| Country: | United States |
| Host: | Geoff Keighley |
| Coverage: | Online |
| Director: | Richard Preuss |
| Previous: | 2023 |
| Main: | The Game Awards |
| Next: | 2025 |
The Game Awards 2024 is an upcoming award show to honor the best video games of 2024. It is set to be the eleventh show hosted by Geoff Keighley, creator and producer of the Game Awards, and held with a live audience at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on December 12, 2024. The event is set to be live streamed across online platforms globally.
As with previous iterations of the Game Awards, the 2024 show is set to be hosted and produced by Canadian games journalist Geoff Keighley. He returned as an executive producer alongside Kimmie Kim, and Richard Preuss and LeRoy Bennett returned as director and creative director, respectively. The presentation, celebrating the show's tenth anniversary, is scheduled to take place at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on December 12, 2024, and will be live streamed across more than 30 online platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Steam, TikTok, Twitch, X, and YouTube. Alternative live streams offering American Sign Language and audio descriptions will also be available on YouTube.
The main event will be preceded by a preshow titled Opening Act. Public tickets became available for purchase on November 1. Future Class organizer Emily Bouchac indicated that the Future Class initiative—an annual list of 50 individuals from the industry who best represent its future, introduced in 2020—would not induct new members in 2024, instead focusing on valuing existing alumni.
Nominees for the show's 29 categories were announced on November 18, 2024. Any game released for public consumption on or before November 22 was eligible for consideration, including downloadable content (DLC), expansions, remakes, remasters, and seasonal content. The nominees were compiled by a jury panel composed of members from over 130 media outlets globally; ballots were due by November 12. Winners are determined between the jury (90 percent) and public voting (10 percent); the latter is held via the official website and on Discord until December 11. The exception is the Players' Voice award, fully nominated and voted-on by the public, for which voting opened on December 2. Specialized juries decide the nominees for categories such as accessibility, adaptation, and esports.
As with the preceding year, the Game Awards partnered with map developer Studio 568 and artists Nighttimes and Spiral House to create an in-game hub world in Fortnite, available from November 25, allowing players to vote until December 11 for their favorite user-created islands among ten nominees selected by Keighley and his team; the winner will be announced during the ceremony. The hub world opens with a photorealistic "MetaHuman" model of Keighley, for which he was scanned in to Unreal Editor for Fortnite at 3Lateral in Manchester. Several critics found the model strange and uncanny. Keighley saw the event as "a prototype" for blending the Game Awards and in-game worlds.
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Astro Bot and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth led the show with seven nominations each, followed by with six. Sony Interactive Entertainment led the publishers with 15 nominations, followed by Square Enix with 11 and Sega with 9. In addition to video game publishers, Amazon MGM Studios and Netflix both received two nominations for their television series in Best Adaptation.
| Nominations | Game |
|---|---|
| 7 | Astro Bot |
| Final Fantasy VII Rebirth | |
| 6 | |
| 5 | Balatro |
| Silent Hill 2 | |
| 4 | |
| Helldivers II | |
| 3 | Neva |
| Star Wars Outlaws | |
| 2 | Animal Well |
| Fortnite | |
| Manor Lords | |
| The Plucky Squire | |
| Stellar Blade | |
| Super Mario Party Jamboree | |
| Tekken 8 | |
| Nominations | Publisher |
|---|---|
| 15 | Sony Interactive Entertainment |
| 11 | Square Enix |
| 9 | Sega |
| 7 | Bandai Namco Entertainment |
| 6 | Nintendo |
| 5 | Devolver Digital |
| Konami | |
| Playstack | |
| Ubisoft | |
| Xbox Game Studios | |
| 4 | Activision |
| Capcom | |
| Electronic Arts | |
| Game Science | |
| 3 | 2K |
| 2 | 11 Bit Studios |
| Bigmode | |
| Blizzard Entertainment | |
| Epic Games | |
| Focus Entertainment | |
| Hooded Horse | |
| Oculus Studios | |
| Riot Games | |
| Valve |
The following individuals or groups are set to perform musical numbers:
Several games saw increased weekly sales following their nominations, including Final Fantasy VII Rebirth by 268% and Metaphor: ReFantazio by 172%, and Balatro had its second-highest-earning week on mobile and a 100% increase in concurrent players on Steam. Balatros nominations pleasantly surprised critics due to its genre, though some felt other indie games remained overlooked outside of their dedicated categories. TheGamers Stacey Henley appreciated that Games for Impact "can finally feel like part of the show" as, unlike previous years, some of its nominees were also named in other categories, though The Guardians Keza MacDonald found its nominees incongruous and criteria confusing. Some critics were puzzled by Silent Hill 2s Best Narrative nomination as it is a remake of a 2001 game. TheGamers Tessa Kaur criticized the omission of Future Class as "a loss for the industry". , EA Sports College Football 25, and were considered among the biggest snubs by some critics and viewers.
Many journalists and viewers criticized s Game of the Year nomination—the first for a DLC expansion—as it overshadowed other games, though some felt its high quality and significant size justified the nomination. The Game Awards's website was updated before nominees were announced to clarify that DLC was eligible, which many predicted was specifically in preparation for Shadow of the Erdtrees divisive nominations; some viewers erroneously accused Keighley of changing the rules to make Shadow of the Erdtree eligible. Others also felt its eligibility meant DLC was snubbed at previous shows, like in 2023, and suggested a new category dedicated to DLC would be more appropriate, though TheGamers Henley argued there are too few annual releases to justify it.
Some journalists considered an outlier in the Game of the Year nominees and were surprised by its success; it is the lowest-scoring Game of the Year nominee in the show's history, with 81 out of 100 on review aggregator website Metacritic. TheGamers Tessa Kaur felt the game's biggest accomplishment was its popularity, comparing it to Barbies Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards. Conversely, Vices Dwayne Jenkins criticized journalists who questioned its deservedness based solely on its critical reception, despite the positive player response; he argued that such discussions are more appropriate for audiences rather than journalists, who should serve as neutral intermediaries, since the awards have no objective criteria.