Following a brief round of voting during the most recent winter sale, Valve has now announced all of the 2024 Steam Awards winners. As you would expect given the previous couple of years, the whole thing is a bit of a mess. Not only have popular games won categories they had no rights being nominated for in the first place, but there's also a game that launched over a decade ago that managed to snag an award!
Rather than babble on, allow me to share with you the brief list of categories and their winners. Have a gander:
Game of the Year Award - Black Myth: Wukong
VR Game of the Year Award - Metro Awakening
Labor of Love Award - Elden Ring
Best Game on Steam Deck Award - God of War Ragnarök
Better With Friends Award - Helldivers 2
Outstanding Visual Style Award - Silent Hill 2
Most Innovative Gameplay Award - Liar's Bar
Best Game You Suck At Award - Black Myth: Wukong
Best Soundtrack Award - Red Dead Redemption
Outstanding Story-Rich Game Award - Black Myth: Wukong
Sit Back and Relax Award - Farming Simulator 25
The first thing I have to say is that I don't believe the winners are all bad games. Not at all. There's a reason they have such a gigantic fanbase, after all. It's just that I find it very depressing to see a community-driven awards ceremony completely push aside games that don't come from massive studios with equally massive marketing budgets. Out of this bunch it's only Liar's Bar that doesn't have the backing of a major studio, so you might as well replace The Steam Awards with the bestseller list and call it a day. It'll end up being the same few games anyway.
Personally, if I could give an award to anyone it would be the "Labor of Love" for Factorio. Not only have the Factorio devs been tirelessly improving the game for many, many years now, but their freshly launched Space Age expansion is a huge step forward for the game, and one that has managed to vacuum up more of my time than I'm willing to admit. So if you're into the whole base-building genre and a break from AAA stuff, I'd definitely recommend giving the free demo a look.
Enjoy!
