Parijat Ghosh 
The Game Awards 2025 nominees dropped, and fans immediately noticed something weird. Ghost of Yotei — one of this year’s biggest, flashiest, most beautifully violent games — scored seven major nominations, including Direction, Narrative, Art Direction, Score and Music, Audio Design, Best Performance, and Best Action/Adventure. And yet… it didn’t make the cut for Game of the Year. Considering the hype and the critical love, the snub feels like a plot twist straight out of a Sucker Punch story mission. But if you zoom out, the reasons start making sense — even if they still sting a little.
A Brutally Competitive Year for Ghost of Yotei
2025 is low-key one of the strongest gaming years in recent memory. The GOTY list is basically a murderers’ row: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Death Stranding 2, Hades II, Hollow Knight: Silksong, Donkey Kong Bananza, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. Each of these games brought something fresh, ambitious, or outright chaotic to the table.
With Clair Obscur leading the year with a record-breaking number of nominations and Hades II dominating discussions since launch, Ghost of Yotei had to fight in a much harder arena than its older cousin Ghost of Tsushima did years back. The jury simply had too many giants to choose from, and not enough chairs at the GOTY table.
Sony’s Golden Streak Needed a Pause
Let’s be honest: for the last five years, Sony has been collecting GOTY nominations like Infinity Stones. The Last of Us Part II, Ghost of Tsushima, Ragnarök, Astro Bot, Horizon Forbidden West, Ratchet & Clank — the pattern was basically “Sony drops a game, it gets in.”
But 2025 finally broke the curse. Last year, Astro Bot even won GOTY and people argued it didn’t deserve the top spot. So the industry, consciously or not, was ready for a recalibration. Sony already secured tons of nominations across categories this year. Giving their biggest release yet another GOTY slot might’ve felt too predictable, especially when the competition was exploding with originality.
Ghost of Yotei Is a Great Sequel, But Not a Reinvention
Ghost of Yotei is gorgeous, emotional, and wonderfully sharp — but it’s not exactly groundbreaking. Critics consistently praised its polish, combat, and cinematic world, but many pointed out that the game doesn’t leap far beyond the formula that Tsushima created.
It’s an evolution, not a revolution. And GOTY often favors the games that break molds, redefine genres, or traumatize the industry in a fun way. Compared to the experimental weirdness of Death Stranding 2 or the mechanical ambition of Expedition 33, Yōtei felt more familiar, even when it was doing that familiar stuff extremely well.
Too Many Samurai Vibes in One Year
2025 quietly became the unofficial “Year of Japanese Historical Action Games.” Between Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, and a handful of samurai-adjacent indies, the market was overflowing with katanas, bamboo forests, and revenge arcs. In a year that already had a big Japan-set blockbuster from Ubisoft, the jury may have chased more variety. They’ve done it before, and they’ll do it again.
Verdict: Ghost of Yotei wasn’t snubbed because it was weak — it was snubbed because everyone else was playing on nightmare difficulty this year. It’s still one of the most-nominated games of 2025 and might walk away with multiple wins on awards night.
It just didn’t check the final box the jury needed for GOTY: being the most innovative, surprising, or conversation-shifting game of the year.
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