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Konatsu Kato – Silent Hill f
• Troy Baker – Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

INNOVATION IN ACCESSIBILITY

• Assassin’s Creed Shadows
• Atomfall
• Doom: The Dark Ages
• EA Sports FC 26
• South of Midnight

GAMES FOR IMPACT

• Consume Me
• Despelote
• Lost Records: Bloom & Rage
• South of Midnight
• Wanderstop

BEST ONGOING GAME

• Final Fantasy XIV
• Fortnite
• Helldivers 2
• Marvel Rivals
• No Man’s Sky

BEST COMMUNITY SUPPORT

• Baldur’s Gate 3
• Final Fantasy XIV
• Fortnite
• Helldivers 2
• No Man’s Sky

BEST INDEPENDENT GAME

• Absolum
• Ball x Pit
• Blue Prince
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Hades II
• Hollow Knight: Silksong

BEST DEBUT INDIE GAME

• Blue Prince
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Despelote
• Dispatch

(Megabonk was originally nominated but later withdrawn at the developer’s request, which is why it doesn’t appear in VGC’s final list.)

BEST MOBILE GAME

• Destiny: Rising
• Persona 5: The Phantom X
• Sonic Rumble
• Umamusume: Pretty Derby
• Wuthering Waves

BEST VR/AR GAME

• Alien: Rogue Incursion
• Arken Age
• Ghost Town
• Marvel’s Deadpool VR
• The Midnight Walk

BEST ACTION GAME

• Battlefield 6
• Doom: The Dark Ages
• Hades II
• Ninja Gaiden 4
• Shinobi: Art of Vengeance

BEST ACTION/ADVENTURE GAME

• Death Stranding 2: On The Beach
• Ghost of Yōtei
• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
• Hollow Knight: Silksong
• Split Fiction

BEST RPG

• Avowed
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
• The Outer Worlds 2
• Monster Hunter Wilds

BEST FIGHTING GAME

• 2XKO
• Capcom Fighting Collection 2
• Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves
• Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection
• Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. World Stage

BEST FAMILY GAME

• Donkey Kong Bananza
• LEGO Party!
• LEGO Voyagers
• Mario Kart World
• Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds
• Split Fiction

BEST SIM/STRATEGY GAME

• The Alters
• Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles
• Jurassic World Evolution 3
• Sid Meier’s Civilization VII
• Tempest Rising
• Two Point Museum

BEST SPORTS/RACING GAME

• EA Sports FC 26
• F1 25
• Mario Kart World
• Rematch
• Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds

BEST MULTIPLAYER GAME

• Arc Raiders
• Battlefield 6
• Elden Ring Nightreign
• Peak
• Split Fiction

BEST ADAPTATION

• A Minecraft Movie
• Devil May Cry
• The Last of Us: Season 2
• Splinter Cell: Deathwatch
• Until Dawn

MOST ANTICIPATED GAME

• 007 First Light
• Grand Theft Auto VI
• Marvel’s Wolverine
• Resident Evil Requiem
• The Witcher IV

PLAYERS’ VOICE

• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Dispatch
• Genshin Impact
• Hollow Knight: Silksong
• Wuthering Waves

CONTENT CREATOR OF THE YEAR

• Caedrel
• Kai Cenat
• MoistCr1TiKaL
• Sakura Miko
• The Burnt Peanut

BEST ESPORTS GAME

• Counter-Strike 2
• Dota 2
• League of Legends
• Mobile Legends: Bang Bang
• Valorant

BEST ESPORTS ATHLETE

• brawk – Brock Somerhalder (Valorant)
• Chovy – Jeong Ji-hoon (League of Legends)
• f0rsakeN – Jason Susanto (Valorant)
• Kakeru – Kakeru Watanabe (Street Fighter)
• MenaRD – Saul Leonardo (Street Fighter)
• Zyw0o – Mathieu Herbaut (Counter-Strike 2)

BEST ESPORTS TEAM

• Gen.G – League of Legends
• NRG – Valorant
• Team Falcons – Dota 2
• Team Liquid PH – Mobile Legends: Bang Bang
• Team Vitality – Counter-Strike 2

GAME CHANGER (honorary award)

• Girls Make Games

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