The Game Awards 2025 nominations are in, and after pushing for Arc Raiders to win Game of the Year above French JRPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, ex-FPS pro Michael 'Shroud' Grzesiek isn't happy about the extraction shooter missing out on a GOTY nomination.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has secured itself 12 nominations – the most in the history of The Game Awards – while Arc Raiders has one in the Best Multiplayer Game category. Joining Clair Obscur in the GOTY category are Donkey Kong Bananza, Death Stranding 2, Hades 2, Hollow Knight: Silksong, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. All fantastic games, no doubt, but responding to the nomination announcements, Shroud calls the awards show "rigged," explaining why he believes Arc Raiders didn't get selected.
"The world is just not ready for AI in video games, not yet. They're just not ready," he asserts, referring to Arc Raiders' controversial use of AI voice lines. For context, although developer Embark hired voice actors for the game, it uses a combination of recorded lines and text-to-speech tech, with the latter used for some NPC dialogue and things like player ping communications in what's understandably been a very divisive choice.
"But, hey, at least they nominated it for something, I genuinely thought they wouldn't nominate it for anything because they were scared to get backlash," Shroud says. "But at least they nominated it for something, so that's good."
Despite appearing somewhat pleased by Arc Raiders' nomination in the Best Multiplayer Game category, Shroud clearly isn't satisfied on the whole. "Once again, another year, another rigged year," he continues. "That's crazy."
The streamer adds that it'd be "pretty cool" if action RPG Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 ends up winning, but speculates that "we know Expedition's going to win. Expedition's going to win like 12 categories." He then aims his frustrations at Donkey Kong Bananza – arguably the best Switch 2 game and one of the highest-rated games of the year on Metacritic – and one Shroud clearly doesn't think deserves to be in the lineup.
"Imagine Donkey Kong [winning]," he begins. "If Donkey Kong would win, this award show is just chalked, you know? Who the fuck is playing Donkey Kong Bananza? Nobody's playing Donkey Kong Bananza. Nobody."
Poor Donkey Kong. The streamer also believes that "sequels have no right to be Game of the Year," with the exception of "game-changing sequels like Grand Theft Auto 6, Grand Theft Auto 5, Grand Theft Auto 4, the Witcher 4, for example." He adds: "Remasters shouldn't be on there either."
Obviously, for now we'll just have to wait and see what comes of the nominations when The Game Awards take place next month – we'll be able to tune in on December 11 at 4:30pm PT / 7:30p ET, which is December 12 at 00:30am GMT.
