LOS ANGELES — The Game Awards 2025 winners had a runaway leader Thursday night at the Peacock Theater, with “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33” claiming Game of the Year and a record nine trophies at Geoff Keighley’s annual celebration. The debut role-playing game from French studio Sandfall Interactive turned 13 nominations into wins across direction, narrative, art and performance categories, Dec. 11, 2025.
The Game Awards 2025 winners: a nine-award night for “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33”
The sweep was both broad and unusually clean. Beyond the top prize, “Clair Obscur” won Best Game Direction, Best Narrative, Best Art Direction, Best Score and Music and Best RPG — then added Best Independent Game and Best Debut Indie Game for good measure. Actor Jennifer English picked up Best Performance for her role in the game, bringing the title’s Game Awards total to nine wins.
The Game Awards 2025 winners list shows just how complete the takeover was: “Clair Obscur” missed out only in Best Audio Design and the fan-voted Players’ Voice category, and no other game won more than one award during the main show.
For readers tracking The Game Awards 2025 winners from primary sources, the show’s own pages list “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33” as Game of the Year and English as Best Performance. For a full roll call of The Game Awards 2025 winners across every category, see Video Games Chronicle’s complete winners list or The Guardian’s category-by-category rundown.
Other standout picks from the Game Awards 2025 winners list
“Clair Obscur” was the story of the night, but the Game Awards 2025 winners also spotlighted big-budget shooters, long-running live-service games and highly anticipated releases:
“Battlefield 6” won Best Audio Design.
“Doom: The Dark Ages” took Innovation in Accessibility.
“South of Midnight” earned Games for Impact.
“No Man’s Sky” won Best Ongoing.
“Baldur’s Gate 3” was named Best Community Support.
“Hades II” won Best Action Game, while “Hollow Knight: Silksong” took Best Action/Adventure.
“Arc Raiders” was voted Best Multiplayer, and “The Midnight Walk” won Best VR/AR.
“The Last of Us: Season 2” won Best Adaptation, and “Grand Theft Auto VI” was named Most Anticipated Game.
“Wuthering Waves” claimed the fan-voted Players’ Voice award.
Record-breaking context for the Game Awards 2025 winners
The nine-award haul resets the show’s benchmark. The previous high-water mark was seven wins by “The Last of Us Part II” at the 2020 ceremony, according to The Hollywood Reporter’s 2020 winners list. And just a year ago, “Astro Bot” led The Game Awards 2024 with four awards, including Game of the Year, as detailed in The Hollywood Reporter’s recap of the 2024 ceremony.
That back-to-back contrast is part of what made The Game Awards 2025 winners feel distinctive: an indie-leaning newcomer didn’t just take the top honor, it swept nearly every major jury category tied to craft — direction, storytelling, art and music — while leaving the player-driven vote to another title.
For Sandfall Interactive, the moment cements “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33” as the year’s defining breakout. For the rest of the industry, it underlines a simple takeaway from The Game Awards 2025 winners: big nights don’t always belong to the biggest studios.
