The 44th Golden Joystick Awards were handed out in London on November 11, which was already the early hours of November 12 in Beijing. Resident Evil Requiem took Ultimate Game of the Year, as most predictions had it. The interesting part was the number shown on stage beside the runner-up: Phantom Blade Zero finished on 16% to Requiem's 17%, one percentage point apart.
The next day at midday, the game's official account posted on Bilibili and pointed at the calendar. From release to the close of voting, it said, there were only 40 hours.
The result: 17% to 16%, with two points covering the top three
The ceremony displayed the top five for Ultimate Game of the Year, but only the first three came with a vote share.
| Place | Game | Vote share |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Resident Evil Requiem | 17% |
| 2 | Phantom Blade Zero | 16% |
| 3 | Crimson Desert | 15% |
| 4 | Control Resonant | — |
| 5 | The Blood of Dawnwalker | — |
Fourth and fifth — Control Resonant and The Blood of Dawnwalker — were reported by placement only, with no percentage attached. The three published shares also leave 52% split among the other nine nominees, which is the arithmetic counterpart of a top three packed into two points. Those three figures appear identically in four Chinese outlets' reports of the ceremony: 机核 (GCORES) lists 17%, 16% and 15% as shares of the total vote, IT之家 and 快科技 give the same three figures, and GameLook pairs them with the phrase "a gap of just 1%".
What kind of award this is decides how those numbers should be read. The Golden Joysticks are primarily a public vote: players pick the winners rather than a closed panel of critics. The same ceremony gave Studio of the Year to Capcom, Most Wanted Game to The Witcher 4, and both the Streamers' Choice and Developers' Choice awards to MECCHA CHAMELEON, while the Critics' Choice Award went to Big Walk. Some of those categories are decided by players, others by the organisers or by juries, and all of the results sit on one list. 80.lv's write-up flags one example: the Streamers' Choice award is described there as a critically chosen prize rather than a public one, even though it appears alongside the player-voted categories.
Forty hours: from launch to the close of voting
Voting for this year's awards opened on September 25; FullCleared covered the opening that day under the headline "Voting Now Open for 44th Annual Golden Joystick Awards". The twelve Ultimate Game of the Year nominees were published on October 26 — FullCleared's piece that day was titled "Here Are the 12 Golden Joystick Ultimate GOTY Nominees". Voting closed on October 30. Phantom Blade Zero launched on October 29. That makes the ballot a window of roughly five weeks.
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| September 25 | Voting opens for the 44th Golden Joystick Awards |
| October 26 | The 12 Ultimate Game of the Year nominees are announced, Phantom Blade Zero among them |
| October 29 | Phantom Blade Zero launches |
| October 30 | Voting closes |
| November 11 | Ceremony held in London, already November 12 in Beijing |
| November 12 | The official Bilibili post |
The relationship between the second and third rows is the part that matters. When the nominee list went out, the game had not been released. It made the twelve-name shortlist on pre-release expectation, not on several weeks of post-launch performance. The twelve, as published, were 007 First Light, Big Walk, Control Resonant, Crimson Desert, Dispatch, Forza Horizon 6, Phantom Blade Zero, Pokémon Pokopia, PRAGMATA, Star Wars: Galactic Racer, Resident Evil Requiem and The Blood of Dawnwalker. By the time most voters could actually open Phantom Blade Zero, a little over a day remained before the ballot closed — the 40 hours the official account cites.
That is what makes 16% worth separating from the other numbers on the board. This was not a game that had been on shelves for weeks and discussed to exhaustion before entering the race. It appeared in the final stretch of the voting window and then, in roughly a day and a half, took a share close to the winner's. Resident Evil Requiem, by contrast, had been out since early in the year, so voters had months to form an opinion of it before the ballot even opened.
Across every category, it appears in exactly one nominee list
Spread the night's winners out by category and Phantom Blade Zero shows up in one place only: the Ultimate Game of the Year shortlist. The main categories are below.
| Category | Winner |
|---|---|
| Ultimate Game of the Year | Resident Evil Requiem |
| Console Game of the Year | Resident Evil Requiem |
| PC Game of the Year | Crimson Desert |
| Best Storytelling | Dispatch |
| Best Soundtrack | Dispatch |
| Best Audio Design | Onimusha: Way of the Sword |
| Best Visual Design | Control Resonant |
| Best Multiplayer Game | MECCHA CHAMELEON |
| Best Indie Game | Valheim |
| Best Indie Game – Self-Published | MECCHA CHAMELEON |
| Best Remake / Remaster | The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered |
| Best Game Expansion | DOOM: The Dark Ages | Revelations |
| Best Game Adaptation | Iron Lung |
| Best Game Trailer | Resident Evil Requiem – Evil Has Always Had A Name |
| Best Early Access Game | Subnautica 2 |
| Best Gaming Hardware | Steam Controller |
| Still Playing – Mobile | Balatro |
| Still Playing – PC & Console | Minecraft |
| Studio of the Year | Capcom |
| Most Wanted Game | The Witcher 4 |
The remaining categories are the same story. Best Lead Performer went to Angela Sant'Albano for Grace Ashcroft in Resident Evil Requiem, Best Supporting Performer to Grace Saif for Diana in PRAGMATA, and the Critics', Streamers' and Developers' Choice awards did not carry its name either.
That makes Phantom Blade Zero the only one of the twelve Ultimate Game of the Year nominees that appears in no other category on the published lists. Each of the other eleven turns up in at least one further category: 007 First Light in Storytelling and Console Game of the Year, Big Walk in Best Audio Design and Best Indie Game, Dispatch in Best Storytelling and Best Soundtrack, Control Resonant in Best Visual Design, Crimson Desert in Best Soundtrack and PC Game of the Year, The Blood of Dawnwalker in Best Storytelling and PC Game of the Year, and so on down the list. The sole distinction the game collected this year was its place in the top prize's shortlist.
Console Game of the Year is worth pausing on. Phantom Blade Zero shipped on PS5 and PC, yet it did not make even the ten-name Console Game of the Year shortlist, which ran 007 First Light, Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave, Forza Horizon 6, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, Nioh 3, Onimusha: Way of the Sword, Pokémon Pokopia, PRAGMATA, SAROS and Resident Evil Requiem.
How each category's nominees were assembled, and why a game released on October 29 could enter the twelve-name shortlist published on October 26, is not explained in any of the coverage. Those lists are the only public record of how this year's selection worked.
Resident Evil Requiem took four trophies on the night — Ultimate Game of the Year, Console Game of the Year, Best Game Trailer, and Best Lead Performer. MECCHA CHAMELEON matched that total with four of its own, adding Best Multiplayer Game and Best Indie Game – Self-Published to the Streamers' Choice and Developers' Choice awards. Dispatch took two, for Best Storytelling and Best Soundtrack.
The official response: 16% out of 40 hours
At midday on November 12, the game's official account posted on Bilibili. As quoted by GameLook, the post read: "From the game's release to the close of Golden Joystick voting there were only 40 hours, and this result has greatly exceeded our expectations." IT之家's report of the same day carried the rest of it: the team had felt players' affection for the game since launch, and thanked everyone who had supported them.
The post itself contains no accusation of unfairness, no claim that the vote was rigged, and no request for a re-run. It makes two points: the window was 40 hours, and the result beat expectations. Chinese outlets generally framed their stories with words like "narrow loss" and "regrettable", but that phrasing belongs to the outlets rather than to the studio.
What the second place does and does not tell you
A public vote measures the slice of players who bother to vote. That is closer to player sentiment than a critics' panel, but the sample is not "all players": the organisers published percentages, not a total vote count, and no regional breakdown has been released. Sixteen percent means the game placed second among the people who cast a ballot, not that the global audience named it the year's second-best game.
Nor is there an error bar between 16% and 17%. Those are final tallies; no vote counts were published and nothing has been said about rounding or ties. "One point short" is a description, not a statistical finding. With the top three packed into 15% to 17%, the result reads more like a crowded field than a two-horse photo finish.
It is also not a sales figure and not a review score. Sales have an official line of their own: more than 4 million copies in the first 72 hours. Reception has its own curve, tracked through the Steam review score's climb back to "Overwhelmingly Positive". The Golden Joystick's 16% is a third kind of number, measuring voting intent and how well a campaign can mobilise it. None of the three converts into another.
There is a useful comparison from the same month. Phantom Blade Zero also won PlayStation Blog's Players' Choice award for October — another public vote, with a candidate pool of that month's new releases and a window covering the whole of October. Same game, two public votes, one first place and one second. The difference is not that the game got better or worse between them; the voter pool, the shortlist and the window were all different.
A share of one award's vote cannot stand in for another award's result, which is why the same game lands in different places in different ballots. This year's Golden Joysticks are settled: Phantom Blade Zero finished second for Ultimate Game of the Year on 16%, behind Resident Evil Requiem on 17%.