Today, the highly anticipated The Game Awards (TGA) ceremony finally concluded.
Let's jump back to 3 hours before the awards ended. At that time, the "Best Independent Game" had just been awarded to the popular title "Light & Shadow: Expedition 33," but this instead made many fans worried: historically, no game has ever won both the "Best Independent Game" and the "Game of the Year (GOTY)" awards at TGA. As a GOTY favorite, "Light & Shadow" now needed to break the curse that had existed since TGA's inception and create an unprecedented moment in gaming history.
Just as everyone was filled with anxiety, a mysterious individual registered an account on a seemingly unrelated "prediction market" platform and deposited ten thousand dollars. He found the topic "Will Light & Shadow win the 2025 GOTY?" on the platform and bet the entire ten thousand dollars on "Yes." At that time, the price for "Yes" was $0.98 per share, meaning that even if "Light & Shadow" did indeed make gaming history by winning both awards, his ten-thousand-dollar bet would only yield a profit of less than two hundred dollars. However, if "Light & Shadow" failed to break the TGA curse, the probability of the topic would instantly drop to 0, which meant his newly deposited ten thousand dollars would be wiped out. What kind of狂热 fan of "Light & Shadow" would take such a reckless risk? And how do prediction markets attract game fans from around the world to guess the winners in advance?
The "Pre-Determined" Script
As early as October 30th, a month and a half before the awards ceremony, the prediction market Polymarket had already launched the topic for "2025 Game of the Year." The probability of "Light & Shadow" winning was firmly pinned above 80% from the start, while the probabilities of other highly anticipated AAA titles winning were suppressed below 10%. Because such a one-sided situation usually only occurs in events where the outcome is already certain, this anomaly made many traders smell something unusual: this wasn't just optimism, this was certainty.
Among these traders with a "certain" attitude, a few operated in an extremely unified style, hinting at the possibility of insider trading. DieselDiesel, trumpnogo, and kasae all bet on "Light & Shadow wins TGA 2025 GOTY" when the probability was around 85%, and the amounts they bet were dozens or even hundreds of times larger than their usual bets. This highly concentrated,反常 betting behavior meant they faced enormous risks: if "Light & Shadow" ultimately did not win, they would not only have to give up all past profits but also suffer huge losses.
As time progressed and the probability of "Light & Shadow" winning increased, they did not sell any of their held shares to realize profits. Even 3 hours before the award announcement, after the "Best Independent Game" award had been announced, they, already significantly浮盈, remained motionless as if they knew the future, betting their entire account balance alongside the mysterious individual mentioned at the beginning for that final, tiny profit.
The Historic Award Moment and the Cashing Out of Insiders
Amid doubts and unease, TGA played out exactly like the script these few traders had arranged over a month ago, dispelling the final suspense: the highly anticipated "Light & Shadow," having already won the "Best Independent Game" award, broke the historical curse and won the Game of the Year award.
And while players on one side cheered and celebrated, the mystery was solved in the prediction market on the other side: the three traders who had been convinced since a month ago that "Light & Shadow" would win confirmed their role of "foreseeing the future" and realized huge profits:
DieselDiesel made a profit of $5,357 in this event, accounting for 176% of all his other trading profits;
trumpnogo made a profit of $2,958 in this event, accounting for 62% of all his other trading profits;
kasae made a profit of $1,658 in this event, accounting for 220% of all his other trading profits.
And the mysterious individual (bobo9997) mentioned at the beginning, because he was certain that "Light & Shadow" would make history," used ten thousand dollars to win a "whopping" $200.
"Even Those Who Foresee the Future Need to Eat"
The most noteworthy common point among these four traders is that while many players doubted whether "Light & Shadow" could break the historical curse, they were "willing to risk" nearly $100,000 in positions to "gamble" on this historic moment happening, and this "gamble" brought them less than two thousand dollars in combined profits.
Now, let's assume these "foreseers" are TGA vote auditing staff. As insiders with an annual income of $100,000, if they wanted to monetize the information in a traditional way, they would need to sell the insider information to media platforms, but this represents various potential fines, dismissal, and even imprisonment. However, with the emergence of prediction markets, they can use anonymity to convert information asymmetry into real money equivalent to 1 to 3 months of their disposable income.
When we view them as assumed insiders who already knew the result in advance, everything becomes clear: being 100% sure that "Light & Shadow" would be GOTY, their final "bet" was just using the one-hour wait time before the announcement to换取 seemingly huge risks but实际上毫无变数的 two thousand dollars in profit. This kind of seemingly high-risk but实际上毫无变数的赚钱 "bet" was almost impossible to encounter before platforms like prediction markets appeared.
However, with the popularity of Polymarket, how many people can resist converting information into real money anonymously?
