The Game Awards 2022 ended in bizarre fashion when an individual snuck on stage and made reference to former US president Bill Clinton. The Game Awards 2022 have concluded, with Elden Ring taking home the coveted Game of the Year award and Geoff Keighley officially confirming that the big show will be back in 2023.
The Game Awards 2022 saw numerous games take home awards, with four titles winning multiple awards throughout the event. By the time The Game Awards 2022 reached its conclusion, Stray and Final Fantasy 14 had two awards, Elden Ring took home four awards, and God of War Ragnarok managed to win an impressive six awards, though fell short of winning the overall Game of the Year title. However, a strange moment at the end of the show seems to be getting talked about more than any of the awards that were handed out at the event.
Shortly after Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki finished his Game of the Year acceptance speech and music started playing to close out the show, an unknown individual approached the microphone. This person walked on stage with the FromSoftware crew and could be spotted in the background during the acceptance speech, but it seemed like neither the Elden Ring developers nor presenter Josef Fares knew who he was. He said, "You know, real quick, I want to thank everybody and say that I think I want to nominate this award to my reformed orthodox rabbi Bill Clinton. Thank you everybody."
Nothing is known about this individual at the time of this writing, but one would assume that they are involved in the gaming industry in some capacity to have been able to sneak on stage so easily. Then again, it's possible they have no ties to the gaming industry at all, though then it's even stranger that they managed to get on stage. They appeared to be escorted off-stage by security after making their comments, and they have since been arrested, according to a tweet by Game Awards host Geoff Keighley. Keighley stopped short of revealing the identity of the person, but information on that front will likely come to light in the days ahead.
This was easily one of the strangest things to happen at The Game Awards, and it's certainly the weirdest thing to happen at the show this year. It unfortunately has somewhat overshadowed the heartfelt acceptance speech that Miyazaki gave, as much of the talk online is focused on the incident instead of Elden Ring winning Game of the Year, so hopefully future Game Awards events will take measures to make sure this doesn't happen again.