Overview
- Masahiro Sakurai announced at the Japan Game Awards on Wednesday that he is discontinuing The Game Designers Award because no one he vetted was willing or suitable to replace him.
- The 2026 prize went to Word Game from indie studio Team9, marking the final presentation of an award Sakurai founded in 2010 to honor gameplay innovation.
- Sakurai said originality rarely drives sales and argued that a lack of creative risk-taking could cause the industry to "slowly die," stressing why he felt the award mattered.
- He has served as head judge and personally invited other judges, a time-consuming role he said he tried for years to hand over before stopping the award.
- Coverage links the move to broader trends of bigger AAA budgets and greater publisher risk aversion while noting indie teams remain the main source of new ideas and that the award's end may reduce public recognition for experimental design.