Ex-Rockstar Animator Says Crimson Desert Could Beat GTA 6 for Game of the Year

Mike York, a former senior Rockstar Games animator with credits spanning Grand Theft Auto V, Red Dead Redemption 2, God of War Ragnarok, Uncharted 2, and Mortal Kombat 11, came out swinging about Pearl Abyss' Crimson Desert on his YouTube channel York Street Gaming, calling it a legitimate Game of the Year contender for 2026. The catch: GTA 6 would have to stumble badly for it to happen.

York made the comments after analyzing Crimson Desert's features overview video titled "Life in Pywell," one of several deep dives he ran on the game before its March 19 release. With roughly 20 years of animation experience, he knows what goes into building a world at this scale, and what he saw impressed him.

"This could become Game of the Year," York said. "And the reason for that is because of how much you can get lost in this game." He compared the experience directly to Red Dead Redemption 2, suggesting players could sink "100s if not 1,000s of hours" into Crimson Desert and still have content left. He praised specific elements: environmental physics, combat systems, traversal variety, and the density of world-building. "This game has a ton of potential," he added. "And it really is a contender when it comes to all the cool stuff that this game has to offer."

But York was equally clear about the obstacle. "It would have to beat out GTA 6, right? If it gets released this year, and if GTA 6 gets released this year, they [Rockstar] would have to probably drop the ball, and the story would have to be crap." He went further, saying there would need to be "a reason for people to hate" GTA 6 for Crimson Desert to genuinely claim the top prize. Strip away that competition, though, and his assessment shifts: "If GTA 6 wasn't here at all this year, Crimson Desert would take probably Game of the Year."

The timing makes this more than a hypothetical. Crimson Desert launched March 19, while GTA 6 is still targeting a November release window, meaning both titles are realistically competing in the same awards cycle. That almost never happens with games at this scale. Pearl Abyss, for its part, previously admitted the game was announced "too early" and spent years trying to live up to that early promise.

GTA 6 carries its own complications. The game has already been delayed twice, and journalist Jason Schreier has reported it may not even be content complete yet, making another delay at least a non-zero possibility.

Rockstar's track record makes York's scenario a tough sell. Neither GTA V nor RDR2 were flawless at launch, but both landed as cultural events that dominated their release years. The astronomical expectations surrounding GTA 6, built over more than a decade of anticipation, give Rockstar a kind of cultural gravity that Crimson Desert would have to actively overcome rather than simply match.

York himself was careful not to oversell his own take. His read is grounded in features videos and technical analysis, not a finished playthrough, and he acknowledged real uncertainty about how the story and systems will come together as a whole. What he is saying is that Crimson Desert is good enough to win in almost any other year. Whether 2026 turns out to be that year depends entirely on what Rockstar delivers in November.