The Game Awards 2025 Recap: A French Indie Studio Just Embarrassed Every AAA Publisher

A 30-person studio from France just walked into The Game Awards and absolutely demolished the competition. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won nine awards including Game of the Year. Thats the most wins in the shows history.

Nine. From a debut game. From an indie developer nobody had heard of two years ago.

Every AAA publisher watching that ceremony should be taking notes. Or panicking. Probably both.

Sandfall Interactive showed up to the Peacock Theater dressed in traditional French marinières with red berets. The whole team. They kept doing it for every award they won. Which was… a lot of trips to that stage.

Game of the Year. Best Game Direction. Best Narrative. Best Art Direction. Best Score and Music. Best Performance for Jennifer English as Maelle. Best Debut Indie Game. Best Independent Game. Best RPG. The only jury-voted award they lost was Best Audio Design which went to Battlefield 6.

This beats The Last of Us Part II which had held the record with seven wins. A French turn-based RPG just outdid one of Sonys flagship franchises.

The game came into the night with 13 nominations. It won all but one of its jury-nominated categories plus took home most of the major craft awards. The only fan-voted award – Players Voice – went to Wuthering Waves instead. But honestly who cares. Nine trophies.

Expedition 33 is the first debut game ever to win Game of the Year. Its the first French-developed game to win. Its also the first game to win GOTY while also being nominated in indie categories. Usually theres a hard line between indie and AAA at these awards. Sandfall just erased it.

The game had already sold well before the show. After the ceremony engagement tripled. They had their best sales day since May and hit 57,000 concurrent Steam players. Over 300,000 copies sold in the five days after the awards.

Not bad for a game that nobody expected to compete at this level.

But the show wasnt just about awards. It was also about reveals. And there were some absolutely massive ones.

Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic. Thats the spiritual successor to Knights of the Old Republic that fans have been begging for. An action RPG set in that era. Its real. Its happening. Coming from a new studio led by Casey Hudson – yes that Casey Hudson from BioWare.

Larian Studios revealed their next project. After Baldurs Gate 3 won everything last year they showed a brutally violent trailer for a return to their Divinity franchise. The weird statue that had been teased was for this.

Total War: Warhammer 40K. The strategy franchise is finally tackling 40K instead of just Fantasy. David Harbour introduced the cinematic. Gameplay snippets showed some ambitious evolution of the formula.

Tomb Raider: Catalyst. Mega Man: Dual Override (Mega Man is back!). Control Resonant from Remedy. Resident Evil Requiem with Leon Kennedy confirmed as playable. Lords of the Fallen 2. Saros from Housemarque getting an April 30 release date.

Also Miss Piggy and Rowlf sang a gaming medley. Which was… something that happened.

The show ran about three hours with roughly 17 minutes dedicated to actual awards. The rest was reveals and performances. According to reports publishers paid up to $450,000 for a 60-second trailer and over $1 million for a three-minute slot. This is as much a marketing event as an awards show.

Geoff Keighley dedicated the show to his father who died in August. An empty seat was reserved in his honor beside Keighleys mother. That was a genuinely touching moment in a show that doesnt always make room for those.

But the lasting image from this years Game Awards is going to be that French team in their berets making trip after trip to collect hardware. A small studio with a vision beating the giants at their own game.

Thats the kind of story gaming needs more of.