Can Twitch Tell Who Will Win the Game Awards?

The Game Awards 2025 marks another year of incredible gaming excellence, honoring the games that have captured our attention and driven cultural moments. We take this opportunity every year to review the nominees and see how they performed on the live stream: How does the largest online gamer community interact with these games, and is their support enough to predict this year’s award winners?

When we covered The Game Awards 2024, our rankings predicted 4 winners from the 8 categories we covered… but we think we can do even better this year. So this time, we ranked games based on the highest number of views in a single month in the past year to provide a fairer comparison of popularity. We’ll also provide our insight into why these games stand out, and the reasons why there is disruption in each category. Plus, we’ll link back to our coverage of select games and content creators from last year so you can get more in-depth info.

The categories we are looking at this year are…

TL;DR Takeaways by Stream Hatchet:

• The Game of the Year nominee with the biggest streaming month was Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 with 48.8 million hours watched
• The Game Awards category with the most combined views is Best Esports Game, with League of Legends leading the way with 246.6 million hours watched
• Grand Theft Auto VI is by far the Most Anticipated Game nominee with 496K unique chats on Twitch since May 2025

Game of the Year Nominees

We’ll start with the most popular category of all: Game of the Year. Last year’s winner, platformer Astro Botwas a devastating blow that took many experts by surprise. This year will be harder to predict with so many quality games. Based on highest monthly viewing hours, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 generating 48.8 million hours watched and edging out the most-nominated games at this year’s awards, Chiaroscuro: Expedition 33. Although Kingdom Come leading by hours watched, the amount of hype behind it Dim light making him the favorite to win here. But who knows: Game critics and the media might choose to give Team Cherry the long-awaited award Hollow Knight: Silk Song for being the pinnacle of Metroidvania games, just like how they reward platformers Astro Bot last year.

Ongoing Best Game Nominations

The Best Continuing Game category recognizes what we typically call live service games: Games with seasons, battle passes, and microtransactions. It’s no surprise that OG’s live service game Fortnite continues to dominate the charts with the highest monthly viewership of 107.4 million watch hours. Plus there is increasing interest in this matter Fortnite as a UGC platform and this could shift the balance of cultural relevance in favor of the game. However, Fortnite facing stiff competition from new entrants Marvel Rivals which was an absolute phenomenon when it was released in December last year and almost equaled it FortniteIt scores here with 91.8 million hours watched. For comparison, Final Fantasy XIV and its community programming didn’t do much harm with just 6.6 million hours watched.

Best Multiplayer Game Nomination

The Best Multiplayer Game category is always hard to predict: you have online giants competing with hilarious couch co-op games in one space. If you look at online multiplayer, ARC raider not only did it generate the highest monthly viewership of 127.8 million hours watched, but it also created the biggest sensation as it marked a new era for extraction shooters. For comparison, Reign of the Night of the Elden Ring trailing with just 51.9 million hours watched. However, there is a strong case to be made that Hazelight Studios Separate Fiction will take home the prize: The game was highly praised for its story, and Hazelight has even previously taken home the top prize, winning Game of the Year in 2021 for It Takes Two. For us, this is a contradiction ARC raider And Separate Fiction here, with a slight edge ARC raider for sheer cultural impact.

Best Esports Game Nomination

Regarding the impact of live-streaming on these categories, Best Esports Game is the most impacted. For starters, the candidates here collectively have the highest hours watched compared to any other category. Second, events like the Esports World Cup and support from big-name co-streamers are integral to the game’s success and acceptance online. Considering that there are no major changes in the world of esports this year, it is likely that big changes will occur League of Legends would again take home the prize (also generating the highest monthly viewership of 246.6 million hours watched). The only disappointing thing here would be if critics credited the growing support for mobile esports by giving it this award Mobile Legends: Bang Bang.

Best Independent Game Nominee

2025 is truly the year of the indie game: 3 of the 6 games nominated for Best Independent Game this year also appeared in the Game of the Year category! And, perhaps not coincidentally, these are also the three most popular live streaming games in this category: Chiaroscuro: Expedition 33, Hollow Knight: Silk SongAnd Hades 2. The strange thing here is Blue Prince which, unlike the titles above, was essentially spearheaded by one developer (Tonda Ros). The judging panel will definitely love Tonda, so we think this category is the best choice. Blue Prince to innovate in Puzzle games or Dim light break through and take on this category as well.

Best Mobile Game Nominee

Mobile Games have a growing fan base spread across the globe. But the top two games in this category based on highest monthly hours watched both have one thing in common: They’re both anime gacha games. Meanwhile, second place Wuthering Wave nominated last year (5.5 million hours watched), the clear favorite here is Umamusume: Beautiful Derby (9.1 million hours watched) that sparked excitement online with its absurd mix of waifu anime and horse racing. Given that the field here is fairly homogeneous, this sheer hype will probably be enough to clinch the win. But maybe there’s room for it Sonic rumble to see SEGA’s take on the Battle Royale party game genre.

Content Creator of the Year Nominations

This is our bread and butter here: Looking at the most popular content creators from the past year. This has been a monumental year for us Kagic Sample You have a video. was (what should have been) the final installment of this annual tradition and generated 84.2 million viewing hours – that’s 60% of its 140 total viewing hours over the past year. As an event that bridges streaming culture and mainstream culture with a series of celebrity cameos, Mafiathon 3 seems to have made Kai Cenat the winner of the year.

But let’s take a look at other contenders that deserve some praise too. Caedrel generated 110.4 million viewing hours thanks to its punditry League of Legends coverage, which made him the center of public attention. Sakura Miko flies the flag for the growing popularity of VTubers, who have dominated YouTube for the last 2-3 years. And we also have content creators we’ve talked a lot about these last few months: TheBurntPeanut, whose VTuber-adjacent streaming personality rose to fame Escape from Tarkov streaming and has now attracted more mainstream attention thanks to his ARC raider stream (like the latest Battle for Speranza community event).

Most Anticipated Game Nominations

Finally, we’ve taken a slightly different approach to predicting the winner of the Most Anticipated Game category, by turning our attention to chat mentions on Twitch about the nominated games. Although to be honest, even a casual reader could guess which game is superior here. Grand Theft Auto VI by far the most popular game launch with 496K chat mentions over the past year, which means (thanks to numerous delays) this category could be out for the second year in a row. Memes that do just that are almost too tempting for the judges to resist. Meanwhile Resident Demon’s Requiem got 76K mentions in chat, continuing Capcom’s streak of well-loved games after this year Wild Monster Hunterwhile game adaptation 007 First Light trailing with just 9K chat mentions.

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Let’s wait for the winner to be announced on Thursday the 11th^th in December, and we’ll see if the voice of the live streaming community is reflected in the judge’s decision. But regardless of the winner, the sheer number of quality games up for grabs proves that the industry has to step up their game to attract audience interest. From amazing RPGs like Dim light to phenomenal multiplayer games like ARC raidereach genre remixes elements in new and interesting ways. And as usual, live streaming will remain a discussion forum for game quality heading into 2026.

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