Resident Evil Requiem Wins Ultimate Game of the Year at the Golden Joysticks, but a $5.99 Indie Tied It

Featured image: Grace Ashcroft in Resident Evil Requiem. Source: Capcom, Resident Evil Requiem official Steam page

Resident Evil Requiem is the Ultimate Game of the Year at the Golden Joystick Awards 2026. Capcom’s ninth mainline survival horror entry beat eleven other finalists on November 11, including Crimson Desert, 007: First Light and Phantom Blade Zero, and it collected four trophies on the night. That would usually make it the undisputed story of the show. This year it has company, because a $5.99 hide-and-seek game made by two people in about two months walked out with exactly the same number of awards.

That tie says a lot about where gaming is in late 2026. Here is the full list of winners, why Requiem’s win matters for Capcom, and how Meccha Chameleon crashed a party that is normally reserved for blockbusters.

Requiem takes the top prize

The Golden Joysticks are run by GamesRadar+ publisher Future and have been handed out since 1983, which makes them one of the oldest awards shows in the industry. The Ultimate Game of the Year shortlist had twelve games on it this time: Resident Evil Requiem, Crimson Desert, Phantom Blade Zero, 007: First Light, Control Resonant, Pragmata, Star Wars: Galactic Racer, The Blood of Dawnwalker, Big Walk, Dispatch, Forza Horizon 6 and Pokemon Pokopia.

Requiem beat all of them. On top of the main prize, it won Console Game of the Year, Best Game Trailer, and Best Lead Performer for Angela Sant’Albano, who plays FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft. Capcom also took Studio of the Year, an award that leaned on Requiem but also on Pragmata and Onimusha: Way of the Sword. GamesRadar joked that this left Requiem with “a total of just 4.33 awards,” which is about as fair a way to count it as any.

The win is not a surprise if you have followed the game since February. Requiem launched on February 27, 2026, holds a 92 on Metacritic for the PC version, and Capcom has confirmed it as the fastest selling Resident Evil game ever. It passed 5 million copies within a week, reached 7 million by late April, and stood at roughly 8.5 million in Capcom’s latest earnings update. For context, the Resident Evil 4 remake took about a year to reach 7 million.

Resident Evil’s third Ultimate Game of the Year in eight years

This is not Capcom’s first trip to the stage for the biggest award. Resident Evil 2 won Ultimate Game of the Year in 2019 and Resident Evil Village won it in 2021. With Requiem, the series has now taken the top Golden Joystick three times in eight ceremonies, a run no other franchise comes close to in that period.

It also caps a strong year for Capcom in general. Pragmata turned into a surprise hit with around 2.5 million sales, and Onimusha: Way of the Sword earned Best Audio Design on the same night after a review cycle that gave the series its first perfect IGN score. Three different Capcom games won awards in three different categories, which explains why the Studio of the Year vote was not close.

Meccha Chameleon, the two person game that tied the giant

The other big winner could not be more different. Meccha Chameleon is a multiplayer hide-and-seek game from Japanese developers lemorion_1224 and Haganeiro. Hiders paint their characters to blend into the map, hunters try to spot them before the timer runs out, and that is basically it. It launched on Steam in June for $5.99, came to Switch 2 in September, and was reportedly built in roughly two months.

It went on to become one of the year’s biggest PC stories. SteamDB recorded an all time peak of 340,534 concurrent players on June 21, and sales reports have climbed from 1 million to well past 5 million, with some outlets citing figures as high as 20 million. Those higher numbers have not been confirmed by the developers, so treat them with caution, but even the conservative figures are remarkable for a game this small.

At the Golden Joysticks it won Best Multiplayer Game and Best Indie Game (Self-Published) from the public vote, plus Streamer’s Choice and Developers’ Choice from the juries. That split is the interesting part. Players loved it, but so did streamers and other developers, which suggests the win is about more than a viral moment.

All Golden Joystick Awards 2026 winners

Here is the complete list across all 25 categories.

The other stories from the night

CD Projekt Red went two for two. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered won Best Remake/Remaster, which pushes the 2015 RPG to 12 Golden Joysticks, the most of any game in the show’s history. If you missed it, we covered what the free Witcher 3 remaster upgrade added when it launched in September. The Witcher 4 also won Most Wanted Game, a category GTA 6 had taken in both 2024 and 2025. GTA 6 itself was not in contention for anything this year, since it has not launched yet.

Crimson Desert is the PC crowd’s pick. Pearl Abyss’s open world action game took PC Game of the Year, and it also made the Ultimate shortlist. That is a satisfying result after the game’s long and bumpy road to release.

Dispatch quietly doubled up. The superhero workplace drama won both Best Storytelling and Best Soundtrack, making it the third most decorated game of the night behind the two leaders.

Phantom Blade Zero went home empty handed. S-Game’s action RPG was one of the twelve Ultimate finalists, but it launched only weeks ago and its launch numbers were strong, so it may fare better at shows with later voting windows.

What this means for the rest of awards season

Last year Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 swept almost everything it was nominated for at the Golden Joysticks, then became only the second game ever to complete the “Big 5” sweep of the major gaming awards. Requiem is unlikely to repeat that. The field is more spread out, and GTA 6 arrives on November 19, close enough to the end of the year to complicate every GOTY conversation that follows.

Still, being named best game of the year by a public vote nine months after launch is a meaningful result. Recency bias usually helps autumn releases at these shows, and Requiem beat that. If you have not played it yet and want the shortest pitch, it is the purest, most confident Resident Evil Capcom has made in years, and it now has the trophies to back that up.

And if you want to understand where gaming culture is going, spend $5.99 on Meccha Chameleon and play a few rounds with friends. A two person game going toe to toe with a Capcom blockbuster is the kind of thing that only happens a few times per decade, and this one earned it.

Sources: GamesRadar+, all winners, GamesRadar+, Ultimate Game of the Year, GamesRadar+, Requiem and Meccha Chameleon tie, GamesRadar+, CD Projekt Red wins, PC Gamer, Requiem sales, VGC, Capcom earnings, Golden Joystick Game of the Year history, Meccha Chameleon.

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