Crimson Desert's Chances of Being Nominated for GOTY Are Slim to None

Crimson Desert‘s early critical reception may have already jeopardized the opportunity for the new RPG to be nominated for Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2026. For Crimson Desert to have any chance of being nominated for the top gong at TGA 2026, it would have to make history and do something that no game has ever done before.

In the months leading up to Crimson Desert‘s release, the RPG gained an enormous amount of hype. The review embargo was lifted a day prior to its March 19, 2026 release date, and to many gamers’ surprise, it was met with more middling reviews than expected. On review aggregators Metacritic and OpenCritic, it holds scores of 78 and 79 respectively at the time of writing. Although these aren’t exactly bad scores, it’s far from the level that many expected from the game based on its pre-release hype. Despite the reviews, Crimson Desert has launched with huge player counts, suggesting that the critical reception has not harmed the number of gamers jumping in to try it for themselves.

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Crimson Desert Would Be the Lowest-Rated GOTY Nominee Ever

Although there are many gamers enjoying their time with Crimson Desert so far, its chance of being a GOTY nominee at The Game Awards 2026 is already slim to none, assuming nothing changes with its future critical reception. If it were nominated for the top prize, it would be the lowest-rated Game of the Year nominee in Game Awards history with its 78 Metascore. Currently, Black Myth: Wukong holds that title with 81, with other titles such as Death Stranding (82) and Ghost of Tsushima (83) also running it close. An excellent critical reception is a pre-requisite for a Game of the Year nomination, and Crimson Desert just misses the mark in this regard. A surprise is possible, of course, but it would break historical precedent for The Game Awards. It would have to become the first game in history to be nominated with a Metascore in the 70s, which feels very unlikely at this point.

Its chances of actually winning the Game of the Year award are even slimmer. Dragon Age: Inquisition, the first-ever recipient of the award, won with just an 85 Metascore, the lowest to date. The last three winners, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Astro Bot, and Baldur’s Gate 3, won with a Metascore of 92, 94, and 96 respectively. The bar is higher than it ever has been before, and it seems that Crimson Desert is far too polarizing to be in with any real shot of winning the award, if it somehow defied the odds to be nominated in the first place.

All of this isn’t to suggest that Crimson Desert won’t receive any recognition when The Game Awards 2026 roll around later this year. The reception is strong enough that it will likely appear somewhere in the nominations, but Game of the Year feels like a stretch unless something dramatically changes with the review scores from here on out.

There is no questioning Crimson Desert‘s ambition and scale, although it is its narrative and core game design that is facing the most criticism from players and critics alike. How much of this will be addressed in Crimson Desert‘s post-launch support remains to be seen, although it’s unlikely this would affect its Game of the Year prospects for later this year, regardless.