The Game Awards 2025 marks another year of revelatory gaming excellence, giving credit to the games which have captured our attention and driven cultural moments. We take this chance every year to look over the nominees and see how they performed on live streaming: How has the largest community of gamers online been interacting with these games, and is their support enough to predict the winner of this year’s awards?
When we covered The Game Awards 2024, our rankings predicted 4 winners out of the 8 categories we covered… but we reckon we can do even better this year. So this time, we’re ranking games by their highest single month of viewership in the past year to give a more fair comparison of their popularity. We’ll also be providing our insights into why these games stood out, and reasons there might be an upset in each category. Plus, we’ll be linking back to our coverage of certain games and creators from this past year so you can get even more in-depth info.
The categories we’re looking at this year are…
- Game of the Year
- Best Ongoing Game
- Best Multiplayer Game
- Best Esports Game
- Best Independent Game
- Best Mobile Game
- Content Creator of the Year
- Most Anticipated Game
TL;DR Takeaways by Stream Hatchet:
- The Game of the Year nominee with the biggest month on streaming is Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 with 48.8M hours watched
- The Game Awards category with the most combined viewership is Best Esports Game, with League of Legends leading at 246.6M hours watched
- Grand Theft Auto VI is by far the most talked-about Most Anticipated Game nominee with 496K unique chatters on Twitch since May 2025
Game of The Year Nominees
We’ll start off with the most hyped category of them all: Game of the Year. Last year’s winner, the platformer Astro Bot, was a complete curveball that threw many pundits for a loop. This year will be even harder to predict with a packed field of quality games. Looking by highest monthly hours watched, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 brought in 48.8M hours watched and narrowly edged out the most nominated game at this year’s awards, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Though Kingdom Come leads by hours watched, the sheer amount of hype behind Clair Obscur makes it the favourite to win here. But who knows: Game critics and media outlets might opt to reward Team Cherry’s long-awaited Hollow Knight: Silksong for being the pinnacle of Metroidvania games, much like how they rewarded platformer Astro Bot last year.
Best Ongoing Game Nominees
The Best Ongoing Game category acknowledges what we more commonly call live service games: Games with seasons, battle passes, and microtransactions. It should come as no surprise that the OG live service game Fortnite continues to dominate the charts with the highest monthly viewership of 107.4M hours watched. Add to that the growing interest in Fortnite as a UGC platform and this could swing the balance of cultural relevance in the game’s favour. However, Fortnite faces stiff competition from newcomer Marvel Rivals which was an absolute phenomenon when it was released in December last year and almost matched Fortnite’s score here with 91.8M hours watched. By comparison, Final Fantasy XIV and its community events don’t make a dent at just 6.6M hours watched.
Best Multiplayer Game Nominees
The Best Multiplayer Game category is always a hard one to predict: You have massive online juggernauts competing with cute couch co-op games in one space. If you’re looking at online multiplayer, ARC Raiders not only brought in the highest monthly viewership of 127.8M hours watched, but it also created the most hype as it heralded a new age for extraction shooters. By comparison, Elden Ring Nightreign lagged behind at just 51.9M hours watched. However, there’s a strong case to be made that Hazelight Studios’ Split Fiction will take home the prize: The game has been overwhelmingly praised for its story, and Hazelight has even previously taken home the top prize, winning Game of the Year back in 2021 for It Takes Two. For us, it’s a toss-up between ARC Raiders and Split Fiction here, with a slight edge to ARC Raiders for sheer cultural impact.
Best Esports Game Nominees
When it comes to the impact of live-streaming on these categories, the Best Esports Game is by far the most affected. For starters, the candidates here collectively have the highest hours watched compared to any other category. Secondly, events like the Esports World Cup and support from top co-streamers are integral to the success of these games and their reception online. Given that there were no major shakeups to the esports landscape this year, it’s likely that League of Legends will again take home the prize (also bringing in the highest monthly viewership of 246.6M hours watched). The only upset here could be if critics reward the growing support for mobile esports by handing the award to Mobile Legends: Bang Bang.
Best Independent Game Nominees
2025 really was the year of indie games: 3 of the 6 games nominated for Best Independent Game this year also popped up in the Game of the Year category! And, perhaps not so coincidentally, they’re also three of the most popular games on live streaming in this category: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Hollow Knight: Silksong, and Hades 2. The outlier here is Blue Prince which, unlike the aforementioned titles, was essentially spearheaded by a single developer (Tonda Ros). The judging panel will have a soft spot for Tonda no doubt, so we’re guessing this category is a toss up between Blue Prince for innovating in Puzzle games or Clair Obscur barreling through and taking out this category as well.
Best Mobile Game Nominees
Mobile Games have a growing fanbase which is truly worldwide. But the top two games in this category by highest monthly hours watched both have one thing in common: They’re anime gacha games. While second place Wuthering Waves was nominated last year (5.5M hours watched), the clear favourite here is Umamusume: Pretty Derby (9.1M hours watched) which fuelled online excitement with its absurd blend of anime waifus and horse racing. Given that the field here is fairly homogenous, this sheer hype will probably be enough to take the win. But there could be space for Sonic Rumble to get a look in as SEGA’s take on the Battle Royale party game genre.
Content Creator of the Year Nominees
This is our bread and butter right here: Looking over the most popular content creators from the past year. It was an absolutely monumental year for Kai Cenat whose Mafiathon 3 was the (supposedly) final installment of this yearly tradition and brought in 84.2M hours watched – that’s 60% of his total 140 hours watched over the past year. As an event which bridges streaming culture and mainstream culture with its litany of celebrity cameos, Mafiathon 3 seems to have made Kai Cenat a shoe-in for this year’s winner.
But let’s look at the other contenders who deserve shout-outs as well. Caedrel brought in 110.4M hours watched thanks to his expert League of Legends coverage, which has made him a staple of the community. Sakura Miko is waving the flag for the growing popularity of VTubers, who have been dominating on YouTube over the past 2-3 years. And we also have a creator we’ve been talking about a lot these past couple of months: TheBurntPeanut, whose VTuber-adjacent streaming persona became famous from Escape from Tarkov streams and has now captured more mainstream attention thanks to his ARC Raiders streams (like the recent Battle for Speranza community event).
Most Anticipated Game Nominees
Finally, we’ve taken a little bit of a different approach for predicting the winner of the Most Anticipated Game category, turning our eye towards chat mentions on Twitch of the nominated games. Although to be honest, even a casual reader could guess which game comes out on top here. Grand Theft Auto VI is by far the most hyped game launch with 496K chat mentions over the past year, which means (thanks to many delays) it could take out this category for the second year in a row. The memes from doing that are almost too tempting to resist for the judges. Meanwhile Resident Evil Requiem had 76K chat mentions, continuing Capcom’s streak of much-hyped games after this year’s Monster Hunter Wilds, whereas game adaptation 007 First Light is trailing at just 9K chat mentions.
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We’ll be waiting with baited breath for the announcement of the winners on Thursday the 11th of December, and we’ll see if the live-streaming community’s voice is reflected in the judge’s decisions. But regardless of the winners, the number of quality games up for contention proves that the industry is having to up their game to capture audience interest. From incredible RPGs like Clair Obscur to phenomenal multiplayer games like ARC Raiders, each and every genre is remixing elements in new and exciting ways. And, as always, live streaming will remain the forum for discussion of game quality heading into 2026.
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