Split Fiction director says he'd "really appreciate" winning GOTY again, but if GTA 6 comes out in 2025 "it's going to be really tough" and he's fine with that because he's "a huge fan"

The two characters in Split Fiction holding their hands up in surrender in a futuristic city.

Split Fiction director and Hazelight Studios founder Josef Fares is hoping he wins Game of the Year again in 2025, but he knows he's got some stiff competition if GTA 6 releases this year as planned.

In a Fall Damage video where Fares responds to YouTube comments (timestamped here), he's shown one that predicts Split Fiction will be this year's Game of the Year. Hazelight took home the big award back in 2021 for the co-op romp It Takes Two, but that game didn't have one of the most highly anticipated releases of all time to contend with.

"I would really appreciate if we won Game of the Year again, but on the other hand, I'm a huge fan of GTA. I think if that comes out it's gonna be really tough, and I want it to come out because I'm a huge fan."

Split Fiction is currently the highest rated game of 2025, beating out other acclaimed titles like Monster Hunter Wilds and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 with a highly impressive 91 Metascore.

GTA 6, meanwhile, is still scheduled to release this fall, and as Fares alluded, if it does there's a good chance it'll sweep all of the awards shows at the end of the year. That said, the boss of Rockstar's parent company Take-Two, Strauss Zelnick, said as recently as February that there's "always a risk of slippage" in reference to GTA 6's release.

Split Fiction director Josef Fares says Ubisoft is "struggling" and should make a co-op Splinter Cell game: "Don't chicken out to do single-player; just say this is split-screen only."