Cyberpunk 2077 Wins Apple Design Award After Years of Repairs
What You Need to Know
- Cyberpunk 2077 won Apple’s top visual design award after years of post-launch patches rehabilitated its reputation.
- Blue Prince, an indie puzzle game, received the Innovation award at this year’s Apple Design Awards.
- Pine Hearts and Guitar Wiz won Inclusivity for accessibility features and motor disability support respectively.
- NBA: Live Games and Scores won Innovation, reflecting Apple’s push for live sports in its ecosystem.
The most interesting detail in this year’s Apple Design Awards list is not the usual indie darlings. Cyberpunk 2077, a game that launched in 2020 and became infamous for a disastrous release full of bugs and broken promises, just won Apple’s top visual award.
CD Projekt Red spent years patching Cyberpunk 2077 back to respectability, and the Ultimate Edition, released in 2024, packages the base game with the Phantom Liberty expansion. That Apple is now handing it a design award is a quiet acknowledgment of how thoroughly the game’s reputation has been rehabilitated, and also reflects how seriously Apple Arcade and the broader Mac/iOS gaming push has grown as a platform ambition.
The rest of the list skews toward smaller, thoughtful titles. Blue Prince, an indie puzzle game about a shifting manor house that became one of the more talked-about games of early 2025, takes the Innovation award. Pine Hearts, a gentle adventure built around grief and accessibility, wins Inclusivity alongside Guitar Wiz, which was designed from the ground up for players with motor disabilities.
The App Side
On the app side, NBA: Live Games and Scores winning Innovation is a mild surprise given that sports apps are rarely known for technical ambition. The award likely reflects Apple’s ongoing push to make live sports a stronger part of its ecosystem, following the investment in Apple TV Plus sports rights.
Primary: News in Depth winning Social Impact is the pick that will generate the least controversy. The app is built to explain news stories with context rather than headlines, which fits squarely into what Apple tends to reward in that category.
The awards are announced before WWDC, which opens Monday at 10 a.m. Pacific, partly to give winning developers a visibility boost during the week when developer and press attention is highest. The timing is deliberate marketing as much as celebration.
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