The My Favourite Game Reader Awards · Issue VII
No juries. No advertisers. No editor shortlists. The titles you spent the most hours with this year, chosen by the readers of My Favourite Game — and decided, as ever, by the people who actually play them.
Process · Transparent by design
Every ballot is cast by a registered reader. We don't run popularity contests, we don't weight votes by account age, and we don't accept paid entries. The full rulebook is published below — the same one we publish in our editorial standards page, and the same one our publishing partners are invited to audit each December.
Voters must hold an active My Favourite Game reader account in good standing — free, and created at least 14 days before voting opens. One ballot per registered account. Business, press and developer accounts are excluded and clearly labelled in our public voter roll.
Readers nominate up to three titles per category during a 14-day nomination window in early November. The four titles with the most reader nominations in each category become the final ballot. Editors do not seed, suggest or remove nominees.
Every ballot is screened for duplicate device fingerprints, suspicious registration patterns and bulk voting. Disqualified ballots are logged, summarised in our annual transparency report, and never silently dropped. In 2023, 0.4% of submissions were removed under this policy.
Votes are counted by an independent scrutineer — in 2023 and 2024, the Manchester office of Bishop Fleming LLP — with the full results file published as a downloadable CSV on the morning of the announcement. Winners are revealed in a live editorial on The Save Point newsletter and our Discord on 16 December.
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We've deliberately kept the rules short and the process boring. The award belongs to the readers, not to the masthead — the only interesting part is the final list.
The 2025 ballot
Scan the categories, pick the title you spent the most nights with this year, and route straight to its ballot. You can vote in all four — the form is short and your choices stay editable until the window closes.
Headline award
The single title you would still recommend to a friend tomorrow morning. Open to any game released between 1 December 2024 and 30 November 2025, across every platform and every size of studio.
Open this ballot ▶
Indie spotlight
For studios under thirty full-time staff, self-published or signed to an indie label. The category that has produced our most surprising winners in three of the last four years.
Open this ballot ▶
Competitive
For live-service, PvP and competitive games that had their strongest year of community activity in 2025 — judged on player retention, patch health and grassroots scene size.
Open this ballot ▶
Community choice
Voted entirely by readers on our Discord. Covers official re-releases, fan translations, decompilation projects, and new ways to play a beloved older title in 2025.
Open this ballot ▶By the numbers
Every number below is drawn from the audited results file we publish each December. No projections, no rounded-up vanity figures — the file is the same one our scrutineer signs off on.
142,000
Votes cast in the inaugural awards
Year one, 2022 — across four categories, with a single-author team running the count by hand over a weekend.
218,000
Votes cast in the 2023 awards
A 53.5% year-on-year increase, across the same four categories and the same single-ballot-per-account rule.
32,000+
Readers in our Discord community
With dedicated channels for 180+ tracked titles and a live results-watch party on announcement night.
84,000
Subscribers to The Save Point
Our weekly newsletter, where the long-form shortlist, the voting window and the final results all land first.
Community figures are not formally audited and are reported here as self-declared monthly active counts, consistent with our editorial standards.
Voting closes 9 December, 23:59 GMT
One ballot, four categories, around four minutes. Your vote joins 200,000-odd others and decides which titles we put on the cover of our end-of-year issue.
A confirmation email and a personal link to edit your ballot until the window closes.
Early access to the long-form shortlist in The Save Point, the morning before it goes public.
An invitation to the live results show on Discord on 16 December, with the editorial team on mic.
By casting a ballot you confirm you've read our editorial standards and our reader-data policy. Voter details are processed under our UK GDPR notice and are never sold or shared with third parties.
