This week, Geoff Keighley announced the nominations for the 2025 Game Awards. It covered a lot of the years biggest hits, but naturally, some notable titles didn’t make the cut in certain categories. Here are the biggest snubs from the 2025 Game Awards, as told by the Shack Staff. Question: What was the biggest snub at The Game Awards 2025 nominations? Aaron Paul and Laura Bailey for Best Performance Ozzie Mejia, Senior Dispatcher This isn’t meant to throw any shade at the tremendous performances in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. A good deal of its success can be attributed to the amazing performances from Charlie Cox, Jennifer English, and Ben Starr. With that said, a major part of what made Dispatch such a breakout game was the performances of its stars, and that game wouldn’t be nearly as good as it is without Aaron Paul and Laura Bailey. Their individual performances are incredible and their chemistry together helped cement Dispatch as one of my favorite games of the year. Dispatch only getting a Best Debut Indie Game nomination somewhat irks me, especially when reflecting on how much impact the voice actors gave its story. Mario Kart World TJ Denzer, likes rail grinding and feathers It’s absolutely wild to me that Mario Kart World got only two nominations out of the entire Game Awards rundown. Family and Racing is fine, but I think it’s fair to say that this could have also gone to best multiplayer, best art direction, best music, and more. I mean, yes, it’s more Mario Kart, but they did an excellent job on a lot of that game and made those tracks and their gimmicks shine. It’s a dang shame that all of that is relegated to just a couple nominations, but oh well. I know in my heart that the music in there slaps. Faker Asif Khan, Doesn’t even like League of Legends I see several people have mentioned the Mario Kart World OST snub, so I am going to take the opportunity to highlight just how absurd it is for six-time League of Legends Worlds champion Faker to not be nominated for Best Esports Athlete. Nominating a team that didn’t even win Worlds for Best Esports Team and leaving Faker off of the Best Esports Athletes nominees highlights a fundamental problem with The Game Awards process. Rushing to get nominees in before the end of the esports season for a game that was nominated for Best Esport is just stupid and leaving off Faker following a threepeat and a come-from-behind victory at Worlds 2025 is simply stupid. Shame on The Game Awards for ignoring the biggest story in esports just because of some fabricated deadline for Jury ballots. ARC Raiders Sam Chandler, Friendly! There are a lot of games that were snubbed this year. It seems like a few games in particular managed to squeeze into just about every category. And let’s not forget that Faker didn’t receive a nomination. Madness. But for me, I was a bit surprised to see ARC Raiders miss out on a Game of the Year nomination. Each of the games on the list are wonderful in their own rights, and certainly deserve a spot, but I think I need to put some skin in the game. I can’t just offer up another nominee, I need to subtract one. Here goes. Remove Death Stranding 2: On the Beach and replace it with ARC Raiders. There, I said it. ARC Raiders is across multiple platforms and it’s constantly breaking its own concurrent players peak on Steam! People are talking about it. Embark Studios has also proven to be rather consumer-friendly, refunding the price difference after reducing cosmetic costs. How cool! Also, how wasn’t ARC Raiders nominated for Best Audio Design? Are you kidding me?! Double-also, where are the Elden Ring Nightreign nominations? Cronos: The New Dawn Dennis White Jr., Give horror games more flowers! I’m actually pretty surprised that Cronos: The New Dawn didn’t get a single nomination this year. I think it should have been up for Best Game Direction or Sound Design. The game does a lot of things right and also does a great job of immersing players in the horror. There’s enough here to really turn Cronos into a thriving franchise. I’ve given Bloober Team some harsh criticism in the past but it feels like they hit a sweet spot with this game and managed to make it feel like a AAA title as well. We’ve definitely got the game in a few categories this year and I look forward to seeing what the team comes up with next. Dispatch (Best Narrative) Donovan Erskine, Dispatcher (and Blonde Blazer fan) The story in Dispatch has stuck with me more than any other game I’ve played this year. In a world that feels increasingly bleak and cynical with each passing day, a story about second chances and the innate good that exists in all of us really resonates with me. Dispatch is also rich with lovable and memorable characters. The fact that the best story of the year didn’t even crack the top six feels like a crime to me. That’s alright, though. I’ll be singing its praises at the Shacknews Awards. Mario Kart World/DK Bananza Steve Tyminski, I’m the Content Creator of the Year, folks! The Game Awards are almost here and a lot of games were nominated for awards. However, it makes you think what games were snubbed from the award show? The biggest Snub is the Stevetendo Show not getting nominated for content creator of the year. I don’t know how The Game Awards missed the mark on that one. In all seriousness, I think I have to go with Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza not being nominated for Best Music. The music in Mario Kart World is some of the best Nintendo music around. It has so many fan favorites from Mario games as well as songs from obscure Mario games too. I get that most of them are remixes but the songs in this game still rock! As for Donkey Kong Bananza, the game is based around songs and singing. I get that some of Pauline’s songs aren’t sung with words but they are some great tunes. I find myself listening to the Zebra Bananza or the new Gangplank Galleon rock song. The end song and level themes are really good too. Pokemon Legends Z-A could have been mentioned in best RPG but The Game Awards usually pass on Nintendo games unless they’re Game of the Year material like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild or Super Mario Odyssey. So, Mario Kart World and DK Bananza not in the Best Music category are my votes for biggest snub of The Game Awards this year. Those are the Game Awards snubs that stuck out to us, but what say you? Sound off in the Chatty or on social media!.
https://www.shacknews.com/article/146938/shack-chat-game-awards-2025-snubs