New Game Awards, New Drama

A debut indie game is pulling out of the competition.

Author

Robert Scarpinito
November 21, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes

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The list of all the nominees for The Game Awards are out, and as per usual, there is Discourse™. The most surprising news, arguably, comes from Vedinad, the developer of Megabonk.

For the first time I can recall, a developer has willfully pulled out of the list of nominees on a peculiar technicality: they have made games before under a different studio name.

There’s a lot to unpack here. At what point is a “debut” different from a “first project"? Realistically, others on the debut list—like Dispatch—have surely worked on at least one other game before, published or not.

And let’s not forget the whole “what even is an ‘indie game’ anyway” discussion. Should Expedition 33 count if it has a publisher? Should Silksong count if they have a multimillion-dollar runway from Hollow Knight?

If you dig a little too deep in this category—or really most categories in The Game Awards—things get questionable pretty quickly. Nonetheless, if you’re curious about the full list of nominees, you can dissect them here.

Fortnite only gets bigger with this update, allowing all sorts of cross-collaboration between Unity and Unreal engines. It’s the kind of good news Unity was probably hoping for, after its disastrous runtime fee fiasco and a round of layoffs in February.

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You can see the new images of the two heroes in the story on our site, but remember: this movie is slated for a May 2027 release, one year after the Mario movie sequel. Their costumes look pretty solid in the images, and it’s exciting to see that production is going along.

This round of Secret Lair cards features the monsters and the hunters—very titularly focused. You can get a look at all the cards in the story above, including some pretty sick Zinogre and Nergigante art. Sadly, there are no Palico cards as of yet.

Can you believe it’s been two years since this one came out to middling reviews? Poor performance, odd design decisions—it exemplified the old adage, “If it ain’t broke, fix it.” Now, Colossal Order and Paradox are on track to part ways after the developer makes a few more updates. Afterward, the game will be under Iceflake’s care.

Concord was pretty short lived, with less than three weeks of being a live, playable game. Some fans had revived it with fan-made servers, though Sony has issued DMCAs to take down YouTube videos that showoff those servers. It’s certainly a choice, one that makes Sony look a little hostile to grassroots efforts.

For some sad news, an industry legend has passed away this week. She helped found Interplay, the original publisher for the original Fallout and Baldur’s Gate games. You can read more about her legacy on our site.