GTA VI Made the Game Awards Cutoff by One Day. The Real Deadline Is Rockstar's.

People spent half of this year arguing about whether Geoff Keighley was going to bend the rules so GTA VI could get into The Game Awards. He didn't have to. The Game Awards FAQ says a game has to be commercially available on or before Friday, November 20, 2026 at 9 PM PT to be eligible, and Grand Theft Auto VI comes out Thursday, November 19 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. One day. That's the whole margin.

And nobody moved anything for it either. The cutoff was November 22 in 2024 and November 21 last year, so November 20 is just where the calendar landed this time.

So yes, GTA VI is eligible for Game of the Year. But eligible and nominated are two different things, and that's the part I don't think enough people are talking about.

Eligible isn't nominated

The nominees at The Game Awards come from a jury of more than 100 media outlets and creators, and in most categories the jury counts for 90% of the vote with fans getting the other 10%. Nominees usually drop in mid November. Last year they came out November 17.

Do the math on that. If the nominees land on roughly the same day this year, they're getting announced before anybody outside Rockstar has legally played the game. The rules do let jurors evaluate games that launch close to the cutoff before ballots are due, but that only works if those jurors actually have the game, and that means Rockstar sending out review copies early. As of right now there's no public word that it has.

That's the real deadline. Not Keighley's. Rockstar's.

Why I care how this goes

GTA is the one game that leaves gaming and goes all the way into the culture. It's the group chat, it's the cookout argument, it's somebody's cousin calling out of work on the 19th. I already said in this month's Press Start that November is GTA month and that's not a debate. So I want it in the room. A Game of the Year conversation without the biggest game of the decade in it would feel fake.

But I also don't want a trophy handed out on vibes. If the jury puts GTA VI on the list without having played deep into it, that's voting on a trailer, and that's not fair to the games that actually had a whole year to prove themselves. Prediction market traders on Kalshi have GTA VI above 80% to win, with Resident Evil Requiem a distant second at around 6%. Those odds are basically saying people already decided before the game is out. That should bother you a little even if you love GTA. It bothers me.

And Rockstar has been here before. Red Dead Redemption 2 cleaned up in other categories at The Game Awards 2018 and still lost Game of the Year to God of War. GTA VI has already won Most Anticipated Game twice. Being the most anticipated and being the best game of the year are not the same award.

What I want to see

Send the review code. Let the jury play it. If it's as good as everything Rockstar has shown us, it'll win on the game and nobody can say it got waved in. If the code doesn't go out, I'd rather see it miss the nominees this year than get nominated off hype, because the version of GTA VI that wins Game of the Year should be the one people actually finished.

And if GTA is not your lane at all, there's plenty this year worth playing, especially if you're just getting into it. I made a list of must play games for first time gamers for exactly that.

The Game Awards are December 10 at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. Nominees should be out any day now. So here's my question for you: should a game that's been out for three weeks be allowed to win Game of the Year? Come argue with me about it in the CXM Discord.