The Game Awards 2025 Results: Winners and Viewership

The Game Awards 2025 landed like a clean split-screen story: one side was prestige validation (Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 sweeping the biggest honors, including Game of the Year), the other side was raw fan momentum (Wuthering Waves winning Player’s Voice).

Meanwhile, the show’s most important meta-story wasn’t a single trophy — it was distribution. Based on StreamCharts analytics for the official channels, YouTube accounted for the lion’s share of watchtime and the largest peak, while Twitch still mattered as a social engine (raids, follower gain, and a big “second-screen chat culture”).

And yes: the announcements did their job. If you’re even mildly online, you probably saw the same clips ricochet across feeds within minutes — especially the Tomb Raider return, Battlefield 6, and Naughty Dog’s Intergalactic reveal.

Let’s start with the core: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won Game of the Year, and it didn’t feel like a coin flip — it felt like the show’s juries sending a clear signal about what they want to reward: ambitious single-player craft, art direction with a point of view, and a complete identity.

But the most revealing result might be the fan vote: Player’s Voice went to Wuthering Waves — not the GOTY winner. That divergence is the modern TGA in miniature: critics/jury and the internet can be aligned, but they don’t have to be, and in 2025 they weren’t.

Here are the headline winners people will actually remember when they talk about “the year”:

• Game of the Year: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Best Game Direction: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Best Narrative: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Best Indie: The Last Night
• Best Debut Indie: Cairn
• Best Ongoing Game: Helldivers 2
• Best Community Support: Final Fantasy XIV
• Best Fighting: Street Fighter 6
• Best RPG: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Best Action/Adventure: Death Stranding 2: On The Beach
• Player’s Voice: Wuthering Waves

Two quick implications for creators and analysts:

First, Expedition 33 didn’t just “win GOTY.” It became the show’s shorthand for what excellence looked like in 2025. That matters because next year’s marketing decks, trailer positioning, and even pitch language will quietly imitate what the awards platform elevated.

Second, the Player’s Voice result is a reminder that “most loved” and “most awarded” are different currencies — and communities spend them differently. If you’re building audience, this is where you pay attention. (If you want a practical way to benchmark your own community response after big moments like this, the Engagement Rate Calculator is the simplest starting point.)

StreamCharts figures for the official channels are enough to see the shape of the audience.

Below is a small, readable table with the key metrics (official channels only). Twitch values are directly visible on the StreamCharts Twitch stream analytics page; Kick’s stream page shows the airtime and average viewers but paywalls some totals, so the Kick/YouTube totals here reflect the reported values.

TGA 2025 — Official Channels (StreamCharts)

2024 baseline (for context)

Now the “so what” math (official channels only):

• Combined hours watched (YT + Twitch + Kick) rose ~6.7% YoY (from ~5.89M to ~6.29M).
• YouTube delivered ~78.4% of official-channel watchtime, Twitch ~21.4%, Kick ~0.2%.
• Twitch peak on the official channel fell ~15% YoY, while YouTube peak rose ~6.8%.

The core conclusion: TGA is increasingly a YouTube-native event, with Twitch behaving like the social distribution layer. Twitch’s impact is often expressed through fragmentation (co-streams) and social mechanics (raids, follower conversion), not necessarily through one giant peak on one official broadcast.

For Twitch-first creators, this is why next year’s plan should include a clean co-stream prep checklist (overlays, restream routing, chat moderation, clip workflow). Streamlabs is overkill for some, but it remains a quick way to operationalize a big-night show flow without turning your OBS scene collection into a crime scene.

On Twitch, the official broadcast generated ~1.34M hours watched, a ~347K peak, and ~204K average viewers across 6h 35m of airtime.

But the numbers that matter specifically for Twitch are the ones YouTube doesn’t really replicate in the same way:

• ~66,566 follower gain during the event (~10K/hour).
• 83 raids pointing at the channel.
• A clear “potential reach” effect where the event is constantly being handed from one community to another.

If you compare this to the 2024 official Twitch baseline (higher peak and average), it’s tempting to conclude “Twitch declined.” That’s too simplistic.

A more plausible reading is: the audience on Twitch got redistributed. Instead of one mountain, you got a mountain range — the official stream plus watch parties plus regional creators plus genre communities. That can reduce the official channel peak while keeping — or even increasing — total Twitch consumption.

This matters because the cultural value of Twitch is disproportionately created on the edges:

• The clips that go viral aren’t always from the clean feed; they’re from a creator losing their mind, screaming, laughing, pausing, rewinding, and narrating.
• The memes aren’t born in a broadcast booth; they’re born in chat.
• The “what did we feel” of the night is often defined by co-streamers, not the official stage.

If you’re building a channel, the lesson is brutally practical: co-streamable tentpole events are a growth lever, but only if you treat them as content production (not passive viewing). A simple two-step that works:

1) Pre-write your segment beats and intermissions (use a calendar). 2) Cut clips in-session, not tomorrow.

For the calendar piece, you don’t need a fancy system — just a repeatable template. How to Create a Content Calendar is exactly the boring, high-ROI workflow most creators skip until they’re already overwhelmed.

If you only look at one thing, look at this: YouTube’s official stream posted ~4.93M hours watched and a ~1.32M peak. Even without counting co-streams, that’s mass broadcast territory.

Why YouTube keeps winning these global tentpoles:

• Frictionless viewing: YouTube is installed on TVs, consoles, and every cheap device in human history.
• Algorithmic surfacing: YouTube can recommend the live stream to people who didn’t intend to watch it, especially around spikes.
• VOD gravity: after the live moment, the VOD keeps collecting long-tail view time, and YouTube is built for that loop.

Here’s the strategic punchline for brands and publishers:

On YouTube, the official stream is a destination. On Twitch, the event is a network phenomenon.

So if you sponsor, advertise, or “announce,” your creative has to match the platform:

• YouTube creative should be readable at a distance (TV screens), instantly legible in 2 seconds, and edited for the replay audience.
• Twitch creative should be chat-aware — memeable, quotable, and reactive — because it’s going to be clipped through a personality.

This is also why the same reveal can feel “bigger” on YouTube even if Twitch is louder: YouTube scales cleanly; Twitch scales socially.

If you’re a creator trying to translate TGA attention into growth, the most underrated move is to make a next-day “explainer VOD” that’s not just a recap — it’s a position. Think: what should people be excited about, skeptical about, or watching next. (If you’re a YouTube-first creator, start with the basics on positioning and tooling: YouTuber + TubeBuddy remains a practical combo.)

Kick’s official numbers for the TGA stream are much smaller than YouTube or Twitch in raw totals (per the StreamCharts values you provided). What we can confirm from the StreamCharts Kick stream page without a subscription is that the stream ran 5h 15m and averaged 2,418 viewers.

Kick’s bigger story is not “it beat Twitch” — it didn’t. It’s that Kick increasingly behaves like an additional distribution endpoint for communities that already live there.

Here’s why that still matters:

• If you’re a creator on Kick, you don’t want your audience to leave the platform for tentpoles.
• If you’re a publisher, you want your reveal to be “everywhere,” even if the incremental audience is small — because the clip supply grows with each extra endpoint.

So the most realistic projection is: Kick won’t become the main TGA venue overnight, but it can slowly increase relevance if more creators run synchronized watch parties there and if “drops + incentives” become a default habit for official streams.

Creator takeaway: if you’re multi-platform, treat Kick as an additional capture net. If you’re single-platform, don’t ignore tentpoles — just package them for where your audience already is.

Awards are the spine of the show. But the muscle — the stuff that moves the internet — is reveals.

This year’s announcements hit a familiar mix of franchise power, studio prestige, and “streamer bait.” Among the highlights reported in post-show roundups: Tomb Raider: The Dark Century, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet (Naughty Dog), Battlefield 6, Total War: Warhammer 40,000, and another look at Crimson Desert.

Why these specific announcements mattered:

• Tomb Raider isn’t just “a game,” it’s a cultural object. Any return creates instant multi-generational interest.
• Naughty Dog reveals hit differently because the studio’s brand is “we ship prestige.” People react as if it’s a film trailer.
• Battlefield 6 is “community repair” content — it’s less about novelty and more about whether the franchise can recover trust.
• Total War + Warhammer 40K is pure cross-audience alchemy: strategy fans + 40K fans + lore nerds.

If you’re trying to predict which reveals will keep compounding in the next weeks, use this heuristic:

A reveal lasts longer when it produces questions, not just hype.

Hype is loud; questions are sticky.

Examples of “sticky questions”:

• What’s the actual gameplay loop?
• Who is this for — core fans, or a new audience?
• Is this a reinvention or an iteration?
• Can the studio land the tone it’s selling?

Creators who win the post-TGA window don’t just recap. They answer questions early — and they do it with receipts.

TGA’s most valuable export isn’t a trophy list. It’s a synchronized global moment — millions of people reacting to the same thing within the same minute.

That’s why the show is now engineered for “reactability”:

• pacing designed around reveal spikes,
• tightly edited trailer cadence,
• and a format that’s basically built to be co-streamed.

Notice what grows fastest after the show:

• short clips of reveals (10–40 seconds),
• face-cam reactions,
• “top 10 moments” edits,
• and opinionated takes framed as answers (“Why Expedition 33 deserved it” / “Why Player’s Voice is a different game”).

If you’re a creator, the game is to convert that wave into identity:

• What do you stand for?
• What do you notice that others don’t?
• What’s your taste?

Because in a world where everyone can recap, taste becomes the differentiator.

And if you’re negotiating sponsorships off the back of tentpole performance, don’t wing it. A clean post-event report (views, clicks, retention, audience fit) changes your leverage dramatically. How to Negotiate Brand Deals is basically “stop being underpaid, politely.”

Projections serve best as scenario planning based on the shape of the numbers.

1) YouTube likely continues to grow as the default

Official-channel watchtime share is already overwhelmingly YouTube-weighted. Unless YouTube breaks something fundamental about live discovery on TV surfaces, it stays the easiest “global main feed.”

Projection: modest growth next year (+5–12% official-channel watchtime) is plausible if the announcements slate stays strong and the show avoids pacing backlash.

2) Twitch’s official peak may remain volatile — even if total Twitch viewing grows

If co-streaming continues to expand (which benefits Twitch culturally), the official channel peak can bounce around year to year. That’s not necessarily decline — it’s distribution.

Projection: Twitch official channel peak may stay flat to slightly down, while the broader Twitch “TGA ecosystem” grows via creators, raids, and regional watch parties.

3) The show will optimize even harder for clipping

Because clipping is now the marketing flywheel.

Projection: more “trailer moments,” fewer dead minutes, more intentional beats that cue reactions.

4) Kick and other platforms will matter most through incentives

Drops, exclusive co-stream perks, or integrated watch-party tooling can increase adoption at the margins.

Projection: Kick remains secondary, but can carve out a stable niche if it keeps “don’t leave the platform” convenience for its base.

For creator operations, the simplest way to turn these projections into action is to treat TGA like a campaign:

• pre-show: prediction content + “what I want to see” positioning
• live: co-stream + clipping pipeline
• post-show (48 hours): explainers + ranked takes + niche deep dives

That flow is straightforward. It also works.

For viewers:

• The ‘jury vs fan’ split isn’t a bug — it’s two different truths being measured at once.

For creators:

• YouTube is where the biggest single-room audience sits.
• Twitch is where the moment becomes culture.
• Co-streaming is not passive viewing — it’s production.

For brands/publishers:

• You’re not buying “a stream,” you’re buying an ecosystem: official feed + co-stream network + clip economy.
• The best activations are the ones that still make sense in a 20-second clip.

If you want to sanity-check performance after a big event, don’t guess. Pull the basics (view curves, retention, community response) and write a short memo you can reuse for the next tentpole. That’s how you turn one night into an annual growth engine.