Fortnite developer Epic Games named Studio of the Year by Golden Joystick Awards 2019

Epic Games, best known as the developer of battle royale craze Fortnite, is the Golden Joystick Awards 2019’s Studio of the Year.

This year’s nominees were wide-ranging. Indie breakouts like Outer Wilds’ Mobius Games competed with household names like Capcom and Nintendo, while studios like 4A Games, Hello Games, and Digital Extremes have gone from strength to strength in recent years. Experimental developers like Dreams’ Media Molecule sat side-by-side with the teams behind classics like Remedy and Respawn Entertainment.

After a quite literally phenomenal 2018, Epic Games could have struggled to live up to its own stellar reputation. Instead, the team behind Fortnite proved that it’s still willing and able to reinvent the game that brought it right to the forefront of the videogame mainstream. When Fortnite really began to hit its stride in last spring, Epic brought out new content for its battle royale at an almost alarming rate, and in doing so set a standard by which all other games would be measured.

Not content to rest on its laurels, however, Epic continued to transform the game throughout 2019, culminating in an almost unprecedented overhaul with the arrival of Fortnite: Chapter 2. In the real world, the studio challenged industry giants with the inaugural Fortnite World Cup, bringing in an audience of millions and handing out what was at the time the biggest prize pool in esports history. In the past 12 months, the studio has shown that it’s able to innovate across the entire industry, both on and off the screen.

Here is the full list of The Golden Joystick's nominees for 2019's Studio of the Year, with Epic Games at the top but otherwise listed in no particular order: 

• Epic Games
• 4A Games
• Capcom
• Digital Extremes
• Hello Games
• Media Molecule
• Mobius Digital
• Nintendo
• Remedy Entertainment
• Respawn

For the latest updates on The Golden Joystick Awards 2019, follow along with all the announcements on GamesRadar's Twitter, or watch the ceremony live on Twitch right now.