The Game Awards, the video game industry’s annual year-end celebration, will return live on Thursday, December 10, 2020 as a free digital livestream available across more than 45 global video platforms.
Last year, The Game Awards reached 50 million global viewers, including a peak live concurrent audience of more than 7.7 million fans.
With the world unable to safely gather in one physical location, The Game Awards will adapt a multi-city approach to the 2020 broadcast. The show will air live in 4K UHD from studio locations with no in-person audience in Los Angeles, Tokyo and London. The three host cities for The Game Awards will be digitally connected for an innovative celebration with live award presentations, musical performances, and spectacular world premiere game announcements.
The Game Awards Festival kicks off today on Steam, Xbox and GeForce NOW in anticipation of tomorrow’s global livestream of The Game Awards.
The Game Awards Festival will feature more than a dozen first-look game demos, available to play for a limited window. Some of the games that will release free, limited-time demos include:
- Little Nightmares 2 (Bandai Namco, Steam)
- Graven (3D Realms, Steam, GeForce NOW)
- Echo Generation (Cococucumber, Steam/Xbox)
- Song Of Iron (Escape, Steam/Xbox, GeForce NOW)
- Olija (Devolver, Steam, GeForce NOW)
- Disc Room (Devolver, Steam, GeForce NOW)
- Guinea Pig Parlor (Jeff Mumm, Steam, GeForce NOW)
- Anno (Lightning Games, Steam)
- Ami (Lighthouse Studio, Steam, GeForce NOW)
- Selfloss (Alex Goodwin, Steam, GeForce NOW)
- A Juggler's Tale (Mixtvision, Steam, GeForce NOW)
More playable titles will be announced in the coming days and during The Game Awards.
This year, The Game Awards Festival breaks new ground by offering fans the opportunity to play demos on nearly any device, anywhere, instantly with NVIDIA GeForce NOW.
“Now you don’t have to worry about download times on Steam demos thanks to GeForce NOW,” said Geoff Keighley, producer, The Game Awards. “We’re excited to partner with Nvidia to help make these game demos more accessible to more people.”
Alongside the Festival, Steam will air The Game Awards live and feature The Game Awards Sale, offering limited-time discounts on The Game Awards nominees and featured titles.
Without a live-in person audience, fans around the world and thousands of live co-streamers will participate and virtually interact with the show across social media, through live in-game experiences, and via interactive extensions on leading streaming platforms.
The Game Awards also announced that it will present a new award starting in 2020, Innovation in Accessibly, that recognizes software and/or hardware developers that are pushing the medium forward by adding features, technology and content to help games be played and enjoyed by an even wider audience. The Innovation in Accessibility honor joins the Global Gaming Citizen program, the Games for Impact award, and other, to be announced initiatives, as ways to highlight those helping grow and diversify the types of people that create and consume video game entertainment.
Once again, The Game Awards will serve as a launching pad for a weekend of instantly playable game content, in-game drops, demos and live streams that celebrate the exciting future for video games across PC, console, mobile and mixed reality experiences. The Game Awards Sale will be available across all major PC and console gaming platforms, giving fans access to special discounts on nominated games and other special offers. The Game Festival, first launched in 2019 as an all-digital consumer event, will return and offer fans limited-time playable demos on upcoming games from both major studios and independent developers. More details on The Game Awards Sale and The Game Festival will be released in November.
The Game Awards is executive produced by Geoff Keighley and Kimmie Kim. LeRoy Bennett returns as creative director for his sixth year, and Richard Preuss returns as director for his fourth year.