Crimson Desert wins PC Game of the Year at the 2026 Golden Joystick Awards, taking 18% of the player vote

Crimson Desert just took PC Game of the Year. The 44th Golden Joystick Awards, held today in London, handed Pearl Abyss’s open-world action game the public-voted PC prize, the official Golden Joysticks account announced. PC Gamer and the GamesRadar+ winners list confirmed the result. That’s a nice payoff after fans were upset the game missed the Console Game of the Year shortlist last month, then made the Ultimate Game of the Year shortlist.

How the vote went. According to TheGamer’s full tally and esports.ru, Crimson Desert led the player vote with 18%, ahead of The Blood of Dawnwalker at 14% and Meccha Chameleon at 13%. The rest of the PC Game of the Year field was Big Walk, Escape from Tarkov, Esoteric Ebb, Mewgenics, Order of the Sinking Star, STAR WARS Zero Company and Valheim.

Pearl Abyss’s official Crimson Desert account thanked players this afternoon: “Your support made this possible. We couldn’t have done it without you.”

The rest of the night. Resident Evil Requiem won Ultimate Game of the Year, plus Console Game of the Year, Best Game Trailer and Best Lead Performer, PC Gamer reports. Crimson Desert still finished close on the big prize: TheGamer has it third in Ultimate Game of the Year with 15%, just behind Resident Evil Requiem at 17% and Phantom Blade Zero at 16%. It also came second in Best Soundtrack with 23%, behind Dispatch at 26%. Meccha Chameleon was the night’s other big winner, taking four awards.

The year behind the win. Crimson Desert launched on March 19 and passed 6 million copies sold worldwide in June, 83 days after release. In July it won Best Technical Innovation at the UK’s Develop:Star Awards, a nod to Pearl Abyss’s in-house BlackSpace Engine, per Games Press. And it’s not done with awards season. Pearl Abyss said this week that the game is nominated for the Grand Prize, Popularity Game Award and Popular Voice Actor Award at the 2026 Korea Game Awards. That ceremony is November 18 at BEXCO in Busan, Inven Global reports.

PPR take: This is the one the players could actually swing, and they did. We said as much when the console shortlist left Crimson Desert out, and the PC vote is the answer. A year of big updates, a 6 million-selling new IP, and a third-place finish in Ultimate Game of the Year that’s only two points off the top. That’s a well-earned trophy, and Busan is next.