Nominees
Game of the Year
- Black Myth: Wukong
- Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl
- Balatro
- Helldivers 2
- Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2
VR Game of the Year
- Metro Awakening VR
- Davigo
- Maestro
- Blade and Sorcery
- Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted 2
Labor of Love
- Stardew Valley
- Baldur’s Gate 3
- Dota 2
- No Man’s Sky
- Elden Ring
Best Game on Steam Deck
- Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor
- Balatro
- Hades 2
- God of War: Ragnarok
- Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader
Better with Friends
- Palworld
- Helldivers 2
- Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2
- Sons of the Forest
- Satisfactory
Outstanding Visual Style
- Silent Hill 2
- Neva
- Nine Sols
- Metaphor ReFantazio
- Hades 2
Most Innovative Gameplay
- Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl
- Balatro
- Helldivers 2
- Liar’s Bar
- Satisfactory
Best Game You Suck At
- Black Myth Wukong
- Ghost of Tsushima
- Dragon Ball Sparking Zero
- The Finals
- Tekken 8
Best Soundtrack
- Silent Hill 2
- Red Dead Redemption
- Fate Stay Night
- Horizon Forbidden West
- Frostpunk 2
Outstanding Story-Rich Game
- Black Myth Wukong
- Ghost of Tsushima
- Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl
- Mouthwashing
- Final Fantasy XVI
Sit Back and Relax
- Tiny Glade
- House Flipper 2
- Farming Simulator 25
- Webfishing
- TCG Card Shop Simulator
I’m a little disappointed not to see Elite Dangerous nominated for Labor of Love. The game is ten years old, and the developers have recently been bringing in new features like it was still new.
I’m surprised to see ED brought up. They gave up console players and won’t even push token updates, like when they balanced engineers for PC players to reduce the grinding. Tried to get back into it but I guess it’s now a legacy game and Frontier straight up bailed.
The game isn’t shut down though. I can still buy their MTX stuff. That’s got to count against them.
Yeah, they stopped updating the legacy PC client, too. I suspect it’s in the same game world as your console, still alive and playable, but with no new content.
The new client is free, but also more resource-hungry; I guess they didn’t have the budget to get it working on consoles.
It’s unfortunate. Games don’t get nominated by being apt for the category, they get nominated by being popular. Heck, last year RDR2 won in this category, and it’s never had any community support beyond a bug fix patch or two.
This whole thing is a popularity contest, for the most part. No way anyone nominating or voting in these awards has played more than a few of the eligible games.
Relies on people knowing about it, sadly.