The Game Awards 2022 came to a dramatic end when an audience member managed to sneak on stage alongside Elden Ring developers who were accepting their win for Game of the Year. As soon as the devs were finished talking, the stage invader walked over to the mic and gave a bizarre shout-out to his “Reformed Orthodox rabbi, Bill Clinton.”
The hijacker was quickly identified as Matan Even, described as being 15 years old at the time and known for disrupting events in the past. He was detained by police and digitally removed from video highlights of the show, but it was enough to raise serious concerns about security at The Game Awards.
Now, despite all of this, Even claims he managed to get into The Game Awards again this year. In fact, as the show was going on, he shared an image from the audience, implying he was in the crowd.
There is a chance he got someone else in attendance to snap the picture for him so he could pretend he was there, so we can’t verify if he was really in the audience or not. However, we can’t find the image being shared anywhere else before Even posted it. On top of this, another user shared what appears to be an image of Even in the crowd, but again, we can’t confirm that it’s legitimate either.
It doesn’t end there. After the show ended, Even shared an apparent letter from the venue where The Game Awards is held, banning him from the premises for life. According to the letter, he could be hit with trespassing charges if he turns up again.
If Even did get into the event in the first place, that in itself is a security concern. We don’t know if he was banned from the venue after his first stunt, but at the very least, host and producer Geoff Keighley likely wouldn’t want him in the audience for The Game Awards anymore. If Even’s version of events is accurate, then it’s not clear what made security throw him out and ban him for life, as he hasn’t admitted to trying to pull off the same trick twice.
At the very least, this year went off without a hitch. If anyone did try to disrupt the show, they didn’t manage to get to the stage. Instead, the big controversy was centred around how the winners were given around 30 seconds to accept their awards before being told to wrap their speeches up. That’s if they were even allowed to make speeches, with many categories announced in quick succession without letting the winners speak at all. Geoff Keighley is yet to respond to these complaints.
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