New award farming strat just dropped: At The Game Awards 2025 ceremony on Thursday night, Grand Theft Auto 6 claimed an honor that probably didn't surprise anybody. For the second consecutive year, Rockstar Games' long-awaited sequel took home the Most Anticipated Game award, just weeks after winning a similar award for the second year in a row at The Golden Joysticks.
The award itself is a given for GTA 6. Instead, it's winning it for two years in a row that places the upcoming sixthquel in an extremely exclusive club, all thanks to a delay. Since The Game Awards introduced the Most Anticipated category in 2020, only one other title has managed to capture the honor in back-to-back years, and that game is Elden Ring.
The collaboration between FromSoftware and Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin took home Most Anticipated Game awards in both 2020 and 2021 before finally launching in February 2022 to massive critical and commercial success, winning Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2022. Given the company, GTA 6 could end up bagging the same award that Elden Ring did at this point next year, although we can't really discount the possibility of another delay just yet.
The Game Awards determines winners through a combination of fan voting and jury evaluation. The jury consists of over one hundred leading media outlets and influencers from around the world. This means winning requires both public approval and recognition from industry experts. For a game to dominate this category two years running suggests that each delay hasn't affected the hype at all.
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If anything, Google's recent stat reveals shows that the GTA 6 hype-train has barely left the station. It's safe to say that the repeated delays and the internal labor disputes, which Rockstar continues to refute despite the issue reaching the UK government, haven't dampened fan interest at all.
Looking ahead, the question is no longer whether the gaming industry wants to see the game launched and available to play. It's if Rockstar can deliver an experience that justifies nearly a decade of development, a timeline that, as Dan Houser hinted, led to his departure from the studio.
We'll wait to see if Rockstar can successfully exceed expectations on November 19, 2026, when GTA 6 hopefully avoids winning a historic third consecutive Most Anticipated Game award at The Game Awards.
