Lifestyle
'Love is Blind' is mired in lawsuits. What does that mean for reality TV?
Contestants on Love is Blind live apart from one another and do not see each other before agreeing to be married.
Netflix
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Netflix
The hugely popular Netflix reality show Love is Blind purports to be an experiment where contestants have a chance to fall in love — sight unseen. After “dating” through a wall in small pods, the men and women get engaged, meet in person and then decide at the altar whether or not to commit to a real, legally binding marriage.
But some members have accused the show’s production company of exploitation, and two former cast members have formed a group to help connect reality show contestants to legal and mental health resources.
“There are a lot of problems with this show,” TV critic Emily Nussbaum says of Love is Blind. “The problem with it is the way the show is run, and frankly, the way that almost all modern reality shows are run. Dating shows, I think specifically, have a lot of these dark qualities that viewers and fans of them don’t know about.”
A staff writer for The New Yorker, Nussbaum wrote about the show in her May 2024 article, “Is Love is Blind a Toxic Workplace?” She chronicles the origins of the genre and its importance to our culture in Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality Television.
Nussbaum says reality television is a “genuinely powerful modern genre” that developed over decades, and which affects everything from personal relationships to politics. She notes that it’s common for contestants to sign extremely aggressive non-disclosure agreements that prevent cast members from discussing the making of the shows.
“They can’t talk about what their producer did, if their producer lied to them, if their producer made them cry by asking them numerous personal questions based on their psychiatric evaluation forms, and then took that crying out of context in the edit,” Nussbaum says. “They can’t talk about any of that, or they may get sued.”
Nussbaum notes that there have been a series of lawsuits related to Love is Blind. One suit, which has been settled, accused the show’s creators of underpaying, underfeeding and pushing alcohol on contestants. In another suit, a cast member accuses the show’s producers of facilitating false imprisonment and sexual assault.
“All of these lawsuits are dealing with a mixture of things: the extremely oppressive contracts, … abuse and exploitation on the show and dealing with the labor conditions,” Nussbaum says. “And [the lawsuits] don’t only have to do with Love Is Blind. [They are] addressing terrible labor conditions and terrible legal conditions and … the people who go on these shows and who work on these shows as worthy of decent treatment.”
Interview highlights
On reality shows as “dirty documentaries”
When I call them “dirty documentary” what I mean is they take documentary techniques and they create formats that put pressure on the people inside them. And the less the people inside [the shows] know about what’s going to happen, the more powerful, and to some degree authentic, their emotional responses are.
On how the earliest form of reality programming took place on radio
The earliest form of reality television that I talk about was actually before TV. … There was this explosion of shows on radio that also cast just regular people, and that created a similar kind of moral outcry, where people were sort of appalled that regular people were going on the air. And I’m talking here about shows like Candid Microphone, which was the first version of Candid Camera, Allen Funt’s prank show, and Queen for a Day, where a bunch of ordinary women went on and told really distressing stories about their personal suffering in their marriages, their poverty, abuse, sickness and things like that. And so people were very upset about the fact that ordinary people were going on the air. There was no such thing as reality casting at the time. I mean, this was just an opportunity for regular people to go on radio, and later on TV, and participate in these shows, sometimes for prizes. Like, on Queen for a Day, the person who won [was] based on a clap-o-meter, like other women rating them [on] who had the ugliest life — their motive for going on the show was obviously that they could win these prizes.
On Love is Blind contestant Renee Poche being hit with a lawsuit for talking about her bad experience
She definitely, as time went by, wanted to back out of the whole thing. But as on all reality shows, it’s a collaboration between the cast and the crew, and there’s all sorts of psychological things that keep you moving forward, even if you have doubts. Essentially, I think the message that she got was that she should keep going because … part of the show is that at the end of it, you’d go to the altar and you can say no to it. So it just kept rolling forward. …
She felt threatened by [Carter, her fiancé on the show]. She was only going to film scenes with him when she went over there to be with him. But ultimately they did move forward to the altar. I mean, the bigger deal is that Renee wasn’t allowed to talk about what happened on the show. She wasn’t actually featured on the season. She and Carter were treated as kind of side characters. Their story was cut down very much at the last minute, and once she began to talk about what Carter was like, that she had felt threatened by him, that she felt pressured to move forward with the show, that’s when she got slammed with the lawsuit.
Nobody’s allowed to talk about the negative aspects of what they experience on the show, because there is a threat of these lawsuits. Generally, people haven’t been sued. Renee was, and I feel that that was a message to everybody. If you experience anything that’s exploitative or abusive while making a reality show, not just Love is Blind, but any show and you speak out about it, you’re at risk of getting sued.
On the private arbitration that keeps controversy out of the public eye
Emily Nussbaum TK
Clive Thompson/Penguin Randomhouse
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Clive Thompson/Penguin Randomhouse
Essentially, it keeps the public, including fans of these shows, from understanding the actual conditions in which they’re made. And most of the time when people talk about their experiences on the show, they’re not sued. But the one person who was sued recently, who I wrote about in my article, was sued for $4 million. And I think that sends a significant message. There are multiple motives for people not to speak out about any of this. And frankly, these conditions in these contracts are absolutely standard for the industry. I think people who watch the show not only don’t know about that, but they often just don’t sympathize with it. The dominant feeling is: You decided to go on it, so anything that happens, you should have expected it. I think that shows a lack of compassion, but also I think it shows a lack of understanding of exactly what the conditions are that we’re dealing with here.
On how reality show participants have few protections
One thing I found while I was working on this piece was about a workplace category that they’re in, in terms of Hollywood unions. They’re called “bona fide amateurs,” which is to say, they’re not scripted performers. That would be in SAG, like actresses, and they’re not unscripted performers that would be in SAG, like, say, TV hosts and things like that. But they’re also not the subjects of documentary, who are in a different category and have a little control. They’re essentially contestants on game shows. They’re designated as a category that is sort of non-official and has no protections or rights of any kind. And so what I was writing about in this piece was that the first glimmerings of a movement to try to win protections, and also just to try to educate the general population about how these shows are made and what these issues are, and to improve things, because I think some of the people at the center of this movement, it’s not like they’re saying you couldn’t make an ethical reality show. They’re saying that right now, the way reality shows are made is non ethical, really, both for cast and crew. They’re non-unionized sets. People don’t have a lot of rights. And the conventions and history of the genre have a lot of ugly things about them.
Thea Chaloner and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the web.
Krampuses take part in the annual Krampuslauf or “Krampus Run” on the evening of the Feast of St. Nicholas in the Austrian city of Salzburg. The tradition is centuries-old in the eastern parts of the European Alps.
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SALZBURG, Austria — As you approach Salzburg’s Max Aicher Stadium on the eve of the feast of St. Nicholas, you’d be forgiven if you thought that, from a distance, there appeared to be a Chewbacca convention underway. As you got closer, though, you’d realize the few hundred mostly men dressed in furry brown costumes were not from a galaxy, far, far away, but had instead assembled for a far more traditional, Earth-bound reason: to play, en masse, the alpine character of Krampus, the monstrous horned devilish figure who, according to custom in this part of Europe, accompanies St. Nicholas as he visits children and assesses their behavior from the past year. While St. Nick rewards the good boys and girls, his hairy, demonic sidekick punishes the bad children.
“It’s basically a good cop, bad cop arrangement,” says Alexander Hueter, self-proclaimed Überkrampus of Salzburg’s annual Krampus Run, an event when hundreds of Krampuses are let loose throughout the old town of Salzburg, where they terrorize children, adults, and anyone within the range of a swat from their birch branch switches they carry.
Members of Krampus clubs throughout Austria and the German state of Bavaria gather at a local soccer stadium to change into their Krampus costumes.
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When asked to explain why people in this part of Europe take part in this centuries-old tradition, Hueter skips the centuries of Roman, Pagan and early Christian history that, together, morphed into the legend of the Krampus figure and instead cuts straight to the chase: entertainment.
“If St. Nicholas comes to town on his own, it’s nice,” says Hueter with a polite smile, “but there’s no excitement. No tension. I mean, St. Nick is all well and good, but at the end of the day, people want to see something darker. They want to see Krampus.”
And if it’s Krampus they want, it’s Krampus they’ll get, says Roy Huber, who’s come across the border from the German state of Bavaria to take part in this year’s Krampus Run. “The rest of the year, I feel like a civilian,” Huber says with a serious face, “but when the winter comes, you have the feeling under your skin. You are ready to act like a Krampus.”
Huber stands dressed in a coffee-colored yak and goat hair costume holding his mask which has a scar along the left side of its face, two horns sticking out of the scalp, and a beautifully waxed mustache that makes his monstrous avatar look like a Krampus-like version of the 1970s Major League Baseball closer Rollie Fingers.
Roy Huber, from Bavaria, holds his Krampus mask prior to the Krampus Run. “When the winter comes, you get the feeling to be Krampus,” he says.
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Rob Schmitz/NPR
Behind Huber stands a Krampus with a red face and several horns that make up a mohawk. Benny Sieger is the man behind this punk version of a Krampus, and he says children are especially scared of his get-up.
“Very scared,” he says, “but if I act like a sensitive Krampus, it can go well. In fact, our hometown Krampus club hosts an event called ‘Cuddle a Krampus’ to ensure that we are not so scary.”
Sieger, though, says he shows no mercy for young adults, especially young men, who he says “are basically asking to be hit” if they come to a Krampus run. He shows off a long switch made up of birch tree branches that smarts like a bee sting when hit with it.
Normally Nicklaus Bliemslieder would be one of those young adults asking for it at the Krampus run — he’s 19 years old — but his mother boasts of how her son gamed the system by playing a Krampus for 14 years straight since he was 5 years old.
“I was never scared of being a Krampus,” he says, “but I was scared of the Krampus. The first time I put the mask on, I wasn’t scared anymore.”
Blieslieder, Siger, Huber and dozens of other Krampuses pile onto a row of city buses that will take them to Salzburg’s old town, singing soccer songs on the way to rile themselves up. In the town center, they put their masks on, the bus doors swing open, and dozens of Krampuses empty into the streets of downtown Salzburg, lunging at shoppers, swatting them with switches, their cowbells a-clanging. At the front of the procession dressed in a white and gold robe is St. Nicholas, holding a staff, handing out candy with a serene smile, and blissfully oblivious of the cacophony of blood-curdling chaos behind him.
After a city bus drops off more than 200 Krampuses at the entrance to the old town of Salzburg, the Krampuses start to put their masks on and get into character.
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Salzburg resident Rene Watziker watches the Krampuses go by, his 4 1/2 year-old son Valentin perched on his shoulders, his head buried into the back of his father’s neck, and his oversized mittens covering his eyes in terror. As Valentin shakes in fear, his father tries to coax him out of it — unsuccessfully.
“He’s too scared of the Krampuses,” says Watziker, laughing. “This is great, though, because this is my childhood memory, too. I want him to have the same good memories of his childhood. He’s going to look at the video I’m shooting and then he’ll be very proud he came.”
Salzburg resident Rene Watziker watches the Krampuses go by, but his four-and-a-half year-old son Valentin perched is too scared to look at them.
Rob Schmitz/NPR
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Rob Schmitz/NPR
Further down the pedestrian street, Krampuses hit onlookers with handfuls of branches and smear tar on people’s faces. Onlooker Sabeine Gruber, here with her 13-year-old daughter, manages to crack a smile at the spectacle, but she says the Krampus Run has gotten tamer with time. She points to the stickers on the backs of these Krampuses exhibiting numbers in case you want to complain that a particular Krampus hit you too hard.
“When I was a child,” says Gruber, “this was far worse. You were beaten so hard that you woke up the next day with blue welts on your legs. These days the Krampus run is more like a petting zoo.”
Esme Nicholson contributed reporting.
‘Selling the OC’ Tyler Stanaland
Backs Out of Alex Hall’s Podcast …
Out of Respect for New Relationship
Published
Alex Hall from “Selling the OC” extended the olive branch to ex-boyfriend and costar Tyler Stanaland by inviting him on her podcast … but it turned out Tyler canceled last minute out of respect for his blossoming new relationship.
Sources familiar with the situation tell TMZ … Alex tried to hash it out with Tyler one-on-one for all to see … but we’re told he got cold feet at the last minute in light of his new relationship with Hannah Morrissey.
Here’s the sitch … Alex asked Tyler to be on her podcast ‘Pretty Dirty’ before Season 4 of “Selling the OC” aired, and we’re told her pitch to him was to sit down publicly and have a conversation about what their “relationship” entails.
If you’re not familiar with the real estate reality drama … Alex and Tyler’s relationship had a lot of muckiness about what really went on between them during the series — and Alex wanted to break it down once and for all, considering fans online have been wondering where their relationship stands today.
Our sources tell us Tyler loved the idea and was down for the appearance with her at first … adding Tyler even said he was excited and thought it would be fun.
However, things took a turn once the latest season aired — and Tyler rescinded his agreement. Alex followed up to lock in a date, and he responded saying after careful consideration, he opted out … because he wants to focus on his current relationship … adding he wanted to keep his chapter with Alex in the past.
Sources say Alex wasn’t surprised he pulled out of his appearance — this is how he rolls — but she respected his decision to back out, and the two haven’t spoken since.
This news comes after Tyler’s shocking elopement with Hannah. Tyler announced his marriage to her just 6 weeks after the news of their engagement.
We’ve reached out to both Tyler and Alex for comment … so far, no word back.
Performers onstage at The Game Awards 2025 at the Peacock Theater on December 11, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
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The first minutes of The Game Awards set the mold for the next three hours. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won best independent game during the preshow, beating out acclaimed sequels like Hades 2 and Hollow Knight: Silksong. Moments after, the main stage opened with operatic singers and a full orchestra (plus the obligatory electric guitar!) belting out music from the game.
Clair Obscur was already the favorite to win the grand prize — but kicking off the show with the game front-and-center felt like an anointing. It triumphed in nearly every category it competed in, picking up nine awards in total. By the time it won “Game of the Year,” Clair Obscur had surpassed The Last of Us: Part 2 to become the most decorated game in the Awards history.
As predictable as the night became, the game it honored was anything but. Clair Obscur came from an independent French studio composed of developers who had worked for the French gaming behemoth Ubisoft. Instead of chasing trendy genres like battle royales or open-world action games, Clair Obscur drew inspiration from turn-based role-playing games like the classic Final Fantasy titles. It paired an intimate and existential story with a setting that was both whimsical and epic. And it cast motion-capture icon Andy Serkis alongside game actor veterans like Ben Starr and Jennifer English, who delivered the night’s most rousing speech when she accepted the award for best performance.
“I just want to say to every neurodivergent person watching in this room, because I know there’s probably quite a lot of you,” English said. “To all of you that feel like life is stuck on hard mode, this is for you, and thank you so much to the games community and industry for giving us, so many of us, a home.”
Jennifer English, also known for her leading role in 2023 Game of the Year winner Baldur’s Gate 3, accepts her best performance award onstage at the Peacock Theater on December 11, 2025.
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Clair Obscur’s victories fit with two themes of the night: the rise of independent studios and the internationalization of the awards themselves. Half of the “Game of the Year” nominees were indie games, even as the term has stretched to include titles with sizable budgets and publisher partnerships.
This semantic squishiness is a result of The Game Awards’ outsourced voting process, which polls over 150 international media outlets (including NPR) to determine a list of nominees. These outlets decide for themselves how to define categories like an “independent game” or “action adventure game.” After the shortlist is tallied, they’ll pick their favorites in each category, which are weighted against an open online voting system that makes up a 10th of the total score. As the jury has expanded outside of the U.S., which now only represents roughly 15% of outlets, award winners have become both more global and more mainstream.
Still, Clair Obscur’s ubiquity speaks volumes. Even as it swept other deserving indies aside, the game demonstrates the outsized impact a small team can have on the broader market. No longer seen as just a niche, prestige title, Clair Obscur rose to prominence thanks to strong word-of-mouth and its inclusion on the Xbox Game Pass Service, which allowed regular gamers and critics alike to try the game out without committing to a full purchase.
Guillaume Broche, Tom Guillermin, Nicholas Maxon-Framcombe, and François Meurisse accept the Game of the Year award for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
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Big companies still took home prizes, however. After being completely shut out last year, Nintendo earned a few awards for Switch 2 exclusives, with Donkey Kong Bananza winning best family and Mario Kart World winning best sports/racing. Grand Theft Auto 6 won most anticipated game for the second year in a row. Wuthering Waves, a Chinese game with a huge mobile audience, won the Players’ Voice award, the only category completely determined by public online votes.
Here are the full nominees and winners for the 2025 Game Awards (winners in bold):
Game of the year
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive/Kepler Interactive)
Death Stranding 2: On The Beach (Kojima Productions/Sony Interactive Entertainment)
Donkey Kong Bananza (Nintendo EPD/Nintendo)
Hades II (Supergiant Games)
Hollow Knight: Silksong (Team Cherry)
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II (Warhorse Studios/Deep Silver)
Best game direction
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive/Kepler Interactive)
Death Stranding 2: On The Beach (Kojima Productions/Sony Interactive Entertainment)
Ghost of Yōtei (Sucker Punch Productions/Sony Interactive Entertainment)
Hades II (Supergiant Games)
Split Fiction (Hazelight Studios/EA)
Best narrative
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive/Kepler Interactive)
Death Stranding 2: On The Beach (Kojima Productions/Sony Interactive Entertainment)
Ghost of Yōtei (Sucker Punch Productions/Sony Interactive Entertainment)
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II (Warhorse Studios/Deep Silver)
Silent Hill f (NeoBards Entertainment/KONAMI)
Best art direction
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive/Kepler Interactive)
Death Stranding 2: On The Beach (Kojima Productions/Sony Interactive Entertainment)
Ghost of Yōtei (Sucker Punch Productions/Sony Interactive Entertainment)
Hades II (Supergiant Games)
Hollow Knight: Silksong (Team Cherry)
Best score and music, leveled up by Spotify
Christopher Larkin, Hollow Knight: Silksong
Lorien Testard, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Darren Korb, Hades II
Toma Otowa, Ghost of Yōtei
Woodkid and Ludvig Forssell, Death Stranding 2: On The Beach
Best audio design
Battlefield 6 (Battlefield Studios/EA)
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive/Kepler Interactive)
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach (Kojima Productions/Sony Interactive Entertainment)
Ghost of Yōtei (Sucker Punch Productions/Sony Interactive Entertainment)
Silent Hill f (NeoBards Entertainment/KONAMI)
Best performance
Ben Starr, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Charlie Cox, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Erika Ishii, Ghost of Yōtei
Jennifer English, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Konatsu Kato, Silent Hill f
Troy Baker, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Innovation in accessibility
Assassin’s Creed Shadows (Ubisoft)
Atomfall (Rebellion)
Doom: The Dark Ages (id Software/Bethesda Softworks)
EA Sports FC 26 (EA Canada/EA Romania/EA)
South of Midnight (Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios)
Games for impact
Consume Me (Jenny Jiao Hsia/AP Thomson/Hexacutable)
Despelote (Julián Cordero/Sebastián Valbuena/Panic)
Lost Records: Bloom & Rage (Don’t Nod Montreal/Don’t Nod)
South of Midnight (Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios)
Wanderstop (Ivy Road/Annapurna Interactive)
Best ongoing
Final Fantasy XIV (Square Enix)
Fortnite (Epic Games)
Helldivers 2 (Arrowhead Game Studios/Sony Interactive Entertainment)
Marvel Rivals (NetEase Games)
No Man’s Sky (Hello Games)
Best community support
Baldur’s Gate 3 (Larian Studios)
Final Fantasy XIV (Square Enix)
Fortnite (Epic Games)
Helldivers 2 (Arrowhead Game Studios/Sony Interactive Entertainment)
No Man’s Sky (Hello Games)
Best independent game
Absolum (Guard Crush Games/Supamonks/Dotemu)
Ball x Pit (Kenny Sun/Devolver Digital)
Blue Prince (Dogubomb/Raw Fury)
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive/Kepler Interactive)
Hades II (Supergiant Games)
Hollow Knight: Silksong (Team Cherry)
Best debut indie game
Blue Prince (Dogubomb/Raw Fury)
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive/Kepler Interactive)
Despelote (Julián Cordero/Sebastián Valbuena/Panic)
Dispatch (AdHoc Studio)
Megabonk (Vedinad)
Best mobile game
Destiny: Rising (NetEase Games)
Persona 5: The Phantom X (Black Wings Game Studio/Sega)
Sonic Rumble (Rovio Entertainment/Sega)
Umamusume: Pretty Derby (Cygames Inc.)
Wuthering Waves (Kuro Games)
Best VR/AR
Alien: Rogue Incursion (Survios)
Arken Age (VitruviusVR)
Ghost Town (Fireproof Games)
Marvel’s Deadpool VR (Twisted Pixel Games/Oculus Studios)
The Midnight Walk (MoonHood/Fast Travel Games)
Best action
Battlefield 6 (Battlefield Studios/EA)
Doom: The Dark Ages (id Software/Bethesda Softworks)
Hades II (Supergiant Games)
Ninja Gaiden 4 (Platinum Games/Team Ninja/Xbox Game Studios)
Shinobi: Art of Vengeance (Lizardcube/Sega)
Best action/adventure
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach (Kojima Productions/Sony Interactive Entertainment)
Ghost of Yōtei (Sucker Punch Productions/Sony Interactive Entertainment)
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (MachineGames/Bethesda Softworks)
Hollow Knight: Silksong (Team Cherry)
Split Fiction (Hazelight Studios/EA)
Best RPG
Avowed (Obsidian Entertainment/Xbox Game Studios)
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive/Kepler Interactive)
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II (Warhorse Studios/Deep SIlver)
The Outer Worlds 2 (Obsidian Entertainment/Xbox Game Studios)
Monster Hunter Wilds (Capcom)
Best fighting
2XKO (Riot Games)
Capcom Fighting Collection 2 (Capcom)
Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves (SNK Corporation)
Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection (Digital Eclipse/Atari)
Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. World Stage (Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio/Sega)
Best family
Donkey Kong Bananza (Nintendo EPD/Nintendo)
LEGO Party! (SMG Studio/Fictions)
LEGO Voyagers (Light Brick Studios/Annapurna Interactive)
Mario Kart World (Nintendo EPD/Nintendo)
Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds (Sonic Team/Sega)
Split Fiction (Hazelight Studios/EA)
Best Sim/Strategy
The Alters (11 Bit Studios)
FINAL FANTASY TACTICS – The Ivalice Chronicles (Square Enix)
Jurassic World Evolution 3 (Frontier Developments)
Sid Meier’s Civilization VII (Firaxis Games/2K)
Tempest Rising (Slipgate Ironworks/3D Realms)
Two Point Museum (Two Point Studios/Sega)
Best sports/racing
EA Sports FC 26 (EA Canada/EA Romania/EA)
F1 25 (Codemasters/EA)
Mario Kart World (Nintendo EPD/Nintendo)
Rematch (Sloclap/Kepler Interactive)
Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds (Sonic Team/Sega)
Best multiplayer
Arc Raiders (Embark Studios)
Battlefield 6 (Electronic Arts)
Elden Ring Nightreign (FromSoftware/Bandai Namco Entertainment)
Peak (Aggro Crab/Landfall)
Split Fiction (Hazelight/EA)
Best adaptation
A Minecraft Movie (Legendary Pictures/Mojang/Warner Bros)
Devil May Cry (Studio Mir/Capcom/Netflix)
The Last of Us: Season 2 (HBO/PlayStation Productions)
Splinter Cell: Deathwatch (FOST Studio/Ubisoft/Netflix)
Until Dawn (Screen Gems/PlayStation Productions)
Most anticipated game
007 First Light (IO Interactive)
Grand Theft Auto VI (Rockstar Games)
Marvel’s Wolverine (Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment)
Resident Evil Requiem (Capcom)
The Witcher IV (CD Projekt Red)
Content creator of the year
Caedrel
Kai Cenat
MoistCr1TiKaL
Sakura Miko
The Burnt Peanut
Best Esports game
Counter-Strike 2 (Valve)
DOTA 2 (Valve)
League of Legends (Riot)
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (Moonton)
Valorant (Riot)
Best Esports athlete
brawk – Brock Somerhalder (Valorant)
Chovy – Jeong Ji-hoon (League of Legends)
f0rsakeN – Jason Susanto (Valorant)
Kakeru – Kakeru Watanabe (Street Fighter)
MenaRD – Saul Leonardo (Street Fighter)
Zyw0o – Mathieu Herbaut (Counter-Strike 2)
Best Esports team
Gen.G – League of Legends
NRG – Valorant
Team Falcons – DOTA 2
Team Liquid PH – Mobile Legends: Bang Bang
Team Vitality – Counter-Strike 2
Players’ voice
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive/Kepler Interactive)
Dispatch (AdHoc Studio)
Genshin Impact (HoYoverse)
Hollow Knight: Silksong (Team Cherry)
Wuthering Waves (Kuro Games)
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