The Million-Dollar Bet on the Eve of the TGA Awards: Who Predicted Game of the Year?

Today, the highly anticipated TGA (The Game Awards) ceremony finally came to a close.

Let's jump back 3 hours to when the awards ceremony ended. At that time, the "Best Indie Game" award had just been given to the popular title "Light and Shadow: Expedition 33," but this made many fans worried: never before had a game won both "Best Indie Game" and "Game of the Year (GOTY)" awards at the TGA.

As a popular title on GOTY, "Light and Shadow" now has the responsibility of breaking the curse that has plagued TGA since its inception and creating an unprecedented moment in the gaming industry.

Just as everyone was filled with anxiety, a mysterious individual registered an account on a "prediction market" platform that seemed to have nothing to do with the gaming industry and deposited $10,000. He found the topic "Will Light & Shadow win the 2025 GOTY?" on the platform and bet all of his newly deposited $10,000 on "yes".

At this point, the price for "yes," representing the probability of the topic occurring, is $0.98 per share. This means that even if "Light and Shadow" does indeed make history in the gaming industry by winning two awards, his $10,000 bet will only yield a profit of less than $200. However, if "Light and Shadow" fails to break the TGA curse, the probability of this topic will instantly become 0, meaning his newly invested $10,000 will be wiped out.

What kind of die-hard fan of "Light and Shadow" would take such a reckless risk? And how does the prediction market attract gamers from all over the world to guess the favorites to win in advance?

The script was "pre-selected"

Back on October 30th, a month and a half before the awards ceremony, the prediction market Polymarket launched a topic for "Game of the Year 2025." From the outset, *Light & Shadow*'s chances of winning were firmly above 80%, while the chances of other highly anticipated AAA titles were all suppressed to below 10%. Since such a one-sided situation usually only occurs in events where the outcome is already a foregone conclusion, this anomaly made many traders sense something unusual: this wasn't just optimism, it was conviction.

Among these traders with a "conviction-based" attitude, several exhibited remarkably consistent trading styles. DieselDiesel, trumpnogo, and kasae all bet on "Light and Shadow winning TGA 2025 GOTY" with an approximately 85% probability, and their bets exceeded their usual amounts by tens or even hundreds of times. This highly concentrated and abnormal betting behavior exposed them to enormous risks: if "Light and Shadow" ultimately did not win, they would not only have to give up all their past profits but also suffer huge losses.

As time went on and the odds of "Light and Shadow" winning an award increased, they did not sell any of their holdings for profit. Even three hours before the awards were announced, after the "Best Indie Game" award had already been announced, they remained unmoved, as if they had foreseen the future, gambling their entire account balance with the mysterious person mentioned at the beginning of this article for a final, small profit.

The historic award ceremony and the realization of the inside story

Amidst doubts and anxieties, TGA, as if following a script orchestrated by these traders more than a month prior, dispelled the final suspense: the highly anticipated "Light & Shadow," having already won the "Best Independent Game" award, broke the historical curse and won the Game of the Year award.

While players on one side cheered, the final mystery was revealed in the prediction market on the other: three traders who had predicted "Light and Shadow" would win a prize a month ago were proven to be "prophetic," reaping huge profits.

Diesel profited $5,357 in this event, representing 176% of all his other trading profits;

Trumpnogo profited $2,958 in this event, accounting for 62% of his total trading profits;

Kasae profited $1,658 in this event, representing 220% of his profits from all other trades.

The mysterious person we mentioned at the beginning (bobo9997) won "up to" $200 with a $10,000 investment because he was convinced that "Light and Shadow will make history".

Even those who can predict the future need to eat, right?

The most noteworthy commonality among these four traders is that, when many players questioned whether Light and Shadow could break the historical curse, they "risked losing" nearly $100,000 in positions to "gamble" that this historic moment would occur, and the combined profit from this "gamble" was less than $2,000.

Now, let's assume these "prophet" individuals are TGA vote counting auditors. For insiders earning $100,000 a year, monetizing their information in the traditional way would require selling their inside information to media outlets or other platforms, but this carries various potential fines, dismissals, and even imprisonment.

However, with the emergence of prediction markets, they were able to anonymously exchange information asymmetry for real money equivalent to one to three months of their disposable income.

When we consider the perspective of insiders who assume they already knew the outcome, everything becomes clear: with 100% certainty that "Light and Shadow" would be GOTY, their final "bet" was simply trading an hour of waiting time before the awards ceremony for a seemingly high-risk but actually unpredictable $2,000 profit.

This kind of seemingly high-risk, but ultimately unpredictable, money-making "bet" was almost impossible to find before the emergence of platforms like prediction markets.

However, with the rise of Polymarket, how many people can resist turning information into real money anonymously?