Of all the Golden Joystick Awards 2025 winners, Schedule 1 arguably stood out as one of the most unique – after all, it is about running your own drug empire… but, what if it wasn't? After launching into Early Access on Steam, Schedule 1 took the web by storm and currently sits with "Overwhelmingly Positive" reviews eight months on. Players praise it as a fun management game, with many spending over 100 hours in-game. At the Golden Joystick Awards, Schedule 1 further proved itself with a win and a nomination, bagging the Breakthrough Award and going up as a Best Early Access Game contender. Schedule 1 update adds a shotgun and rival cartel to Steam's viral drug-dealing simulator following a player vote, and I'm sure that doesn't have any harrowing implications Beating Hades 2, Megabonk, Dying Light: The Beast, and everyone else, the most powerful Steam release of the past month is an open-world physics sandbox with 27,000 gilded reviews Steam expert hails PC gaming "golden age" of rough-but-fun games that devs can make quickly and players love, from Peak to Megabonk: "Steam players want fun first" He continues: "A couple of countries don't love it; that's fine. Australia was one of them for a little while. We were effectively banned in Australia, which kind of sucked, but we got it there in the end." It's certainly interesting to hear, especially seeing as Tyler himself is from Australia – but everything evidently worked out. I'm mostly intrigued to learn that the game that sees you taking on the role of a successful drug manufacturer was almost a cozy game myself, however. Can you imagine Schedule 1 being a part of the ever-growing lineup of games like Stardew Valley, featuring a wholesome farming loop rather than… erm, its current gameplay? I'm not sure that I personally can, but I'm actually glad things worked out the way that they did. It's not like there's a plethora of Breaking Bad-esque games to choose from on Steam as it is, and something about Schedule 1 makes it scratch an itch I never knew I had. It sounds like Tyler is thrilled with how the situation played out for Schedule 1, too, telling us he's "really, really honored" to have witnessed his game win an award. Want to support more small developers? Check out some of these upcoming indie games if so.