To date, only three publishers have managed to release games that have won the coveted Game of the Year award at The Game Awards. Following the end of Spike's annual Video Game Awards show, Geoff Keighley formed The Game Awards, which serves as essentially the video game version of the Academy Awards, breaking viewership records from one year to the next as fans tune in to see world premiere trailers and which games manage to win in their various categories.
Since The Game Awards was formed in 2014, nine games have been crowned Game of the Year. In 2014, it was Dragon Age: Inquisition, which was followed by The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Overwatch, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, God of War, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, The Last of Us Part 2, It Takes Two, and finally Elden Ring in 2022. The 2023 Game Awards event will mark the 10th iteration of the awards ceremony, and it will be exciting to see which game wins GOTY next year.
The Game Awards haven't been going on all that long, but there are still some interesting observations to make about the Game of the Year winners, particularly when it comes to the publishers behind the games.
Game Awards GOTY Winners List
- Dragon Age: Inquisition (Electronic Arts)
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (CD Projekt)
- Overwatch (Activision Blizzard)
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo)
- God of War (Sony)
- Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (Activision Blizzard)
- The Last of Us Part 2 (Sony)
- It Takes Two (Electronic Arts)
- Elden Ring (Bandai Namco Entertainment)
Electronic Arts, which was infamously voted to be one of the worst companies in America on more than one occasion, has nevertheless managed to win Game of the Year twice with titles it's published. EA's BioWare studio developed Dragon Age: Inquisition, the first-ever Game of the Year winner at The Game Awards, and then in 2021, Hazelight's It Takes Two, published under Electronic Arts' EA Originals label, won the big prize.
The first game company to collect two Game of the Year awards was Activision Blizzard, snagging the first one in 2016 thanks to the runaway success of hero shooter Overwatch, and getting its second one in 2019 thanks to FromSoftware's acclaimed action game Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
And finally, Sony has won two Game of the Year awards thanks to the efforts of PlayStation exclusives God of War in 2018 and The Last of Us Part 2 in 2020. Sony had the chance to become the first company to win three Game of the Year awards at the 2022 event, and while God of War Ragnarok had the most awards the show, it fell short of winning GOTY, losing out to FromSoftware's open world epic Elden Ring.
2023 will give more publishers the chance to become multi-time GOTY winners. Sony, EA, and Activision Blizzard will all have the opportunity to become the first company that wins three GOTY awards, and it will definitely be interesting to see who manages to pull it off first.