Who were the big winners at the GDC awards?

Awards, awards awards!

It was a week filled with awards, and we have details on all the winners. 

First up was the Game Developers Choice Awards, which is voted on by the development community. Balatro was the big winner, taking home Game of the Year and a number of other prizes. Here are the 2025 winners:

Best Audio: Astro Bot
Best Debut: Balatro
Best Design: Balatro
Best Narrative: Metaphor: ReFantazio  
Best Technology: Astro Bot
Best Visual Art: Black Myth: Wukong
Innovation Award: Balatro
Social Impact Award: Life is Strange: Double Exposure
Game of the Year: Balatro

Meanwhile, the 2025 Independent Games Festival Awards also took place last week. Consume Me won the top prize, but here is a list of all winners from the event: 

Excellence in Visual Art: Hauntii
Excellence in Audio: Despelote
Excellence in Design: Tactical Breach Wizards
Excellence in Narrative: Caves of Qud
Nuovo Award: Consume Me
Best Student Game: Slot Waste
Audience Award: The WereCleaner
alt.ctrl.gdc Award: ChromaCorp
Seumas McNally Grand Prize: Consume Me

Finally, the The Game Audio Network Guild Awards were held, recognizing nominees across 25 categories in music, sound design, and dialogue. You can view the full list of winners here, but Star Wars Outlaws dominated the show.

Side Quests (more stories worth reading)

🍺 Our staff spent the night with the tycoon game Ale Abbey. Check out their thoughts. 

👎🏼 A Texas conformity bill could impact tabletop roleplaying games in schools statewide.

⚾ Major League Baseball’s Seattle Mariners will wear Nintendo and Switch 2 logos on their jerseys this season.

✖️ Could Steam be coming to Xbox consoles? 

🙈 Ubisoft reportedly implemented an "anti-harassment plan" for Assassin's Creed Shadows developers that includes not sharing their involvement with creating the game on social media.

👍 Game workers in the U.S. and Canada launched an industry-wide union with the goal of building a game industry that "nourishes its talent and invests in its future."

🏆 The Origins Awards have 120 nominees for their various 2024 board game and tabletop awards. 

💔 Fallout 76 players reported a “game-breaking bug” for the game’s new Ghoul Within update. 

🖥️ A new industry report suggests that 67% of the games played on PC are at least six years old. 

🏈 Electronic Arts offered college football players $1,500 to appear in College Football 26, up from $600 a year ago. 

🕹️ Sony created a new first-party PlayStation studio called Dark Outlaw Games.

📉 A new report shows that Steam discounts are now 4 times less effective at driving game traffic than in 2019. 

📈 Round numbers: Assassin's Creed Shadows hits 2 million players just two days after its release. 

🎥 Multiple Hollywood studios are reportedly bidding on the rights to make a Split Fiction movie. 

New Releases this week: 

Check out our article on 12 New Games to Play in March.

3/27: AI LIMIT (PlayStation and PC)
3/27: Atomfall (PlayStation, Xbox and PC)
3/27: KARMA: The Dark World (PlayStation and PC)
3/27: The First Berserker: Khazan (PlayStation, Xbox and PC)
3/28: inZOI (PC)

Thanks for reading. If you enjoy our newsletter, tell a friend to subscribe!