Game of the Year 2025 – Best Multiplayer Game

Stefan L 20/12/25 Comments Closed

Game of the Year 2025 – Best Multiplayer header

2025 has been a huge year for multiplayer gaming. From big budget sequels in major franchises, to emerging genres like the extraction shooter breaking into the mainstream, and smaller, more experimental indie games, there’s been a little bit of everything for everyone to enjoy – so long as you enjoy other people, I guess.

So, of all the headline-grabbing multiplayer games, both expected and unexpected, which came out on top?

When Lethal Company exploded in popularity back in 2023, it triggered a major shift in the culture around multiplayer gaming – competitive argument-simulators like Jackbox and Among Us remain popular, but a new crop of games focused on chaotic co-op shenanigans emerged out of the woodwork. PEAK represents not only the best of that new genre we playfully refer to as “friendslop” – it represents the most fun you can have with a new multiplayer game this year, and it’s a major achievement in online gaming.

The concept is simple: it’s a co-op game about climbing, and if you and your three friends have to try to scale the massive multi-biome summit laid out before you. Fail to do so and your run is over. The fluid, physics-based absurdity of the game generates a million laughs a minute, but even in downtime and defeat there’s fun to be had. The game smartly lets dead players not just spectate the remaining crew, but float around as adorable ghosts, berate the surviving climbers, and even get in their face and distract them a little bit. It’s a wonderful blend of friendsloppy chaos and genuinely well-designed systems that has made it the best multiplayer that money can buy in 2025.

– Miguel

Mario Kart World – Runner Up

How do you follow up from near perfection? It’s a problem that you could argue Nintendo has faced many times over the decades, but was definitely true for creating a sequel to Mario Kart 8. That kart racer had sat atop the genre for a decade, presiding over both Wii U and Nintendo Switch as the best-selling game, and being exceptionally well supported with DLC through the years. So how do you top that? Well, you don’t, really. You turn right and just go for a drive through the countryside for a while.

Going open world is a huge part of what makes Mario Kart World feel new and different. In addition to having the many themed race circuits, they’re all joined up by a network of roads and environments that you can also race through – OK, that you have to race through because Nintendo decided to put really emphasise this. With larger lobbies, wider roads and more items, Mario Kart World is even more of a light party game than before. But then there’s the Knockout Tour, the Battle Royale racing mode that features huge map-wide races, eliminates players at regular intervals, and builds up to a real pressure moment to survive to the very end.

It’s a lot of chaotic fun, perhaps a touch too chaotic, and with Nintendo’s typical quirks like not letting you party up for matchmaking (that they’ve thankfully tweaked in patches), but it remains an essential purchase for any Nintendo Switch 2 owner.

Battlefield 6 – Runner Up

2025 was the year that Battlefield finally, well and truly, stuck it to Call of Duty. EA placed a huge bet in assembling a collective Battlefield Studios around DICE, and while some parts of Battlefield 6 have been a miss, the core multiplayer brings back a lot of the tone, feel and action that defined this series through the early 2010s. 64-player matches, defined classes, vehicular warfare are all here, and it’s great to get back to basics alongside some new and inventive game modes.

Through launch and its first season, the main complaints to lodge against Battlefield 6 have been a lack of large-scale maps that defined this franchise, and Battlefield Studios’ annoying tinkering to shorten match lengths and reduce player counts, and (of course) some rather silly looking skins in the battle pass, and then backtrack when the community complains that this is stupid and not what they want. But the core is still there, and we hope that 2026 sees Battlefield Studios build and grow around that.

Honourable Mentions (in alphabetical order)

Are you an avid multiplayer gamer? Was it the ‘friendslop’ of 2025 or the bigger budget games that really worked for you this year? Either way, come back tomorrow for another award. Cheerio!

Want to catch up on all the other GOTY 2025 awards? Here’s our full list of gongs, starting with the top prize!