Arc Raiders Excluded From GOTY Category of The Game Awards, Streamer xQc Says AI Is the Reason

Arc Raiders has missed out on a Game of the Year nomination at The Game Awards 2025, and streamer Felix ‘xQc’ Lengyel believes its use of AI is to blame.

xQc claims Arc Raiders’ AI tech led to its TGA 2025 GOTY snub despite critical acclaim. | Image via X

Every year, The Game Awards sparks heated debates about which titles deserve recognition, and this year is no different. While fans celebrated nominations for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Hades II, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, Donkey Kong Bananza, Hollow Knight: Silksong, and Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, many were puzzled by the absence of Arc Raiders from the GOTY list.

The extraction shooter from Embark Studios has been one of the most critically acclaimed releases of 2025, yet it only secured a spot in the Best Multiplayer Game category.

That decision didn’t sit well with the community. Shroud went as far as calling the awards “rigged,” while xQc offered a more specific theory. In a post on X dated November 19, he suggested that Arc Raiders’ reliance on AI technology may have influenced the jury’s decision. “I think The Game Awards are trying to avoid alienating their viewerbase by not including Arc Raiders in a few categories because of the ‘AI’ controversy,” he wrote.

For context, Arc Raiders uses two forms of AI. The first is machine learning, which allows robotic enemies to adapt to player actions. The second, and more controversial, is text‑to‑speech (TTS) voice lines generated from recordings of real actors. Embark Studios’ CCO Stefan Strandberg defended the practice in an interview with Eurogamer, explaining that TTS helps expand the game’s scope in areas where repetitive dialogue might otherwise burden voice talent. He stressed that the game does not use generative AI, but the debate hasn’t gone away.