In 2022,Elden Ring won Game of the Year, but the acceptance speech washijacked at the last minute by a stage invaderwho ‘nominated’ his “Orthodox rabbi Bill Clinton”. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of Geoff Keighley’s events being interrupted. Earlier this year, during Gamescom Opening Night Live, a member of the stage ran up to Keighley andstarted yelling about Clinton wanting GTA 6.

As reported byVGC, Keighley and the event organisers are pushing to ensure it doesn’t happen again on December 7 during 2023’s TGA. “We don’t want to talk about that stuff too publicly, just because it’s security. We definitely have plans and we’re trying to do all we can to keep me safe, but also everyone watching the show, the audience, people participating in the show, and everything.”

[Stage invasions are] something that is top of mind for us, but we also want to put on a great show that celebrates these games, and celebrates our love of video games, so that’s an important thing to keep in mind as well.

Both stage invaders were luckily little more than trolls, but it’s a safety concern for those on stage if people can get on so easily and stick around for so long. Keighley hasn’t divulged the extent of the ramped-up security this year, no doubt to keep a tighter ship, but hopefully, these measures prevent another incident.

For context, the first stage invader to crash a Keighley event last year didn’t show up at the last minute. He hung around behind Hidetaka Miyazaki during his acceptance speech. When Miyazaki and other FromSoftware developers started to leave the stage, the invader walked up to the mic and began his rant. He was there the whole time, with many watching from the audience confused as to who he was. Since that night,TGA has worked to scrub him out of photos.

The stage invader during Gamescom was taken away by security much faster, but he was still able to get on stage close to Keighley and interrupt him to rant about Clinton and GTA 6.

Both stage invaders had already built up a reputation prior to these events. Matan Even, who crashed the Elden Ring GOTY acceptance speech, hadpreviously crashed a World of Warcraft panel. The Gamescom stage invader, meanwhile, had interrupted a live German TV show two days prior, running in front of the camera while yelling, “Wo ist GTA 6?” (where is GTA 6?).

Hopefully, things run a little smoother this time. As Gamescom head Christian Baur told VGC, “If somebody with bad intentions would have tried to do the same thing, that was a big risk.”