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At The Game Awards last week, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 became the 12th title to win Game of the Year. Since the awards’ inception in 2014, the top prize has rarely gone to an independent studio. But that doesn’t mean that the biggest publishers always win either.
To date, the publisher with the most Game of the Year Awards is Sony, which emerged victorious last year with Astro Bot, The Last of Us Part 2 in 2020, and God of War in 2018.
Surprisingly, Nintendo has only won the award once, for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in 2017. Microsoft has yet to win any, although it now owns Activision, which took home the award in 2019 for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
Although the onslaught of trailers tends to overshadow The Game Awards themselves, receiving that honor can be a game-changer. CD Projekt’s 2015 win for The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt cemented its status as one of the top independent publishers in the industry. That title has also become one of the best-selling games in history.
While there have been winners across multiple game types, RPGs have taken six out of the 12 Game of the Year Awards, and Expedition 33’s win is the latest victory for that genre.
The complete list of every Game of the Year Award winner from The Game Awards is reproduced below.
