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Life is Strange wins Social Impact Award at 2025 GDC; No one shows up to collect it

Despite some harsh criticism, Life is Strange won the Social Impact Award at GDC 2025, however, no one was there to collect it as people from studio were already laid off

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Mayank
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Life is Strange Double Exposure

The 2025 Game Developers Choice Awards at GDC recently concluded and Life is Strange managed to win the Social Impact award. The sad part was that no one was there to collect it because everyone was let go. Life is Strange saw a rough launch and the development team behind the game faced even rougher times with multiple rounds of layoffs.

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‘Everyone’ is a little exaggerated here, but the development studio faced several lay offs as the game failed to meet the expectations of Square Enix. There are reports that the game was a big loss for Square as per their recent financial results.

“It’s fitting that nobody was there to accept the GDCA award that Double Exposure won, because we all got laid off lol. A bunch of us are at GDC, but we didn’t know we were even nominated so nobody was prepared to accept anything,” former Deck Nine narrative designer ‪Elizabeth Ballou wrote on social media.

Tough times for game developers

Life is Strange is now a prime example of how a popular franchise can face uncertainty in the current gaming industry. Players were quite hyped to see the old protagonist back but the deeper they went into the game, the more complaints started emerging for weak story and gameplay.

The ultimate result of failure seems to be layoffs which are happening quite frequently all around, mostly across big studios that spent hundreds of millions making the game, only for it to shut down or have weak sales. This type of uncertainty also doesn’t let the games get creative and stick to a single/safer formula.

Also Read:Following poor launch of Life is Strange, Square Enix is asking for feedback

Here are all the winners of the 2025 Game Developers Choice Awards

On the other hand, we can celebrate the ones that make it to the top, and the superhit indie roguelike card game from last year ‘Balatro’ finally saw justice by winning Game of the Year. The game also won multiple other awards revealing how popular it was among the developers. Below are the winners for all categories -

  • Game of the Year - Balatro (LocalThunk / Playstack)
  • Best Narrative - Metaphor: ReFantazio (ATLUS / SEGA / Studio Zero)
  • Innovation Award - Balatro (LocalThunk / Playstack)
  • Best Design - Balatro (LocalThunk / Playstack)
  • Best Debut - Balatro (LocalThunk / Playstack)
  • Best Audio - Astro Bot (Team ASOBI / Sony Interactive Entertainment)
  • Best Technology - Astro Bot (Team ASOBI / Sony Interactive Entertainment)
  • Social Impact - Life is Strange: Double Exposure (Deck Nine Games / Square Enix)
  • Best Visual Art - Black Myth: Wukong (Game Science)