Holy cow, Germany hands out serious cash to its homegrown game award winners: Signalis won €60,000 for 'Best Debut Game'

pcgamer.com:

I'm sure a trophy from The Game Awards is a big deal for the winning developers, but is it better than cold, hard cash? That's what winners of Germany's annual Computer Game Awards go home with in the form of a national endowment, and I think I might take that over a handshake with Geoff Keighley.

This year's Deutscher Computerspielpreis (DCP), as the event is known in its native tongue, took place on May 11 in front of a live audience for the first time since 2019. «Especially this year, the creative minds behind the games deserved this big stage, because the award-winning games were created under the difficult conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic,» German Games Industry Association managin director Felix Falk said.

«Outstanding games have been created that are attracting a lot of attention in Germany and abroad. This underlines Germany's enormous potential as a great spot for game development. We congratulate all the winners of the German Computer Game Awards 2023.»

The top prize at this year's event went to the retro-RPG Chained Echoes(opens in new tab), developed by Matthias Linda and published by Deck13, which earned a €100,000 ($109,000) «endowment» for Best German Game. Chained Echoes claimed another €25,000 for being nominated in the Best Debut category. The brilliant survival horror game Signalis(opens in new tab) won the Best Debut category and its €60,000 prize, along with €40,000 for Best Audio Design and €30,000 for a Best German Game nomination.

It might seem odd to throw around that kind of prize money at an industry awards event—you don't see Geoff Keighley cutting cheques for Hideo Kojima, after all—but the event is sponsored by Germany's federal government as part of its strategy to support and enhance