PC Gamer's breakout game this year is PUBG—this award is to recognise its status as a 2017 phenomenon. Whatever you thought of it, it was a game that pretty much everyone had to play this year. Below, some of PC Gamer's writers relay why they enjoyed it this year, and explore why it became as huge as it did. Find our GOTY hub here.

Chris Livingston: PUBG aimed for the sweet spot between the intimidating complexity of Arma and the arcade-like action of H1Z1, and hit the mark pretty much dead on. It can't be denied that H1Z1 (formerly King of the Kill) was a massive hit, with millions of copies sold and a playerbase keeping it at the top of the Steam charts for months, but PUBG truly took the genre into the mainstream, attracting scores of players who had never set foot in battle royale before. The premise seems simple, but we've seen both BR modes (like Ark: Survival of the Fittest) and standalone BR games (The Culling) fizzle out, so there's clearly more to it than just dropping 100 players on a map and letting them shoot each other. Whatever that secret formula is, PUBG mixed it up in a lab, poured it into an Early Access beaker, and it fucking exploded.

Evan Lahti: It's one of the few multiplayer shooters with a sense of pacing. Beginning: goofing off on the spawn island; streaking like meteors toward the ground; a mad, bloody dash for a gun, any gun. Middle: Playing dress-up with gear; jumping your motorcycle off a cliff; shooting the shit with your friends over voice chat. End: A sudden firefight, or crawling on your belly into the final circle.

Brace yourself for an avalanche of Battle Royale games in 2018 and 2019. And honestly: bring it on. I love the way that this format of FPS respects your time and pretty much guarantees a combination of tension and comedy whether you die in 20 seconds or win after 20 minutes.

Tyler Wilde: What I love about the genre is that every match has an intrinsic winner. There are no points to tally, just one player left lying in a bush. It's a win by KO, whereas most shooters come down to a decision—overtime on an Overwatch point, for instance. Battlegrounds itself isn't very pretty, has unruly vehicle physics, and a serious cheating problem, so why has it been the year's phenomenon? For one thing, it’s an infinite highlight clip generator: those wonky vehicles can be funny as well as annoying. Plus it's got a weird, memorable acronym. I genuinely think that did some work for it.

Samuel Roberts: I think Evan put it best in his PC Gamer Top 100 entry for PUBG: "it compresses the time and space that survival games like DayZ give you, forcing you into contact with other players and out of your comfort zone." And that's the magic of Battlegrounds, really: it concentrates the drama and paranoia of players meeting in a survival game, making the game entirely about the conflict that follows. PUBG's formula is magic, no matter how you choose to play (cowardly, in my case). And no matter where you finish, you'll always have a story to tell. It's disposable in the best possible way. 

Joe Donnelly: Like any online game worth its salt, much of what makes Battlegrounds special is its incidental set pieces. You know the ones, the unscripted moments that catch you off guard and make you smile—where you've perhaps entered an enemy base by motorbike via its second floor window, or somehow wind up finishing second place in search of a bare-fisted chicken dinner. And beyond its high-pressure shoot outs, dashing and running, vehicle explosions, ducking and covering, there’s something to be said about PUBG’s sense of exploration. In May, Gil Lawson wrote about how Battlegrounds' map gets more haunting as you play it, where revisited locations cast up memories of previous encounters, misadventure and triumphs. I couldn’t agree more, to the point where I now enjoy the game’s quieter spells almost as much as its flashes of action. With the release of the desert map, Miramar, I look forward to exploring pastures new.    

For more coverage on PUBG, head here. 

The world has only had their hands on Miramar—the new PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds map—for about a week. That's an extremely limited amount of time in most other games, but given the PUBG community's thirst for new stuff, a faint vision of the meta is already falling into place. The map will leave the test servers on December 20 (with new weapons and vehicles to boot), alongside the official release of PUBG 1.0. 

Pro teams are already slaving away to uncover the most efficient loot runs possible, and I imagine we probably won't have a crystalline image of all of Miramar's quirks til January, but in the meantime I've surveyed the scene and am reporting back with the hotspots people are talking about right now.

Pecado

Miramar is home to some of the most impressive cityscapes yet released in PUBG, but one of the best places to drop is a tiny little industrial hamlet right in the middle of the map. Pecado is located northwest of Los Leones (right along a crusty mountainous ridge), and if you land on top of the abandoned boxing arena, you can easily drop through the roof and pick up a boatload of level-three gear early. Better yet, the central location means you're pretty much guaranteed to be in the first circle. As the meta shakes out, perhaps Pecado will shape itself into an early-game bloodbath, but right now it feels distinctly overlooked compared to the other hotspots.

LOOTOMETER: 4 out of 5 

Campo Militar

Remember the Military Island on Erangel? You know, that uber-congested fortress that rewards you with an incredible arsenal if you manage to survive the rabid scramble? Military Island is a great place to either set yourself up for the late-game, or watch your campaign come to an end in about 20 seconds. Miramar keeps that tradition alive with Campo Militar. 

Located in the extreme northeast corner of the map, Campo Militar will douse you with oodles of weaponry (snipers, assault rifles, attachments) in both the massive concrete office building in the center of the base and the surrounding warehouses. The remote location means you won't have to worry about any crossfire or flanks, but you will inevitably have to fight off everyone else who had the same idea as you. As always, the military base pays dividends to anyone who manages to come out on top. Also, given that Campo Militar isn't on an island, you're not quite as sealed off from the rest of the playing field. It's a lot easier to get out of dodge compared to the two lonely bridges out of Sosnovka.

LOOTOMETER: 4 out of 5

Water treatment

One of the things Bluehole is introducing alongside Miramar is the ability for players to vault over stuff. You know, like guard rails or broken windows. It's a minor mechanic in the grand scheme of things, but there's a lot of strategic depth in any additional mobility in a game like PUBG. One location where it comes in handy is the water treatment plant, nestled in the mountains of San Martin. A lot of the loot here is stacked on top of the sizable steel water tanks. The lack of vehicles means your mobility might be hampered when it's time to leave, but if you're looking for a lot of resources without feeling exposed in one of the metropolises, this is the place for you.   

LOOTOMETER: 3 out of 5

Hacienda Del Patron

The Hacienda is a picturesque desert mansion just east of the township of San Martin, and a stone's throw south of the water treatment plant, and it's the early frontrunner for being the best pure loot spot on the map. Run through the mansion's two floors and pavilion, you'll quickly find yourself strapped with grenades, guns, medpacks, and level three gear. Yes, you might be coming in hot, because San Martin is one of the higher trafficked areas in Miramar, but the Hacienda is removed enough from the pandemonium that it's not a flat-out suicide mission. YouTuber BigBossBilly shows off exactly how profitable the loot run can be in a video posted to his channel earlier today. In one scour, he picked up a level three helmet, a level three vest, a handful of scopes, and more guns than anyone could possibly need. 

LOOTOMETER: 5 out of 5

The prison

The funny thing about the prison is that it's the same place you spawn into when you're waiting for the round to start. You know, the PUBG staging area, where everyone runs around naked, does crossfit, and screams into their microphone before being loaded into the plane. Yeah, you can go back there. It's resting on an island off the southwest corner of the map, and it actually makes for a pretty solid loot run. The prison complex itself is huge and full of odd little nooks and crannies that reward a good scouring, as well as a decent selection of vehicles when it's time to migrate to the circle. There are some other locations on the island—namely the port city of Los Hugos—so you do have other options if the prison is a little too hot. 

LOOTOMETER: 3 out of 5 

The rest

The website pubgmap.io is already hosting an extremely useful interactive map of Miramar showing off all the automobile spawns, boat spawns, and weapon concentrations on their site. If you're looking to plan out a specific root, (or if you just want to theorycraft without being shot at,) that'd be my first stop. 

With Playerunknown's Battlegrounds exit from Early Access coming in just a few days, changes and tweaks are still underway on the test server, which is hosting 1.0's new desert map, Miramar. If you've been playing—and a lot of you have, seeing as how PUBG's test servers are the 5th most played game on Steam—you may be happy to learn that sometime after launch you'll be able to choose which map you play on when you join a PUBG server.

Originally, the plan was for map selection to be random, as it was back in the days when Battle Royale was a mod: You'd join a server, but you wouldn't know what map you'd be playing on (granted, there were more than just two maps for the mod). The idea was to throw players into a situation and force them to adapt. You didn't wind up on your favorite map, or one you know really well? Too bad. Just suck it up and tough it out.

It sounds like PUBG players want to choose which map they're playing on, though, and it's tough to blame them—when Evan and I tried out Miramar we both decided it was superior to the original map, and neither of us want to play on Erangel anymore. It's all desert, all the time from now on. In today's test build patch notes, PUBG Corp announced that it's been listening to player feedback and has, somewhat reluctantly, agreed:

"So we came to the conclusion that it is best to allow our players to choose which map they want to play on," the patch notes state. "However, we have 3 team modes and 2 perspectives - TPP and FPP. Adding map selection will result in there effectively being 12 game modes in total. You also need 100 players to fully experience Battle Royale. When all these factors are combined, it could be very difficult to offer a seamless experience 24/7 to players looking for matches. In some regions with smaller player bases, many issues are already expected to occur; queueing times could be extremely lengthy, matches may not start at all, matches may start with a number of players that is much lower than 100 in off-peak times."

"Despite these circumstances, our development team has decided to listen to our community’s feedback. We need some time to address the anticipated problems and technical issues, so maps will not be selectable right after PC 1.0 release. However, we will do our best to add the feature and required systems as soon as we can, so you can enjoy Battle Royale in the map of your choice."

In other test server patch notes, a replay menu has been added to the lobby screen, meaning that after a match you can watch a recording, pause the action, move the camera around in 3D space, and even follow other players. I've been playing with it this morning—it could use some fine-tuning but it's pretty cool. If a toggle is added to hide all UI elements, it could result in some really nice screenshots and videos.

The game will save your most recent 20 matches for replay, then begin overwriting the oldest recordings. If you've got favorites, you can lock them so they'll stay on your list, however.

Mirimar's initial blue zone size has been tweaked as well, and some weapons have been rebalanced a touch. Read the full notes right here.

Popular Twitch streamer DrDisrespect announced on his channel today that he plans to take time away from livestreaming to focus on his family.

"I have a beautiful family, and a wife, and kid. And I want to be transparent that I've been unfaithful," said a visibly distressed DrDisrespect. "I apologize to you guys, and my sponsors, and Twitch. This is not who I am, this is not what I represent. That's it."

A character of Guy Beahm, a former designer for Call of Duty: WWII studio Sledgehammer Games, SocialBlade lists DrDisrespect as the 16th most popular channel on Twitch, with more than 1.4 million followers on the platform. His sponsors include Razer, Turtle Beach, GFUEL, ASUS Republic of Gamers, and chair maker Need For Seat. 

Known for his over-the-top macho identity and boastful catch phrases reminiscent of a WWE character, DrDisrespect exploded in popularity in 2017 in parallel with the growth of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, which he plays regularly. Last week a mixture of gaming press and public voters selected him as the recipient of the Trending Gamer award at The Game Awards. 

Update: Following publication of this story, we received this comment from NetEase, a Chinese company that was sponsoring an event that DrDisrespect was due to participate in. The statement reads:

"After recent events, NetEase and DrDisrespect have mutually agreed that he will not be taking part in the Rules of Surivival 'Hunt the Streamer' event on the 17th with 29 other streamers at DrDirespect's request. The event was to let players enjoy the battle royale with their favorite streamers, giving them the chance to win up to $30,000. With DrDisrespect's absence, his time-slot during the event will be replaced by a streamer soon-to-be announced. Any questions can be directed to us if any outlets have any questions about the event."

In the wake of PUBG's ever-growing success, a number of established games have spun their own interpretations of the battle royale formula. Several clones have since surfaced too, which has caused Brendan Greene—aka PlayerUnknown himself—to speak out against the lack of copyright protection in the games industry. 

Speaking to BBC Radio 1's Gaming Show (via Newsbeat/gamesindustry.biz), Greene stressed that while he's keen to see the battle royale genre continue to grow, more needs to be done to prevent rip offs. 

"I want other developers to put their own spin on the genre... not just lift things from our game," says Greene. "For that to happen you need new and interesting spins on the game mode. If it's just copycats down the line, then the genre doesn't grow and people get bored."

To this end, one particular clone that comes to mind is this Chinese Terminator 2-inspired mobile game that appears to mirror PUBG in both style and appearance. The following footage of that popped up on Reddit earlier this year:

Greene continues: "There's no intellectual property protection in games. In movies and music there is IP protection and you can really look after your work. In gaming that doesn't exist yet, and it's something that should be looked into. 

"Some amazing games pass under the radar. Then someone else takes the idea, has a marketing budget, and suddenly has a popular game because they ripped off someone else's idea. I think it's something the industry needs to look into. You're protecting the work of artists basically. Games are art for a large part, and so I think it's important they're protected."

Greene's chat with Radio 1's Gaming Show will feature in full on the BBC iPlayer in January.

Camel toe, as defined in unexpectedly restrained fashion by the Urban Dictionary, is "the appearance of a wedge in a woman's genital region resulting from tight fitting clothes." It is also the cause of a recent bit of unexpected upset in Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, following a surprise change in female character models that appeared on the PUBG test server over the weekend. 

Courtesy of the subreddit: 

I'll be honest, part of me thinks this is a tempest in a t-back, but I also don't have to put up with watching hunky digital avatars running around with banana hammocks flapping all over the place (well, excluding Conan Exiles), so my perspective is admittedly somewhat skewed. And it's certainly fair to ask why the change was made now, nine months after its initial release on Early Access.

Apparently the whole thing was unintentional: "After looking into this, it appears it came as part of the character model we received from an outsourcer when we first started the project," Brendan Greene, the PlayerUnknown who gives the game half of its unwieldy title, said on Twitter. "The file itself has not been changed in two years. It will be updated shortly with changes! Sorry for any offense caused!"

Predictably, a certain subset of PUBG fans are unhappy with the change, but as one game dev unaffiliated with PUBG pointed out, there was no outrage or "screeching," and anyway, that's what test servers are for: To test things, and change them as necessary. "Cameltoes hurt and are similar to a wedgie. Would you like to fight for your life with a wedgie?" they wrote, "No. It makes no sense and is unnecessary. Simple as that."

Steam's November 2017 Hardware Survey shows an 8.23 percent rise in players who use Simplified Chinese since October, bringing the total share of Chinese-readers to a massive 64.35 percent of Steam's survey respondents. English accounted for 17.02 percent, and Russian was the third highest at 5.11 percent. Just one year ago, English was on top with 44.10 percent of respondents and Simplified Chinese only accounted for 8.60 percent.

The dramatic increase of Steam users in China began in 2012, when Valve and Perfect World partnered to publish Dota 2 in the country. Perfect World later published CS:GO in China, and the two games are now the third and second most popular games on Steam in China, respectively. The most popular, however, released this year: SteamSpy estimates that 78 percent of Steam users in China own PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.

And that means something interesting could happen next year: Tencent obtained the rights to publish and operate PUBG in China. It's unclear whether Tencent's government-approved version of PUBG will remain on Steam, or release through its WeGame service. In the announcement, Tencent does not mention what platform its version of PUBG will release on, promising more information soon.

There is precedent, though: When Tencent secured Chinese publishing rights to Rocket League (as a free-to-play game), it was taken off sale on Steam in China. "Though new players will no longer be able to purchase the existing version of the game on Steam from this point forward," wrote Psyonix, "the existing community will still have access to the game you paid for in addition to all other currently-available features."

If PUBG follows the same route, Chinese players will be able to keep playing on Steam, though it will no longer be available to purchase. The massive Steam adoption may then slow down, though it's always possible another game will catch on in China sans a government-approved publishing deal. (According to Niko Partners, Steam operates in a grey area in China, as not all games on Steam are approved for sale by China's State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television.)

Despite the results of recent Steam Hardware Surveys, China isn't necessarily home to the most Steam users of any country, at least not yet. The Hardware Survey includes Chinese-speakers outside of China, of course, and Chinese is by far the most-known language in the world. Additionally, the data comes from users who logged in and agreed to the survey during November, and Steam doesn't offer the survey demographics, only the results.

But if China doesn't have the largest share of users, it's at least close. SteamSpy currently has China in second place for user count, with 11.34 percent of the world's Steam users, while the US accounts for 14.67 percent. Yet these estimations, which are based on public user profiles, don't include users who haven't put their location in their Steam profile. SteamSpy recorded over 20 million users as 'Other' on December 8th.

And China has the most active userbase by far according to SteamSpy: 19.48 percent of the world's active Steam population for the past two weeks compared to the US's 14.17 percent. This is backed up by more of Steam's own data. According to the past seven days of Steam records, The United States downloaded 58.6 petabytes worth of data, barely surpassing China's 57.2 PB. SteamSpy estimates that Chinese players own far fewer games on average than American players, so it follows that a petabyte of data in China represents more individual players than a petabyte of data in the US.

If this trend continues, expect to see more games on Steam with Chinese language support—currently, there are over 4,500. It'll also be interesting to see if there's any reverse effect, as well: more Chinese games releasing on Steam with or without English, Russian, and other language support. Tencent-published game Europa, for instance, currently appears on Steam. Alternatively, or at the same time, we could see Tencent work toward becoming a worldwide platform.

A new report from digital research firm Superdata says that the worldwide esports market was valued at $1.5 billion in 2017. Fully half of that came by way of investments from "high-profile sports organizations and brands," the company said in the Esports Courtside: Playmakers of 2017 report, "highlighting a growing confidence in its ability to break into the mainstream." 

"Once only large in core Asian markets like Korea, esports have expanded worldwide and are now top of mind of every publisher, platform, and brand," Superdata wrote. "At $1.5 billion for 2017, global esports revenue will grow 26 percent by 2020 as it attracts an even more mainstream audience. This increase will be fueled by a viewership projected to grow 12 percent each year and a swelling number of third-party investments." 

The report notes the success of crowdfunding in esports, seen primarily in the hefty prize pools put together for Dota 2 and League of Legends, but the really big money is in direct revenues, such as franchise fees, sponsorships, and merchandise sales, which are also predicted to grow. 

The Overwatch League, despite what appeared to be early struggles to get off the ground, gets special mention for having teams based in cities, which "bridges the gap between esports and traditional sports," the report says. "This makes Overwatch more approachable to traditional sports investors." 

At the same time, the report also suggests that there's plenty of room for the opposite approach to esports success, as typified by Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, which got its own nod for breaking 200 million unique viewers in just seven months.  

"PUBG's unprecedented viewership is now 20 times larger than its player base, indicating a growing popularity among non-players as well," the report says. "Overwatch League opens the floodgates for a new kind of esports governance, and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds rides a wave of esports performance with no formal strategy."

As for the people who watch esports, they still prefer Twitch to YouTube, although not by a very large margin, and the vast majority of esports viewers in the US watch both: Twitch for livestreams, and YouTube for "more curated content."

PUBG's Miramar map is live on the PUBG test server, which is available as a separate library entry to anyone who owns the game on Steam. Our resident parachuters Chris and Evan dived in together to see how it compares to Erangel.

Evan: Yow, this is such an upgrade. It's not just the novelty of having a new place to run around—Miramar feels like a map built from the ground up for PUBG. 

Chris: Yeah, even having not put nearly as much time into PUBG as you have, I can't really imagine revisiting Erangel once Miramar is on the main servers. It's not just a refreshing change of scenery (though it is a refreshing change of scenery). Miramar feels like a stronger and better map for PUBG.

Evan: It's inviting and bright, a big contrast from the Soviet dullness of Erangel. It puts me in this wild west mindset that melds nicely with battle royale—I want to get into trouble. The region feels more authentic, too. I spotted some Catholic symbols across Miramar, like the burned-out glass candles left around the mausoleums at Graveyard.

Chris: The setting does feel much more specific, which I think is good. Maybe I've just been playing in these vaguely Eastern European post-apocalyptic landscapes for too long (since Stalker) and it's great to feel an altogether different vibe. Even though presumably everyone is still dead from the apocalypse.

Evan: Speaking of that, it's funny how closely Miramar mirrors the general shape of Chernarus, the stock map for Arma 2 and DayZ.

Chris: It definitely feels like an intentional homage to Brendan Greene's DayZ days (zees).

Evan: So one strategy-affecting change I'm seeing the off-road terrain. It's rugged. Miramar isn't a landscape of halfpipe hills to flip your car off of. Most of the areas we drove across were bumpy and irregular, and we had to move at half speed. I felt way more fragile when driving.

Chris: It feels almost too extreme of a change—I don't think PUBG is a game that needs to be slowed down any further. I like it, though: it'll force players to make real choices in their strategy depending on what vehicle they're driving and where they are. In Erangel I don't ever really deliberate about going off-road. It's honestly not much different than driving on paved surfaces. In Miramar, you might opt for speeding through a big town along a road (and drawing certain gunfire) instead of skirting it over the terrain, simply because going off-road is tougher and slower now.

Evan: The other side effect of that change is that the landscape as a whole has way more nooks and crannies, little dips in elevation to go prone in. Whether you like that will depend a lot on which version of the game you're playing (first- or third-person), and what range you like to fight at, I think.

It's absolutely a more complex map. A lot of the structures I've been inside are less uniform, departing from, say, the monotony of Georgopol's symmetrical rows of copy-and-pasted apartment towers. But that complexity favors tactics like window sniping and hiding in subtle arrangements of cover to get a good shot, neither of which are my favorite moments in PUBG.

Chris: Me neither.

Evan: I'm still getting a read on how the structure of this new map affects the rhythm of migration, looting, and combat. Miramar has a few islands—two SW, and two off the east coast that aren't connected by bridge. But they're extraordinarily small. I like that boats are deemphasized (I mean, it's a desert), but I also like the way Erangel's southern island operated as a secondary region to the main zone. Don't expect to get ambushed on any bridges, because there aren't any bottlenecks here.

Chris: It'll be interesting to see what become the most favored landing spots. Right now it seems like Erangel was at the start, where if you want some quick action you land in a big town and otherwise you pick a more remote location. As the map gets more familiar to players we'll start to see what people gravitate towards. But it definitely feels more crowded in terms of buildings and looting than the first map. Remote spots still feel close to everything else.

Evan: Yeah, exactly—apart from the fringes, where the circle's least-likely to spawn, most parts of are within 500 meters of a city or major compound. On the whole, more areas seem viable. The decision to put the military base in the far NE corner of the map is a little weird to me—it means there's one route in and out of a major landmark. I guess it's at least a change from the racetrack ring of road that circles Erangel's base.

Chris: It might work well during the matches where the circle closes on the southern side, so those who land at the base to get good gear can't just camp on it for the entire round.

Evan: Chris, you were the first person outside of the studio to see Miramar when you went to South Korea to write a cover story about it a couple months ago. Has this thing changed in any noticeable ways since you saw it then?

Chris: Yeah, it's changed a lot. The build I ran around in didn't have any of the big towns, the river at the edge of the map has been turned into an ocean, and there's a lot more polish and finer detail now. It also feels like there's less cover: the early build I saw was heavily dotted with trees, but playing today I feel way more exposed than I did then when running out in the open. I'd say there's still plenty of work to do: I noticed some architectural features that didn't quite fit together in some of the buildings. But it's come a long way since I first saw it in September.

Evan: Yeah, I think the number of manhours put into this piece of geometry is evident from the moment you step on it. 

Chris: What do you think about the new vaulting system, though? I didn't use it much. Maybe I don't think to do it (except in the lobby, where that's all I do) or maybe it's not quite the game-changer I thought it would be. I've done or two jumps through a window because it's closer than the door.

Evan: It's useful in windows—I don't have to circle a house looking for the door, I can just bust through the nearest frame. With PUBG's forgiving fall damage, I can also make a panicked leap out a second or third story and survive. It's handy, and it's going to make sieges less predictable.

Chris: PUBG definitely feels less predictable now. A new map, new weapons, and new vehicles are kinda what PUBG needed for a shot in the arm. It's weird to say a game that draws almost 3 million players a day needed a makeover, but it feels exciting to me again.

Evan: If PUBG's future maps are this intricate and inspired, it'll have a long lifespan. I should note that although I've been getting terrific fps on Miramar, we did have a few server disconnects and crashes, but that's relatively expected in this testing phase. Otherwise there's no reason not to get these 14 gigs on your hard drive right now. 

Last night's Game Awards show featured all kinds of world premieres, new trailers, sponsorships, overlong speeches, enthusiastic swearing, and even a few awards amidst it all. And don't worry if you missed the show, because we've got all the winners for you right here. 

• Game of the Year – The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
• Best Game Direction – The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
• Best Narrative – What Remains of Edith Finch
• Best Art Direction – Cuphead
• Best Score/Music – Nier: Automata
• Best Audio Design – Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
• Best Performance – Melina Juergens as Senua, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
• Games for Impact – Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
• Best Ongoing Game – Overwatch
• Best Mobile Game – Monument Valley 2
• Best Handheld Game – Metroid: Samus Returns
• Best VR/AR Game – Resident Evil 7: Biohazard
• Best Action Game – Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus
• Best Action/Adventure Game – The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
• Best RPG – Persona 5
• Best Fighting Game – Injustice 2
• Best Family Game – Super Mario Odyssey
• Best Strategy Game – Mario + Rabbids Kingdom
• Battle Best Sports/Racing Game – Forza Motorsport 7
• Most Anticipated Game Presented by McCafé (ba dap bap bah bah) - The Last of Us Part 2
• Best Independent Game – Cuphead
• Best Student Game – Level Squared
• Trending Gamer – Guy Beahm, Dr. Disrespect
• Best Esports Game – Overwatch
• Best Esports Player, Presented by Omen by HP – Lee sang-hyeok, "Faker"
• Best Esports Team – Cloud9
• Best Debut Indie Game, presented by Schick Hydro – Cuphead
• Best Chinese Game - jx3 HD（《剑网3》重制版 )

You may have noticed, if you were reading closely, that the Best Multiplayer award isn't in the list. That's because, once the dust had begun to settle, people noticed that it hadn't actually been handed out.

A quick look at the Game Awards website late last night confirmed it: Voting on all six eligible games—Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, Fortnite, Call of Duty: WWII, Splatoon 2, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and Destiny 2—had closed, but none of them were indicated as the winner.

Game Awards producer and host Geoff Keighley told Polygon that the omission wasn't an oversight, but just a delay—for which he apologized—and said that a winner had in fact been selected. Odd as it all appeared, there's no real surprise which game came out on top: It was PUBG.