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
Nominating Stalker 2 for Most Innovative Gameplay Award seems crazy to me. It’s a great game, but I definitely wouldn’t call it innovative.
It has always been a “Which game has the bigger fan base” contest 🤷♂️
I don’t think I ever agreed with the nominations or the the final winners, because they never make any sense other than through the hype and fan-base lens.
Occasionally good games get nominated for the correct categories (Terraria for Labor of Love) but it’s very rare. I haven’t even played any 2024 games but wanted the badge so I just nominated some off brand games that will never win.
I agree with this comment so much that my dumb ass tried to upvote it twice forgetting I already did
In the modern gaming industry, it’s considered innovative to not be shit cuz your shareholders forced you to abandon all morals.
didnt they even ban elon? absolute winner move.
Came here to comment the same. I love the game but those mechanics are 17 years old.
Early access games shouldn’t be allowed. Hades 2 isn’t even officially released yet.
I’d like to see Black Myth Wukong win nothing just because of how salty they get over it.
It’s going to be based on user votes, and given just how popular that game was I don’t think it unlikely to win.
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.
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.
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.
Relies on people knowing about it, sadly.
The Best Game You Suck At Award nominations seem weird to me. Especially The Finals and Dragon Ball.
Games like A Difficult Game About Climbing or Shadow of the Erdtree make more sense to me.
I think The Finals is one of the more difficult shooters to wrap your head around and takes forever to get really good at. I think many people use this category “fun game where I always get my ass kicked” low skill floor high skill ceiling games.
Shadow of the erdtree all the way. People bitched so much about it being too hard. Great DLC, was not that hard compared to other souls games (the final boss was a total bastard though holy shit I died a lot)
I’m so glad Tiny Glade is getting some attention and is even on this list at all. That’s amazing.
Balatro getting nominated for two separate GOTYs is wild (in a good sense)
I don’t understand the appeal of this game. Played it for a couple of hours because it got hyped so much. What makes this game so fun for people?
I mean, fun is subjective. For a lot of people Balatro strikes just the right spot between strategy and randomness, and is very replayable. It’s perfectly okay if it’s not your cup of tea, though.
True. It’s just that I usually like these kind of games. It’s probably just me.
Outstanding visual is pretty packed this year, but I wish Nine Sols wins it. It’s not even underrated, just feels like it wasn’t talked much about outside of Hollow Knight enjoyers, maybe due to it launching on PC only (console version came out only recently), or perhaps due to the studio’s turbulent past. More people should really give it a go.
Is the award called a Steamy or a Steamer?
So Palword was nominated for the Better With Friends award, meaning they are okay with it being in the awards despite being a beta, but it didn’t get nominated for GOTY.
Robbed.
I was surprised to see Hades 2, as it’s still in early access. Not that it doesn’t deserve it.
You can‘t even rate early access games for obvious reasons. Nominating it for GOTY is just silly and potentially very awkward for the devs.
Palworld specifically campaigned for the “better with friends” award.
Labor of Love is a tough one… I might as well flip a coin between at least three of them, they all deserve it
I’m surprised to see God of War Ragnarok on the best game for Steam deck. I tried playing the first one on there and got like 15 fps. Does this somehow run better?
