Geoff Keighley Strikes Again -The Curse of The Game Awards

It's incredible how much Geoff Keighley has. I don't doubt he's a gamer, but he’s also a hype man, a business man, and isthe defacto face of the Games Industry - Hosting Summer Games Fest (the new E3), Gamescom and The Game Awards. Love him or hate him, he here’s to stay. He’s not without his faults - ‘Wrap it up please’, condemning crunch culture in one breath while promoting the next Call of Duty in the next breath, excessive celebrity appearances and a few too many adverts. He also has a knack for dooming Games.

From the top of my head, I remember Geoff hyping up Fort Solis thanks to the voices of Troy Baker and Roger Clark being in it. The game was barely a boring road bump in the year’s lineup. Geoff was all over (paid or otherwise) the Saint’s Row reboot and that might have been the worst reviewed game in recent memory, King of Meat couldn’t manage 500 players on a free weekend. It’s hard to tell whats misplaced excitement and what’s veiled sponsorship.

Well, he did it again at the 2025 Game Awards, perhaps the most well known example of it so far. In a show with exciting announcements like Control: Resonant and Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic, ending on a game like Highguard just wasn’t the best idea.

This meme comes up a lot and it’s for good reason, it happens all the time. Highguard (Synonym, Overwatch…)showed a generic fantasy/scifi shooter with bland characters and a barren world. The reception for the game was very negative, not helped by the company’s near month long silence following The Game Awards.

What wasn’t silent was the discussion. Why would Highguard be the last game? Isn’t the last slot the most expensive? The developers are silent, did they waste their budget? We did get some answers over the month - Geoff chose the game to be the last because he liked the look of it. I suppose that’s fair enough. Closer to release, Geoff continued to hype up the game on Twitter, replying to every positive tweet and even saying people would be apologizing for doubt. It got to a point where someone even asked Geoff if he had financial involvement in the game, which he denied. I believe him. This wasn’t Geoff the Businessman, this was Geoff the gamer… who just happened to have his finger on the complete wrong pulse.

There was a reveal stream the night before release explaining some things but when the game launched - it launched to overwhelmingly negative reviews. There was a lot of hate bandwagoning (like the infamous Reddit Battlefront 2 comment) but I believe there was a lot of legitimate criticism in there too. In the week that followed. the blind supporters clashed with the haters on matters to do with the game. Right now, the game is only averaging 1000 players. It’s not going to last.

What went wrong then? The game clearly has some issues that may be too little too late to solve, but what has happened with Geoff? Geoff liked the game and wanted it for the Game Awards whereas the developers wanted to shadow drop the game. They also didn’t think the games trailer was the right one for The Game Awards.

If the developers had their wish, the game would have shadowdropped in a poor state but wouldn’t have had weeks for negativity to grow. The radio silence from the developers didn’t help either. Really, I think Geoff is to blame. Geoff the gamer. Geoff the businessman. Geoff the hypeman.

Geoff who sent Highguard off to it’s death before it ever had a chance.