The Game Awards security will be tightened to prevent another stage invasion, Geoff Keighley says

The Game Awards host and producer Geoff Keighley says security will be tightened at this year’s show to prevent another stage invasion.

Both The Game Awards 2022 and this year’s Gamescom Opening Night Live show were disrupted by unauthorised people coming onto the stage and speaking into the microphone.

The incidents have raised concerns for the safety of Keighley and the other guests who take to the stage to give and receive awards, and discuss upcoming games.

In a recent Q&A stream on Twitch, Keighley was asked if he would be taking more security measures for this year’s Game Awards to prevent a third stage invasion incident.

Keighley said he was, but didn’t want to go into specifics so that would-be invaders wouldn’t know the security plans in advance.

“Yeah, we are,” he replied. “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. It’s certainly something we’re thinking about. We appreciate the concern.

“Believe me, that’s 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. But yeah, I appreciate the concern around that.”

At The Game Awards last year, Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki‘s Game of the Year acceptance speech was followed by a bizarre moment when a member of the audience appeared to join the FromSoftware team on stage, before grabbing the mic and making references to “his orthodox Rabbi Bill Clinton.”

This was followed by a second stage invasion at Gamescom Opening Night Live in August, where Keighley was interrupted early during the show by an audience member who appeared to repeat “Bill Clinton wants to play GTA 6” several times before being removed by security.

Both incidents raised concerns about the safety of Keighley and the other people on stage, partly due to the relative ease with which these invaders got onto the stage but also how long it took for security to remove them.

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Gamescom boss says it’s prepared for security breaches like Opening Night Live stage invasion

The event’s head says he was expecting this type of incident to be attempted

In an interview with VGC shortly after the events at Gamescom Opening Night Live, Gamescom head Christian Baur explained that the safety of participants and attendees is of great importance, and that security was prepared for the possibility of a stage invasion.

““In the end it was good because the intention of the person was just something silly but, of course, if somebody with bad intentions would have tried to do the same thing, that was a big risk. And I think it’s something we have to take really seriously, and we have to think of ways we can improve security,” Baur told us.