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The story
A thread predicting this year’s GOTY (Game of the Year) popped up on the Hardware/Industry (Geha) board. Among the contenders named were Pragmata, Resident Evil 9, Wolverine, and Banshi Senkou, but the real center of debate was whether Grand Theft Auto VI, releasing November 20, would even be eligible for this year’s The Game Awards. Since past eligibility cutoffs have clustered in mid-to-late November, some argued GTA6 could sneak in under the wire — while others pushed back on the idea of crowning a game whose reputation hasn’t even had time to settle right after release. Opinions were split.
What people said
Resident Evil 9
Pragmata
Wolverine's a top contender for KOTY (5ch's unofficial "Worst Game of the Year"), come on 😒
That thing's probably an insane masterpiece
No way
Gameplay-wise it's stuck 30 years in the past
There's no way something like that even makes the 2026 GOTY nomination list
Though I haven't played it myself
Nah
It's honestly been mediocre ever since Raccoon City
A game has to be well-made all the way to the end to win GOTY
Globally it really ought to be Forza Horizon 6, but those guys won't pick it
For whatever reason, racing games seem to be excluded
Forget racing games — Geoff Keighley will never let a Microsoft game get nominated, period
Pretty sure past Forza Horizon entries have been nominated before
There are plenty of legit ones out there
Why are you so fixated on the PlayStation camp's stuff?
It's been getting hyped up hard even before release
Out of the running for now
Nobody's talking about it at all
it might be more fun to just predict next year's instead
Next year's a total rush of big titles anyway
Isn't it basically just Fable and the God of War spin-off?
And even those two feel kind of weak
Right now it's probably one of Forza Horizon 6, Resident Evil Requiem, or Poko-a (a Koei Tecmo title the thread's using a nickname for)
I'd laugh if Poko-a actually won
Koei Tecmo taking GOTY right after FromSoftware, ahead of Capcom, Square Enix, and Konami
2015 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
2016 Overwatch
2017 The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
2018 God of War
2019 Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
2020 The Last of Us Part II
2021 It Takes Two
2022 Elden Ring
2023 Baldur's Gate 3
2024 Astro Bot
2025 Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
More than sales numbers, it kind of feels like they tend to pick something a little edgier
Does Pragmata have a real shot?
Being a new IP feels like it works in its favor too
Did it actually have anything new to it?
Isn't that the whole point for GOTY?
It was seriously great
Wouldn't be shocked if it picked something up at the GDC Awards
Has nothing to do with Microsoft
Steers clear of Nintendo as much as possible
Those are the requirements for winning GOTY at The Game Awards!
Though for the record, last year's winner, Expedition 33, was heavily funded by Microsoft (lol)
That's exactly why 33 launched day one on Game Pass
Way too much of a franchise entry
Poko-a's out too
Its source material, Builders, is a Minecraft ripoff
Ocarina of Time is out of the question
Don't go thinking a remaster's gonna win
By that logic what do you do with BG3?
Under the hood it's basically the same as Divinity from ten years back
Honestly I figured they'd end up giving it to some SIE/Sony game no matter what
But the reviews aren't good, so that looks unlikely now
For real
Not that I don't want it to, or anything
Like people said above, expectations are just too high, so it's impossible to predict how that'll swing the judging
Has Minecraft — the game that Builders itself ripped off before Poko-a ripped off Builders — ever actually won Game of the Year? That's the one that should've gotten it
Doesn't need it
It spread by word of mouth, so a 'prestigious' (lol) award would just get in the way
Best-selling games in history that never won GOTY
That's Minecraft and Tetris right there
TGA didn't even exist yet when Minecraft came out in the first place
I wonder if there was some predecessor award back then
There are plenty of GOTY awards besides TGA — and there were back then too, weren't there?
Honestly nobody really cares about anything besides TGA
When people talk GOTY, they mean TGA
Nothing besides TGA has any value
Asked an AI for the list of eligibility cutoff dates for The Game Awards each year
2016 November 24
2017 November 27
2018 November 16
2019 November 15
2020 November 20
2021 November 19
2022 November 18
2023 November 17
2024 November 22
2025 November 21
2026 Not yet announced (expected to be announced fall 2026)
The odds are actually pretty high that GTA6, releasing November 20, counts for this year
TGA will probably set its cutoff with GTA6's release in mind, and there's a good chance Rockstar timed the release specifically to land in that window
Still, though
Declaring a game 'the best of the year' right after it drops feels really off somehow
It's like jumping to a conclusion before the reviews have even settled
Feels like it should just get pushed to next year
Yeah, fair, but ARC Raiders was kind of the same deal last year, in that stacked indie field
Judges probably get review data well ahead of time, so timing likely isn't actually an issue on their end
But yeah, there's definitely a whiff of 'selling on hype without real confidence' to it
Background and key points of this discussion
The Game Awards (TGA) typically sets its eligibility cutoff for “games of that year” sometime in mid-to-late November. In post 92, a poster shared a decade’s worth of cutoff dates they say they got from an AI, pointing out that GTA6, releasing November 20, could well sneak into this year’s eligibility window. It’s worth noting, though, that this is information the poster got from a generative AI, not an official announcement. Several awards besides TGA also call themselves “GOTY,” but the thread proceeds on the assumption that “talking about GOTY = talking about TGA,” so TGA isn’t necessarily the only benchmark that matters. It’s also worth flagging that KOTY (Kuso Game of the Year, i.e. “Worst Game of the Year”), which comes up in the thread, is an unofficial award that originated on 5ch and has nothing to do with TGA. The thread ends without a resolution, torn between the cautious view that “it’s strange to crown a game whose reputation hasn’t settled right after release” and the speculation that “the release date was deliberately timed for this.”
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Geha)) thread “This Year’s GOTY Is Seriously, Actually Impossible to Call wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.”
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