Expedition 33’s Ben Starr lights up the Golden Joysticks with hard-hitting layoffs speech

At this year’s Golden Joystick Awards, voice actor Ben Starr delivered one of the ceremony’s most striking moments, using his time on stage to spotlight the human side of the ongoing wave of games-industry layoffs.

“Many people might criticize me for grandstanding right now, but the one thing that Sandfall do and have done is respect people that work for them. They respect the people that they are making games for, and they want to make them good,” Ben Starr said after receiving his award for Best Supporting Performer, starring as Verso in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. 

He further emphasized that the studio’s approach to craft, placing creative integrity and character-driven storytelling over chasing trends, was central to Expedition 33’s identity. 

Starr shifted quickly from celebration to candor. In a pointed, emotional address, he praised developer Sandfall for what he described as an urgently needed commitment to respecting both the people who make games and the people who play them.

“That is why this game is great, it’s because they wanted to make it good for the people they’re making it for. They didn’t want it to be popular. So they wrote characters that are flawed, they wrote characters that are broken, they wrote characters that, ultimately, you might hate. And I’m very, very fortunate to potentially play one of them,” he further continued, highlighting the studio’s willingness to embrace complexity and imperfection in its characters.

His speech landed in a year marked by industry instability, with thousands of developers laid off across studios both large and small. While Starr did not mention a specific company or incidents, the subtext resonated strongly with an audience acutely aware of the turbulence facing game workers.

Who is Benn Starr?

Ben Starr is an English actor and voice actor. He has won and been nominated for multiple awards in the past, such as the Best Lead Performer with Clive Rosfield in Final Fantasy XVI. He voiced several more prominent characters, such as Jimbo in Balatro, Prometheus in Hades 2, Khazan in The First Berserker: Khazan, and many others. 

His speec at the Golden Joystic Awards 2025 underscored a growing push within the video games industry: to honor not just the games that win awards, but the people whose labor and, too often, whose livelihoods make them possible.