Gayming Awards Meet the Nominees: Industry Diversity Award
At the 2026 Gayming Awards, the Industry Diversity Award goes to the organization who knows that beyond profit, what truly makes gaming powerful is how it can uplift and support queer players today.
This award is for groups who use their platform to push for inclusivity in this industry. Whether they make games or help others create their own, these are the organizations who fight every day to make the medium more diverse and accessible for all. And as we’re seeing attacks against LGBTQ+ voices daily, their work is more important than ever, with each nominee fighting for an industry that respects and incorporates the voices of queer people everywhere.
Every one of these orgs deserves gratitude for how they uplift the communities that gaming tends to ignore. Let’s take a look at each of them now and try to determine which one will be taking home the Industry Diversity Award at 2026’s Gayming Awards!
Behaviour Interactive
It may be strange for some fans to see Behaviour Interactive as a nominee for this award — rather than inclusion and equality, most people know this studio for its terrifying gameplay and gory kills.
Yet even though it achieved global fame through the seminal project Dead by Daylight (DBD), the past year has seen Behaviour Interactive set new standards for LGBTQ+ representation in gaming. This activism is best shown through one of DBD’s newest characters, Orela Rose; Rose is the first transgender survivor in the game. And not only was she voiced by real-life trans advocate Angelica Ross, but she was created through the advising numerous consultants, with Behaviour Interactive making sure she offered authentic representation for trans communities.
Through this new character, the company showed how easy it is for studios to integrate queer identity into gaming (calling out the many developers who claim featuring inclusivity would ‘ruin’ their projects). And her representation went far beyond just gameplay as the game’s fans celebrated this character by raising more than $300,000 for pediatric care and LGBTQ+ community services! Her character and the fandom’s reponse showcased Behaviuor Interactive’s commitment to offering stories that marginalized fans can truly see themselves within.
Their work has a set a new precedent for representation in the industry and the power that modern fans have to create change. This makes Behaviour Interactive one of the most impactful studios industry, as well as a clear contender for 2026’s Industry Diversity Award!
DON’T NOD
Few games have had as much of a cultural impact as Life is Strange, with the project’s developer, DON’T NOD, showing in recent years that this was only the start of their fight to make gaming as queer as possible.
A trailblazer when it comes to inclusion in this industry, DON’T NOD awed players with its latest project Lost Records: Bloom and Rage, a narrative-game that portrayed queer characters with a depth that our community rarely receives in gaming. It acts as the latest in DON’T NOD’s long lineup of projects to center marginalized themes — but this company isn’t only fighting for equality through its games! To show that it’s advocacy goes beyond the screen, DON’T NOD has spent the past few years creating a work environment that centers personal wellbeing above all else for its employees. It’s an unfortunate rarity for the gaming industry — ask the many LGBTQ+ developers who’ve faced rampant discrimination — that sets a model for how studios can support every member of their hard-working teams.
DON’T NOD has made revolutionizing gaming it’s standard, with every project showing the studio’s focus on establishing a medium where every kind of player can feel seen. Their games are almost always queer fan-favorites for a reason, making them an obvious nominee for the Industry Diversity Award.
Out Making Games
The fight for inclusive gaming is an international one, with Out Making Games (OMG) working hard to innovate this industry within the United Kingdom and beyond.
The organization was created to empower LGBTQ+ people in gaming; its founders had a deep awareness of not only the lack of representation in projects, but how professionals don’t feel accepted by the wider industry. It’s what led them to create a multi-faceted style of advocacy that focused on both bringing diverse creators together and working with studios to create diverse games. And this past year has been a truly landmark one for the group’s work; 2025 saw OMG host six major social events across the UK that brought hundreds of LGBTQ+ professionals together for networking and fun. Along with this, they developed five studio awareness packs, vital sources of information that helped numerous developers create games with authentic queer representation today.
By collaborating with fans, grassroots movements, and big-name studios, Out Making Games works with every level of the gaming industry to make this medium more accessible. They offer fun networking for professionals and much-needed learning for studios, making them essential voices in this movement — and huge contenders for this year’s Industry Diversity Award!
Riot Games
It’s hard to be a gamer in 2026 and not know the global powerhouse that is Riot Games; from League of Legends to Valorant, this global developer has made some of the most popular online games to ever exist. Yet while most fans are aware of it’s many hit projects, too few know about the other key aspect of Riot’s work: it’s advocacy.
Through games alone, Riot has become one of the few international developers to feature LGBTQ+ characters fans can actually feel represented by. And beyond these projects, Riot has committed to using its own success to uplift other studios, with its Underrepresented Founders Fund providing funding to many studios led by marginalized developers. These allocations have led to creation of numerous LGBTQ+ indie projects, with Riot going even further to uplift queer creators by donating of $100,000 in Out in STEM (oSTEM) groups across the world! These organizations make it easier for LGBTQ+ students to find work in the gaming industry, with Riot’s investment allowing these individuals to use their voices to craft a medium more inclusive for all.
Through this financial advocacy and the representation in its games, Riot makes it clear how much it values the LGBTQ+ communities who’ve made its success possible. The studio has set a standard for what it means to use your success for good, making them not only a role model for other organizations, but an obvious nominee for the Industry Diversity Award at 2026’s Gayming Awards!
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