VGChartz Official Game of the Year 2025 – Voting Now Closed - Article
by Craig S , posted on 26 December 2025 / 8,803 Views
Hello and welcome to VGChartz’s 19th annual Game of the Year Awards!
This is it, the Final Voting stage. The lists of Nominees have been substantially trimmed down thanks to the community’s Preliminary Voting, now it’s your chance to help determine both the final Shortlist of games to be featured in each award article and the Winners themselves.
Here’s the link to our Final Voting Form. As usual, all you need to take part is a Google account:
>>VOTE HERE<<
Frequently Asked Questions
Q - When does voting close?
A – Final Voting closes on 2nd January, 2026.
Q - Can I change my vote/edit my voting form after submitting it?
A - Yes, you can edit your voting form up until we close voting.
Q - Do I have to select a game for every award?
A - Nope. Select your favourite for as many or as few categories as you wish.
Q - Why can’t I vote for game XXXXXXX?
A – Unfortunately it didn’t make the cut during Preliminary Voting!
Q – I’d like to see an award for Best XXXXXX, it’s a shame you don’t do one.
A – Let us know in the comments; we’re always open to suggestions, especially for new or replacement categories.
Q – How is the winner in each category determined?
A – By a mixture of community and staff voting, weighted 50/50. On the community side we use the Google Form that’s linked above, while on the staff side we vote individually on the staff forums. The staff’s results are converted into percentages for each game in each category. These percentages are combined with the percentages from the community’s results, with the total then being divided by two to get an average. This average determines both the final Shortlist of games to be featured in each award article and the Winners themselves.
Q - When and how will the Winners be announced?
A – Winners will be announced in a series of articles that we'll start publishing in mid-January.
Q - What's with the Astro Bot banner? That was a 2024 game.
A - Astro Bot was last year's Overall Game of the Year winner. We're giving it one last moment to shine in the spotlight before we reveal 2025's best games.
Here are all of our past Overall Game of the Year winners:
Astro Bot
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Elden Ring
Metroid Dread
The Last of Us Part II
Resident Evil 2
God of War
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End
Rocket League
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U
Super Mario 3D World
Journey
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Mass Effect 2
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
LittleBigPlanet
BioShock
More Articles
Wow… the winners here have been better than those at the TGA
Mostly agreed though that 2015 Rocket League win over Witcher 3 remains a bit of a blemish.
agreed
Rocket League is easily in the upper-half of VGC's GOTYs altogether and has gone on to cement a 'sports/rally' game as one of the most competitive e-Sports.
Well I have no strong opinions about Rocket League but in my book Witcher 3 is better than every other Goty on that list, one of the best written games of all-time on top of being the best open-world RPG, so even if Rocket League was in the upper half that wouldn't quite cut it for me.
That's fine. I'm not in the best position to declare if Witcher 3 beats Rocket League without reaching TW3's end tbh. But I will say part of my... lethargy to return is its rather underwhelming "RPG-ness." Compare that to Rocket League's perfect distillation of rocket-powered cars with soccer and it's easy to see why it remains the Rosetta Stone for non-licensed sports titles.
Plus, it's the only one on this list where VGChartz & I agree. ;)
"RPG-ness" is many things, it's not a shape your own character kind of game, but part of the beauty is playing as an appealing character with their own personality and goal. But now that I think about it 2023 is the only one I technically agree with as well, though they've listed my number 2 around half the time.
Meh on Witcher 3. Xenoblade X over it
I mean to each their own but that's not a competition in my book.
The Wildgate snub was - sadly - expected, but South of Midnight missing from category nominations is genuinely surprising.
Super Mario 3D World winning in 2013 over The Last of Us, GTA V, Bioshock Infinite, and Rayman Legends will never make sense. Super Smash Bros. for Wii U was also made irrelevant by Super Smash Bros Ultimate in just a few years.
It's tragic that Expedition AI Generated is included in the polls. But it seems more users here are keyboard warriors than I thought. -_-
No Metal Eden for best shooter saddens me. Oh well
I’m surprised to see MHWilds didn’t make the shortlist for Most Disappointing
