The Game Awards 2022 was a memorable one thanks to a stage invader, Al Pacino, and Christopher Judge’s lengthy acceptance that quickly became the talk of the town. Judge’s lengthy speech also inspired a bunch of memes, where even Judge joined in to poke fun at himself. Even though the TGA organizers might not have liked the time he took, the viewers were quite happy as Steam actually gave away seven additional steam decks during his record-breaking speech.
As tweeted by TGA’s official account, Judge’s speech of 7 minutes and 59 seconds was the longest in awards show history. Thankfully, Valve was giving away Steam Decks every minute TGA was on, so the viewers were in for a treat. However, TGA has now confirmed that Valve actually gave away sever additional Steam Decks during the speech, which, if you think about it, could’ve been Kratos’ plan all along. Shame they didn't let him have that one extra second to make it eight.
Valve also gave away 171 additional Steam Decks in the second round of giveaway. This happened thanks to the overwhelming response it received during the TGA livestream. There were also Gabenists who were spamming the chat with obscure Linux commands, but apart from that everything was normal.
As for Judge’s speech, it was not only the longest in TGA history, but it is also the longest across award shows. In a follow-up tweet, TGA mentioned that the longest acceptance speech in history was by actress Greer Garson during the 1942 Oscars. If there isn’t any other award show that has an acceptance speech longer than Judge’s, this officially makes him a record-breaker. In-person attendees noted that the teleprompter urged Judge to “Wrap it up”, but once Kratos sets his mind to something, there is no stopping him.
However, Judge’s speech was not the most talked about moment at the event as a stage invader decided to crash FromSoftware’s GOTY acceptance speech for Elden Ring. The accused, Matan Even, was arrested shortly after this, and further investigation revealed that this wasn’t his first rodeo as he had crashed a World of Warcraft panel before.