Geoff Keighley has attempted to trademark “The Game Awards.”
This move could cripple independent creators and smaller outlets that run their own video game awards, like Stuttering Craig of Side Scrollers and his upcoming The Real Game Awards show.
Keighley started The Game Awards in 2014. At the time, the event celebrated gamers and the games they loved. In the decade since, it has grown into a corporate outlet for a very bloated games industry, often pushing agendas and towing shill corporate lines in an attempt to net exclusive trailers and announcements from huge studios.
The Game Awards’ winners are decided by a jury of “industry experts” (which consists of games journalists from establishment access media outlets like IGN, Polygon, Variety, and PC Gamer) along with a public vote.
However, the public vote only counts for 10% of the results while the media jury gets 90% of the vote.
Following a video by Moriarty of the ReallyCool YouTube channel back in December 2023 that exposed the voting jury, The Game Awards deleted its jury page.
In response to my video, The Game Awards has taken the unprecedented step this year of… deleting their jury page and hiding who’s involved
We have moved further away from transparency, and TGA should be ashamed https://t.co/p5q5GPHXE8
— Moriarty (@MRIXRT) November 15, 2024
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Keighley’s show even features a category called “Games for Impact,” which essentially celebrates the game that injected the most DEI that year. Keighley described it as recognizing “a thought-provoking game with a profound pro-social meaning.”
Game For Impact is one of the show’s featured awards. It gets a full presentation and acceptance speech while categories like Best Sports Game get only a passing mention.
YouTube personality SmashJT brought this issue to light in a video on his official channel simply titled, “Geoff Keighley Must be Stopped.”
Smash JT via Smash JT YouTube
“I thought this was a joke,” SmashJT said while standing on the shore of Laguna Beach, “but the Dorito Pope is actually moving forward with trying to silence any kind of opposition.”
Keighley earned the nickname “Dorito Pope” during an interview with LevelSave.com back in 2012. The interview featured excessive advertising for Doritos and Mountain Dew, which led to gamers granting him the dubious moniker.
A screenshot of an interview in which gamers dubbed Geoff Keighley the “Dorito Pope” – YouTube, LevelSave
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Moriarty highlighted Keighley’s trademark plot on X.
Geoff Keighley is attempting to trademark “Game Awards” with the US Patent Office, meaning no one else will be able to host an awards show with the words “Game Awards” in it
Worse, he’s emailing fans and requesting they file with the USPTO on his behalf pic.twitter.com/O9EnFI0aWe
— Moriarty (@MRIXRT) November 15, 2024
“Geoff Keighley is attempting to trademark ‘Game Awards’ with the US Patent Office,” he said in his initial post, which also featured screenshots of the filing. “Meaning no one else will be able to host an awards show with the words ‘Game Awards’ in it.”
This move by Keighley would be a direct threat to Stuttering Craig of SideScrollers and his #TakeGamesBack initiative. Craig announced plans last spring for a new gaming awards show called The Real Game Awards, where the players vote on winners instead of gaming journalists.
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“Year after year, over and over again after The Game Awards people say there has to be a real award show for gamers,” Stuttering Craig said in his official announcement back in March. “Well, let’s do it!”
If Keighley succeeds in his attempt to patent The Game Awards, he’d be able to bring legal action down on not just Craig, but any other organization that holds an awards show with “game awards” in their title or description.
A screenshot of Al Pacino presenting at The Game Awards 2022 – YouTube, TheGameAwards
Keighley will likely encounter resistance to this filing, since “game awards” is such a broad term. The US patent office has rules against trademarking common use language. However, many worry that he might use his wealth and influence to find a loophole and ultimately succeed.
“It’s like the most generic terminology about an award show you could ever have in your life,” Smash JT said. “And he’s trying to patent this! And if he gets the right people in charge that look at it, they could potentially approve it and then anybody trying to say anything about their own game awards would be infringing on his copyright.”
Looks like I need to trademark the word “real” soon so nobody can use the word “real” ever… for anything. https://t.co/lcv5hL0bHa
— Stuttering Craig (Official) (@StutteringCraig) November 16, 2024
“Looks like I need to trademark the word ‘real’ soon,” Craig said in response, “so nobody can use the word ‘real’ ever… for anything.”
Do you think Geoff Keighley will ultimately trademark The Game Awards? Does the gaming industry need an alternative award show controlled by the players? Sound off an let us know!
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