Seven months after launching into a genre crowded with competition and skepticism, ARC Raiders now has a Game of the Year award to its name. Embark Studios’ extraction shooter swept the 2026 Nordic Game Awards, held on May 28 at Slagthuset in Malmö, Sweden during the NG26 Spring conference — the largest game development conference in Northern Europe — and walked away with three of the seven awards handed out on the night.
The night’s big winner was ARC Raiders by Embark Studios, taking home Nordic Game of the Year as well as Best Audio and Best Technology awards. For a game that launched in October 2025, sold over 14 million copies, and has been steadily building one of the most passionate player communities in the extraction shooter genre, the recognition feels less like a surprise and more like a long time coming.
Why This GOTY Win Matters More Than It Might Seem
Here’s the context that makes this win meaningful beyond the hardware itself: many fans were disappointed that ARC Raiders did not win Game of the Year at any major award ceremony, as the game was widely regarded as one of the best extraction shooters in recent years. The 2025 Game Awards — the biggest night on the industry calendar — gave ARC Raiders the Best Multiplayer Game award, which is a real and significant recognition. But the top prize went elsewhere, and a vocal portion of the community felt the game deserved more.
The Nordic Game Awards are a different kind of ceremony. The judging panel comprises game developer associations from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, responsible for selecting nominees and evaluating entries. This is a jury of industry peers from within the game development ecosystem — developers and producers who understand what goes into making something like ARC Raiders technically and creatively. Winning GOTY in that room, especially against a strong field that included Battlefield 6 (which was nominated in three categories and left empty-handed), carries a different kind of weight than a public vote.
The Full 2026 Nordic Game Awards Winners List
- Nordic Game of the Year: ARC Raiders — Embark Studios (Sweden)
- Best Technology: ARC Raiders — Embark Studios (Sweden)
- Best Audio: ARC Raiders — Embark Studios (Sweden)
- Best Art: The Midnight Walk — MoonHood (Sweden)
- Best Game Design: Split Fiction — Hazelight Studios (Sweden)
- Best Fun for Everyone: LEGO Voyagers — Light Brick Studio (Denmark)
- Best Debut: Discounty — Crinkle Cut Games (Denmark)
Swedish studios absolutely dominated. Sweden accounted for five of the seven categories — ARC Raiders with three, Hazelight’s Split Fiction with Best Game Design, and MoonHood’s The Midnight Walk with Best Art. Denmark took the remaining two with LEGO Voyagers and Discounty.
Two additional recognitions worth noting: the People’s Choice Award went to Lootbound from Artdock Games, the organizers paused to honor Ukrainian studios which drew a standing ovation from the audience, and audio designer Ari Pulkkinen was elevated to legendary status. The evening was hosted by Danish actor Magnus Bruun, known for his role in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
A Closer Look at the Other Big Winners
The Midnight Walk — Best Art
MoonHood’s claymation dark fantasy adventure took home the Best Art award, and it’s a deserved recognition. The Midnight Walk is one of the most visually distinctive games released in recent memory — a hand-sculpted stop-motion aesthetic rendered in real-time that looks like a Tim Burton dream sequence brought to interactive life. The game left a strong impression with its unique aesthetics, dreamlike atmosphere, and artistic direction. For a smaller studio going up against technically massive productions, winning on pure visual identity is a genuine achievement.
Split Fiction — Best Game Design
Hazelight Studios winning Best Game Design for Split Fiction is another recognition that the co-op game community has been cheering since launch. Josef Fares and his team have built a reputation for co-op games that treat the two-player format as a creative constraint to work around rather than a limitation to apologize for, and Split Fiction apparently pushed that philosophy further than It Takes Two did. Winning in a design-specific category at a peer-voted awards ceremony is a meaningful signal about how the wider developer community views what Hazelight accomplished.
Discounty — Best Debut
Crinkle Cut Games’ Discounty winning Best Debut continues a trend of narrative-driven management sims punching well above their weight in award conversations. The supermarket management game earned attention for combining genuinely interesting story beats with mechanical depth that’s usually reserved for games with much larger budgets. A Best Debut win at a regional ceremony judged by industry peers is an excellent foundation for whatever the studio does next.
ARC Raiders’ Full Award Season — From Launch to GOTY
To appreciate how unusual ARC Raiders’ award trajectory has been, here’s the full picture of what Embark has accumulated since October 2025:
- December 2025 — The Game Awards: Best Multiplayer Game
- January 2026 — Steam Awards: Most Innovative Gameplay (user-voted)
- February 2026 — D.I.C.E. Awards: Online Game of the Year
- March 2026 — BAFTA Game Awards: Multiplayer
- May 2026 — Nordic Game Awards: Nordic GOTY, Best Technology, Best Audio
That’s five separate award ceremonies across seven months, covering both peer-judged industry awards and user-voted recognition. The Steam Awards win in particular is notable because it reflects what the actual player community thinks rather than what critics or industry juries decided — and a multiplayer extraction shooter winning Most Innovative Gameplay from Steam’s user base is not a small thing given how competitive that category typically is.
The Commercial Picture
Awards matter more when they’re backed by a game that’s actually being played, and ARC Raiders passes that test comfortably. Publisher Nexon’s February 2026 financial report confirmed over 14 million copies sold since launch, with Nexon describing ARC Raiders as having “exceeded expectations” in a quarter where its other titles underperformed. By comparison, another notable extraction shooter — Hunt: Showdown — took roughly five years to reach 10 million players. ARC Raiders reached comparable numbers in its first few months.
The momentum is still very much alive. As we covered recently, Embark is testing new PvE map conditions including the Rebellion Incident mode in the Chinese build, and a new content roadmap is reportedly arriving “very shortly” with more detail than previous versions. The shift from monthly updates to two major seasonal drops per year — with the first, Frozen Trail, targeting October 2026 — gives Embark the runway to build something substantial for a playerbase that’s been asking for more. The Nordic GOTY win is coming at a moment when the game’s community is genuinely engaged and hungry for the next chapter.
What the Team Said
Embark’s acceptance speech at the Nordic Game Awards didn’t lean into corporate talking points. The developer on stage was visibly emotional and kept the message focused on three things: the players, the team, and Nexon’s support. Calling it “a super amazing moment” while standing among what they described as “the best of the Nordics” captured something genuine about what this recognition means for a studio that took a significant creative risk with its debut title.
For a game that launched without a battle pass, without a season roadmap, and with a price point that the market initially questioned — and proceeded to become one of the most decorated multiplayer titles of its generation — the arc from October 2025 to this stage in Malmö is a genuinely good story.
For everything else happening in gaming this week, Twitch’s new AI stream summary feature is generating major backlash from streamers after its TwitchCon Rotterdam reveal, Nvidia is officially revealing its N1X Arm laptop chips at GTC Taipei on June 1, Bunny Guys is completely free on the Epic Games Store until June 5, and Pokemon Winds and Waves just received major story leaks covering its Champion role, Seed Pokemon, and the Netsu weather gimmick.
