Resident Evil Requiem Wins Ultimate Game of the Year at the 44th Golden Joystick Awards

By CriticalPixel · 2026-11-12

Resident Evil Requiem walked out of the Troxy with the biggest trophy of the night. Capcom's survival horror sequel took Ultimate Game of the Year at the 44th Golden Joystick Awards in London on November 11, adding Console Game of the Year, Best Game Trailer for Evil Has Always Had a Name and Best Lead Performer for Angela Sant'Albano's turn as Grace Ashcroft. Four wins on one night, and a loud argument that the publisher finally has its flagship horror series firing on every cylinder at once. The ceremony sold out the venue, which tells you plenty about how much weight a public vote still carries in this industry.

Grace Ashcroft moving through a dim corridor in Resident Evil Requiem

The PC side of the ballot went somewhere less obvious. Crimson Desert, Pearl Abyss's enormous open world action RPG, took PC Game of the Year, and PC Gamer's own review landed at 80 percent with a line about it being vast and obtuse in a way that will frustrate some and exhilarate others. That is a fair read on a game that spent years in teaser purgatory before landing on Steam in March with a scale that most studios would not attempt. Handing it the PC trophy over the usual safe picks is the kind of call that makes a public vote worth reading.

The real story of the night sat at the other end of the budget scale. MECCHA CHAMELEON, a hide and seek multiplayer game built by a single developer working under the name lemorion_1224, won four awards: Best Multiplayer Game, Best Indie Game Self-Published, the Streamers' Choice Award and the Developers' Choice Award. It hit Steam in June, it costs less than a takeaway, and it beat the AAA nominees in categories voted by players and by other developers. When a solo project takes half the show, the show is doing something right.

Chameleon characters hiding in a crowded room in MECCHA CHAMELEON

The rest of the ballot spread wide

Everything else was scattered, which is the healthiest thing about this year's list. Dispatch took Best Storytelling and Best Soundtrack, Valheim won Best Indie Game, Subnautica 2 won Best Early Access Game, Doom: The Dark Ages - Revelations won Best Game Expansion, and Control: Resonant took Best Visual Design. Capcom claimed Studio of the Year on the back of Requiem plus Onimusha: Way of the Sword, which picked up Best Audio Design. The Steam Controller won Best Gaming Hardware, Big Walk took the Critics' Choice Award, and Iron Lung won Best Game Adaptation. You can read the full list of winners over at GamesRadar.

CD Projekt Red had a split night. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered won Best Remake/Remaster while The Witcher 4 took Most Wanted Game, which is the awards equivalent of being praised for the past and bet on for the future in the same breath. Grace Saif won Best Supporting Performer for Pragmata, and Balatro and Minecraft took the Still Playing awards for mobile and for PC and console. That last category is the only one on the card that rewards a game for simply refusing to die, and both winners have earned it.

Kliff standing on a cliff overlooking the open world of Crimson Desert

Old ceremony, new argument

The Golden Joysticks have been running since 1983, longer than any other publicly voted game awards, and the format has barely moved: a shortlist in late September, a public vote through October, an Ultimate Game of the Year round that closes days before the ceremony. This year that vote produced no runaway frontrunner, unlike 2025 when Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 hoovered up almost everything it was nominated for. Instead the trophies went to a Capcom horror game, a Korean open world epic, a one person hide and seek toy and a Valheim that refuses to leave the conversation five years on.

That spread is the point. A ballot open to anyone who plays games will always reward the thing people actually finished, not the thing with the biggest marketing budget. The Golden Joysticks lean on that promise harder than any other show, and the official event site has spent the year repeating that these awards are voted by the people who buy and play the games. It sounds like a slogan until a solo developer walks up and takes four trophies from under Capcom's nose.

What the night actually proved

Reaction in the hours after the ceremony was thin and mostly warm. Spanish and Brazilian outlets rushed out winner lists before the venue had emptied, Capcom fans treated Studio of the Year as a coronation, and the sharpest complaint I saw came from a fan insisting Mewgenics had been robbed. Nobody was angry about Requiem. That is a change from the usual awards night ritual of arguing about the top prize for a week, and it suggests the vote landed somewhere close to the consensus for once.

My issue is not with the winners, it is with the calendar. Most Wanted Game going to The Witcher 4 means we handed a trophy to a game nobody outside CD Projekt Red has touched, on the same night we handed one to a developer who shipped something real in June and watched it climb. Trailers are not games, and an awards show that mixes the two in the same room should be honest that they are not the same kind of win. Keep the category, sure, but stop pretending it belongs next to Ultimate Game of the Year.

None of that takes anything away from Requiem. Capcom built a horror game that critics and players agree on, which almost never happens, and it walked into a public vote and won outright. The show sold out the Troxy, the trophy cabinet in Osaka got heavier, and the argument about what counts as the year's best game now moves to The Game Awards in December. Requiem has the momentum. Whether it holds that spot through a holiday season packed with heavy hitters is a different fight, and one Capcom should be ready for.