Normally the steam awards winners are real stinkers, but the voters had shockingly good taste this year.
I was a little sad that Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 didn’t win anything. That was my personal GOTY
Honestly, this whole debate feels familiar. Arc Raiders looks like yet another extraction shooter riding hype, while Blue Prince actually tried something weird and different. Sure, you can compare it to Betrayal at House on the Hill, but remixing that idea into a roguelite puzzle experience is bold. Steam Awards almost always crown popularity, not real innovation. Still, Blue Prince suddenly sounds way more tempting.
Blue Prince is way deeper than I was expecting… It seems beating the game is only scratching the surface.
The awards are fun when I compare my vote list with my friends’ vote list, but the actual awards are just annoyingly pointless.
The winner of each category is predictable immediately. It will only ever be the game with the highest number of players and the category doesn’t matter.
If GTA6 comes out in 2026 and posts “we are hoping to win the Emotional Indie Platformer Award”, it’s going to win the Emotional Indie Platformer Award.
Damn, they did my boy The Alters dirty. Not a single win.
Also, Arc Raiders most innovative? Isn’t it just an (admittedly improved) extraction shooter?
My one issue with Alters was if you make certain decisions with what to produce or work on, at certain points, I had to roll back pretty far to undo them to just survive upcoming events. Really cool game otherwise.
I love the story of that game, too, but being unable to progress at those points makes for a good strategy game while also being antithetical to its message, lol.
It’s definitely flawed. But I found it to be original if nothing else and a breath of fresh air in a sea of extraction shooters, rogueliles and soulslikes. Rather reminded me of Death Stranding when it came out.
The arc are ectremely impressive enemies and feel like nothing I’ve ever fought in a game, and the matchmaking system puts you in matvhes with people that have the same level of aggression. So it’s not your regular extraction shooter where NPCs are a sidenote and everyone plays kill on sight and that’s extremely refreshing
Main thing I’m sad about is deltarune not winning the soundtrack category.
RV There Yet isn’t really that chill. It’s also highly frustrating at times.
It winning was really surprising to me. It was fun for like 15 minutes. I guess… people like it? It’s a meme? Idk.
It’s also trying to ride the success of Peak
I really wish Baby Steps had won something.
I got three right.
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April had a content patch, 12 new subclasses and it enabled crossplay I believe.
The win was not without controversy, with fans split on whether Baldur’s Gate 3 really deserved the accolade, with many saying that No Man’s Sky did far more in 2025. While players still love Baldur’s Gate 3, they point out that Hello Games did more to support its game in 2025.
“I hate when people vote for things based on how much they like them rather than how much they deserve them,” one user writes on the Baldur’s Gate 3 subreddit. “BG3 is a great game, sure, but it received one final major update this (last) year. No Man’s Sky received four and it’s still going.”
No Man’s Sky has added thousands of generic resource gathering tasks by now!
I have tried playing it maybe half a dozen times and come to the same conclusion each time: “This is it?”
It’s a great game for wasting your time in the most banal tasks possible, but not much more.
How tf does bg3 have Limited replayability? Im on my 9th run! Wtf kind of take is this? Put the meds down pal.
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Right… linear… this guy has never played dark urge.
There’s differences in playthroughs, if you choose, but it is linear. The game ultimately railroads you to the same endings.
Tap for spoiler
Goes on to enslave the world is apparently the same thing as killing an eldritch being with an army of friends you amass and being a hero apparently.
man who’s never played BG3 what are optional/hidden side quests
Limited replayability? It’s top of mind for me when I’m rattling off replayable games.
Turning an unplayable ripoff game into something that is maybe worth the steam sale price ten years later isn’t a “labor of love” it’s mitigating legal risk from it’s investors.
BG3 added a ton of content since release, to the point where they even brought in the entire voice cast to record additional dialogue.
Unplayable? I bought the game at launch and it played absolutely fine.
Was it a barren wasteland with fuck all to do? Sure, but it worked perfectly fine, the last decade has seen HG turn NMS into one of if not the most comprehensive space adventure game.
Since 2016 they have added various additional stuff like VR support, alongside gameplay enhancements (IE: content like building your own fleet, bases, settlements, expeditions, animal taming etc). All for free.
Conversely, larian has repeatedly stated that they do not want to do additional content for BG3; with every patch release it’s “this is it, we’re done with this now”, and when quizzed on additional content, such as dlc, The studio claims the Devs were elated to cancel BG3 dlc in favour of making a different game entirely.
Personally, I don’t consider the latter to be an indication of a labour of love, but rather an obligation to their fans (because larian are a very good studio, who care for their fans).
I love both games, but BG3 absolutely did not deserve the labour of love category imo, there are simply far more obvious alternatives.
Hasn’t No Man’s Sky won before? I don’t think you could vote for ones that had won before
It was one of the runners-up, and I definitely voted for it… so, either it can win more than once or it didn’t win previously.
NMS has too many bugs with years of technical debt, incoherent game design choices, broken promises, broken game mechanics, half-baked mechanics, terrible UI, an unrelatable story, and a cardboard universe…
It just doesn’t look like a passion project. HG have made quite a handsome profit from the updates as well.
It’s refreshing to see Expedition 33 winning a category it deserves, and only that category.
That would be your opinion. It deserved game of the year in my personal opinion, in addition to the music award.
Give it all the awards
You weren‘t kidding. These are all real winners for the players. And I wouldn‘t say last year was totally packed. At least not for me but this is a great list of games to add to your pile of shame.
The fuck is the VR winner.
There hasn’t really been that many VR games lately.
Screw Silksong, Abiotic Factor should’ve won game of the year! I had a lot of fun with it and it really felt like the devs put a lot of heart into it.
What kind of game is it? What’s it about?
It’s a first person survival crafter with very strange science vibes.
Imagine you were a scientist on your first day at Black Mesa when Gordon caused the Lambda Incident (this is a Half-Life reference for those uninitiated) and in a kind of Subnautica style need to scrounge the environment for resources to research and crafted supplies and equipment to use to survive and explore further while encountering invaders as well as what are essentially SCPs or Objects of Power (Control/Alan Wake) throughout the facility and other environment all in the hopes of trying to escape with your life.
You lost me at crafter. Zero interest in that kind of gameplay.
I haven’t played it, but the same elevator pitch is given every time someone describes it on a podcast: it’s like someone made off-brand Half-Life and merged it with the survival genre. I’ve heard a lot of good things.
Wow, how predictable, the game everyone has waited on for so long is GOTY.
I just roll my eyes at all of the winners while making a cock-jerking motion with my hand to symbolize the circle jerking the Steam community gets off on.
Were you hoping for expedition 33?
No I was hoping for the dinosaur browser game.
