The man who hijacked this year’s Game of the Year acceptance speech with a bizarre tribute to former president Bill Clinton has been arrested, according to the show’s organiser.
“The individual who interrupted our Game of the Year moment has been arrested,” Geoff Keighley wrote in a tweet that has been liked more than 200,000 times.
The bizarre moment occurred at the tail end of the show, after nearly four hours of problem-free action. When FromSoftware’s Elden Ring won the top prize of the night, the unnamed man appeared to join the crew onstage, arriving from a different part of the auditorium without being detected.
After standing awkwardly alongside the actual FromSoftware team, while Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki gave his acceptance speech, the interloper grabbed the microphone during the applause to add his own addition to the record.
Security pulls kid ranting about Bill Clinton off stage #gameawards pic.twitter.com/T7Li4nfbuA
— Brennan Murphy (@brenonade) December 9, 2022
“Hey Martin, 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,” he said.
“Thank you, everybody,” he added to a polite, if confused, ripple of applause before the music played him and the genuine awardwinners off the stage. It looks like security was already making a beeline for him and he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to say much more in any case.
“All right, well… an eventful evening,” a flustered-looking Keighley said upon returning to the stage, before congratulating the actual winners and saying how much he was looking forward to 2023, which will be the tenth anniversary of The Game Awards.
The whole saga adds a mild tarnish to what was otherwise an excellent night for FromSoftware, with Elden Ring picking up four awards in the seven categories in which it was nominated.
The Standard also gave the game the top award in our own game of the year 2022 picks.
