Why ignoring mobile gaming at the world’s biggest awards shows matters

The lack of recognition of mobile games at prestigious awards shows like The Game Awards and the BAFTAs is a debate that runs every year.

The situation doesn’t seem to be improving. Despite mobile being the platform of choice for the largest gaming audience and the world’s most played titles, mobile games don’t get the same love that their PC and console counterparts do.

At last night’s The Game Awards, Umamusume: Pretty Derby took the accolade for Best Mobile Game. Despite launching in 2021, it wasn’t available to global markets until its international launch this year.

With respect to the finalists and the teams behind them, some of the other nominees in the category raised an eyebrow. Bungie and Netease’s Destiny: Rising has had a slow start since launch and appears to be performing worse with each passing month. Will it stay live on the market for another year? The Sonic Rumble development team, meanwhile, has itself said the title needs work.

Kuro Games’ Wuthering Waves appears to fall outside the eligibility period with its May 2024 release date, though perhaps that makes up for its lack of recognition at last year’s show. Meanwhile Persona 5: The Phantom X hasn’t hit the heights of other mobile game launches in the past year.

There was little room for mobile elsewhere - though surprisingly, Wuthering Waves did bag the accolade for Players’ Voice ahead of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Dispatch, Genshin Impact, Hollow Knight: Silksong. Perhaps it’s a telling vote of how players actually feel about mobile (and Kuro Games’ ability to galvanise its community to vote). Mobile Legends, meanwhile, was in the running for Best Esports Game.

As I said on the Week in Mobile Games podcast, clearly The Game Awards is not geared for mobile audiences. It’s built largely as a marketing vehicle for big double-A and triple-A games.

And as our news editor Aaron noted, the mobile nominees have the look of more typical PC/console games, perhaps making them more palatable. No room, then, for games like Delta Force, Kingshot, Monument Valley 3, Color Block Jam, Archero 2, Disney Solitaire, and others.

Two sides of the story

Also this week, The 2026 BAFTA Games Awards longlist was revealed, with 64 titles making the longlist. Of those, three games are available on mobile: Is This Seat Taken?, Monument Valley 3, and Vampire Survivors. What else do they have in common? They are available on other platforms.

On the face of it, that’s another snub for mobile games. And with the lack of a mobile category now, there seems little way in for mobile.

However, developers and publishers could perhaps take the partial ‘blame’ for this. BAFTA asks developers to lobby, and if mobile games aren’t nominated, then there can be few complaints about making the longlist.

BAFTA takes fees for submissions. It charges £264 (including VAT) for entries submitted before September 11th or within 30 days of a game’s release. If an entry is submitted later than within 30 days, the cost rises to £528.

The BAFTA rules and guidelines can be found here.

Industry bias

Midjiwan CEO Christian Lövstedt, who runs the studio behind the popular mobile title Battle of Polytopia, penned an open letter titled “the games industry is biased. It is time to fix that”.

He claimed that mobile has found itself out of the limelight at awards shows because it is “perceived by too many as a world of predatory monetisation and low quality”.

“I have previously called this all out myself, and pushed for change in the mobile sector,” wrote Lövstedt.

“However, just because games like that do exist in the mobile market, it should not diminish the achievements of the market's best games - it perhaps makes them more impressive. And if we’re honest with ourselves, there are triple-A industry darlings crammed with the same monetisation mechanics.”

He added: “When BAFTA announced that it would be dropping the platform specific awards, it gave me hope for unity in the industry. Unfortunately, it resulted in mobile games being almost entirely ignored. At the 2025 BAFTA Games Awards, not one mobile-first or mobile-exclusive title reached the nominations list for any category.”

Lövstedt said awards and media shape the narrative of what counts as culturally or creatively valuable. 

“When mobile is excluded, we send a message to developers, investors, and publishers that mobile is not a place for ambition or artistry. That narrative influences hiring, funding, and who gets the spotlight on stage.

“If we celebrate innovation, we should celebrate it everywhere.”

He concluded: “The industry has a choice. Acknowledge its largest and most creative platform or continue rewarding a shrinking definition of what counts as ‘real gaming’.”

I don’t agree with all of Lövstedt’s points. I don’t think winning an award is ever going to truly impact a mobile game’s success or whether a developer gets investment - that’s not how the ecosystem has built itself. It all runs off the engine of user acquisition.

But mobile game developers that make quality titles deserve to be recognised alongside their industry peers and not shunned. As it stands right now, the wider industry looks stuck in the past.

See mobile games get some recognition at the 12th Pocket Gamer Awards. The winners will be announced in January 2026.

You can also check out the winners of the industry-voted Pocket Gamer Mobile Games Awards 2025 here.