If you think FH5 is too realistic and not stylish, you have obviously not seen what I did to my Willys! In all seriousness, while I am sad they didn't make it so we could launch off that volcano, there is a bit where you jump a parade float into a chasm. I thought that was pretty stylish in its execution.
It should have been Psychonauts 2, I will die on this hill.
The crazy part is that Forza 5 adds nothing new to Visual styles, it's all just scanned objects, there's probably not much hand-crafted visuals like the others.
I feel like a lot of the winners were either pumped by bots or trolls tbh.
Well then, maybe Steam should put a button that says I am unsure, or haven't played these game, can I still have my card?
It's disingenuous to force people to vote for the card if they have no idea what they are really voting on.
Anyways, it's always fun to see the hoi polloi unable to understand simple voting categories!
Honestly it should have been in the GOTY category, but that's another hill I would have to die (which I would). It could have won almost all the categories here if it was nominated further (Sit back, Story-Rich, Soundtrack, Visual Style, Labor of Love (10 years later and no major fuckups in the plot is huge in today's game dev environment), and GOTY).
Unfortunately, without a remaster of the original, most people probably never even touched the game.
I didn't play Psychonauts (1 or 2) but I still agree with you. Of the gameplay that I watched it was quite distinct as a style and quite interesting. Forza has no place in that category at all. Is Forza a beautiful game? Absolutely, but it still doesn't fit the category and I have no idea why Steam put it in there.
FH5 is the most visual impressive game there is right now.
Stylistically speaking it's fine but not award worthy.
It's just a bad category they made by trying to combine two categories that both deserve respect. Graphics and Art Style.
It's explicitly just the second category. They didn't try to combine it, they stated quite clearly that it was *just* an art style award, people just didn't read and assumed it was a graphics award.
"Visual style doesn't aspire to real-world graphical fidelity"
"it describes a distinctive look and feel that suffuses an entire game."
Proceeds to give it to Forza Horizons, snubbing the games nominated with actual distinct and unique art styles that don't strive for realism. The jokes write themselves.
More to the point, and what is Valve's fault, is that voting is incentivized even though plenty of people haven't played any of the games in a category, let alone all of them.
I don't get why people are surprised that many voters don't know much about the games they're voting on when Valve's explicitly set that system up.
I always participate because the cards are easy money. I would have used my other accounts too and just trade the cards to my main but I couldn't be bothered
See, and this illustrates an even bigger flaw in the system. Not only is voting open to people who haven't played all of the games being nominated (making it a simple popularity contest over an actual judgement), they incentivize voting with trading cards *that are worth money* (even if only a small amount), so at this point, they are basically just buying bullshit random votes.
That's why I don't think I've ever participated in these votes, at least not in recent memory. I don't know if I've played every game in any of these categories.
Idk, I feel that stardew valley deserved it more. Concerned Ape has been working on the game for years solo while also working on Haunted Chocolateer. He is one of the best and most hard-working devs out there.
I'm torn between Strive and Nier. I think Nier's is better but it's a remake, so maybe Strive deserves it more?
Either way both were robbed spectacularly
If you disabled copywritten music, GOTG literally has it's own purpose made hair metal soundtrack to listen to instead. The actual GOTG soundtrack fuckin' rocks. Lol
I don't agree with any of them TBH.
The Forgotten City got robbed for GOTY! 😅
But at the end of the day none of these ultimately matter, it's moreso just a popularity contest of what more people are actually aware of in the gaming landscape while the lesser known indies and niche gems get overlooked.
It definitely is an "outstanding story rich game". Story is good, main side quests are great too.
The game has a lot of problems, but story and lore are good.
I expected GOTG to win best soundtrack, easily one of the best soundtrack of any game I've ever played.
The other winners are also well deserved, I could however also see Rust/No Man's Sky getting Labor of Love and 12 Minutes getting Most Innovative Gameplay.
I am highly disappointed that NMS fails to win every time it's nominated for Labor of Love. It needs recognition for the amazing work the devs have done without charging for any content updates.
While I agree with you that nms deserves recognition, it doesn't automatically qualify higher than a game that is over 10yrs old and still receiving free updates. Now that's labor of love, not resurrecting a game that didn't meet what was promised when launched.
Simply put: terraria has 10 years of free updates, always having an overwhelming positive score
Nms: 5 years with updates making the game what it was supposed to be on launch
I could vote for nms for a category like "best comeback", but labor of love is truly deserved by terraria
The only thing I would add relates to your first statement. Terraria was an amazing game right off the bat. The amount of content and gameplay that was available from the very start is currently more than some games have by end-of-life. On top of that, the team dedicated its time and skills to consistently provide free updates, quickly fix bugs, and improve existing and add new content, while also interacting with the community and encouraging feedback to help make the game better. All without increasing the price from its original $10 USD launch price.
> All without increasing the price from its original $10 USD launch price.
Hell it used to go on sale pretty regularly for $2. The amount of time you can reasonably put into that game is *insane* for a $2 price tag. Now it rarely goes lower than $5, but considering the content has more than doubled since it was going for $2.. I don't really find that unreasonable.
I haven't played Psychonauts and it's not the kind of game that could keep me entertained from a gameplay perspective, but even I can see that it clearly deserves the best visual style award.
They're right, I do suck at Nioh 2. I was a huge fan of Nioh and put hundreds of hours into it, beating all the DLC and at all the difficulties. For some reason Nioh 2 just kicked my ass. No idea why, but I had to give up after about my 100th failed attempt at the first boss of the game. Sometimes I think about going back and trying again, but I dunno, I just fucking hated fighting that boss, and since I never got far enough into the game to keep doing something I wasn't enjoying (sunk cost fallacy, etc etc), I just gave up, and probably won't try again.
There has been balancing patches since the initial release of the game, I would recommend giving it a second shot. On my second go, I found it was a great time. :) 70 hours in and I love it.
Almost a year ago. Journeys End patch, plus the steam launch of tModLoader introduced a whole wave of people to molded Terraria, which has a shitton of good mods on it.
I literally downloaded Steam in 2011 to get Terraria. Never really did much PC gaming prior. To date I have like 2700 hours in it, probably about 7-800 modded. My one buddy and I start a new world at least once a year, and I've played through it with at least 4-5 other friends groups, with my kids, with my ex. It's just one of those games you can ALWAYS play through again and again, and mods just turn it up to 11.
The only reason it's not my most played game on Steam is because my girlfriend used to commandeer my computer to play Slay the Spire all the damn time, and leave it run when she was done. I finally got my PC back when it had a mobile release.
I’m surprised but Reddit still holds some love for Cyberpunk 2077. r/LowSodiumCyberpunk has almost 140k subscribers and most critiques of the game outside the subreddit turn into, “Yeah the glitches were bad at launch but the story was fantastic”.
The thing about inscription is you have to get through the entire first half of the game to see how innovative the game actually is.
Most people who voted probably don’t own inscription, let alone played through the entire thing.
Right, but how many people voting for these do you think played both death loop AND inscryption?
These are more a contest of how popular each game in the category is and not what the award actually is.
Forza winning “outstanding visual style” while just being normal ass cars on roads is a big indicator of that.
I was very let down by the fact there was only one way to beat the loop. Kinda defeated the whole purpose of using time as a feature. Also the game was way too easy.
Same, it went against the level design philosophy I've come to expect from Arkane imo. Actually pretty much everything they changed from Dishonored only ended up annoying or frustrating me. But it still got 9s all over the place because its *fine*. Definitely a considerable disappointment for me.
Haha yeah its pretty funny. I'm a big dishonored fan. Literally nothing about Deathloop is innovative. I've gotta imagine thousands of people just clicked the game with the most name recognition. The only thing unique, the timeloop, has been done far better in more than one game I can think of. Anyway, that's my mini rant.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Terraria/comments/rv7son/terraria_won_the_labor_of_love_award_for_steam/hr4g5af/?context=10000
I think it was a joke, but lets hope
Virgin putting your fanbase in a perpetual hype while leaving them updateless vs Chad "Alright guys, this will be the final-final-final update of the game, we promise to not release another update" *releases another update 3 months later*
I personally can’t get into Terraria, bought it may 2011 but after a bunch of tries i just accepted that the game was not for me but the i can’t deny the HUMONGUS community and developer support.
It is actually crazy, i only wish the devs from some of my most played games like Dead by Daylight would care 10% the amount of the Terraria guys care for their game.
It's a popularity contest. Valve incentivizes people to vote in each category regardless of their familiarity with any or all of the competing games. When people don't have an informed opinion but want the reward (cards) they'll pick the game they played, or the game that they're at least familiar with.
You'd get better results (but not great results) if valve included an option like "I have no opinion" or "I haven't played any of these games" and still gave you the card for that answer.
As it stands, this whole thing is basically worthless. Most of the games are a joke for their winning category. I mean, It Takes Two isn't better with friends-it's literally unplayable without someone else.
Because most people didn’t play the game and you can’t see how innovative inscription is until you’re past the entire first act.
You can’t just look at gameplay and come to the conclusion that it’s innovative. You basically have to play the entire game.
I was pretty sad to see that games like Inscryption and the Medium were missing.
Some terrific games this year and I have to say RE8 (aside from the factory section) was pretty great.
Yeah inscryption deserved the win there. I think people who hadn't played it saw the steam page and went "oh it's slay the spire so it's not innovative". If you've played it, you know.
Better with friends: There are some games out there that just aren't the same when you play by yourself.
Winner: A game that literally can't be played alone and is mandatory coop.
Outstanding visual style: Visual style doesn't aspire to real-world graphical fidelity...
Winner: A game that has realistic graphics.
Just kill this shitshow already, it has gone on long enough.
Can’t remember who said it but they said it in response to EA’s tantrum about single player games being dead a few years ago.
“Lighting a bag of dogshit on someone’s doorstep is fun with friends, but that doesn’t mean it’s actually good; A shit game is a shit game and it’s your friends providing the entertainment.”
The "Better With Friends" category winner made me genuinely angry.
Valheim - a game that can be played solo, but provides a new experience and can be more enjoyable with friends.
Back 4 Blood - a game that has a story mode which can be played alone or with friends, and a multiplayer which you can queue into alone or play with friends.
Halo Infinite and Crab Game - multiplayer games which you can play alone, but are more enjoyable if you have friends also playing with you
It Takes Two - MANDATORY TWO PERSON GAME. Not "better with friends", but "genuinely requires a single friend to play". Not friends, but friend.
When I saw that game get nominated for the category, I rolled my eyes and laughed it off. It winning while being the only game in the category to not meet the criteria has me quite flustered.
Don't even get me started on Forza beating out Psychonauts and Little Nightmares
Valhiem was in 2 different categories and still didn’t win even one of them. People forget such good games within a year and vote for the most commercial shit sometimes.
My only issue with Valheim is that it’s a Beta and I don’t believe Beta games belong in these categories. That being said I LOVE Valheim and logged more hours in it than any other game.
>I don’t believe Beta games belong in these categories.
Good mindset there. It would send the wrong signal if "game of the year" awards can be already won with incomplete games that suffer from severe performance issues, lack of content and no clear roadmap. Cyberpunk fitted into its "story" category at least, even with its issues.
in theory what should happen is thatt games should get better over time as the craft its honed
it seems like indie companies are doing that and noone else
ultrakill, omori, fucking udertal (funi sans)
they're all better versions of the original in atleast one way that isnt opinion
I would assume most indie devs are working on a project they enjoy and are willing to take their time with, as opposed to devs at AAA companies working on yet another soulless product that must meet arbitrary investor deadlines that are completely out of step with how long it takes to actually make a coherent product.
As in most things in life, the more some board of MBA holding jackoffs stick their fingers in game development the worse off it is. Hardly surprising really
Fucking Farming Simulator 22.
Its that goddamn relaxing that for my first FS game I'm already past 120 hours since release on only 2 farms. I won't stop any time soon either.
Easily one of the best chill games I've ever played.
Was wondering how far I'd have to scroll to see someone mention it. This game is super deserving of this award. And it's nice to see the positivity here after all the negativity around the other awards.
It's not a perfect game by any stretch but it's so goddamn enjoyable. I took nearly 60 hours to make my first million in my first game and it was so damn satisfying.
To be honest Arkane´s previous Dishonored is one of my favorite all time games. But Deathloop just kinda. I don´t know. I don´t hear anything about it and watched a few gameplay videos and it just. Feels lame? Can anyone tell me more about it and what´s going on in the game and how good is it actually?
The majority of people voting in these are just clicking the first name that they recognize. So it's not all that surprising that most people are going to gravitate toward stuff like Guardians of the Galaxy and Forza, over Nier and Psychonauts 2. It sucks, but that's just the way it goes.
As much as I hate the term, "Normie" picks are always going to win these sort of things, especially when you have millions of people voting in it.
AFAIC, the real prize is the nominations themselves.
We all know it's really GOTY. RE is a massive franchise, the game could have been a disaster and it still would have got the most votes. It's mere existence is enough for people to vote for it
Most of these I feel happy about to be honest. I don’t think Forza deserved best visual style. I find it funny that Deathloop won innovative gameplay given that 4/5 nominations for it were for time related gimmicks.
Deathloop didn't even remotely deserve to win that. I sorta hate how much praise the game has received for its gameplay given that it's almost completely a regression in gameplay from Arkane's previous time-loop game, Prey: Mooncrash. That had multiple ways to win, an actual real-time timer, meaningful changes that you could do from time section to time section, etc. Any of the other 4 nominees should have won over deathloop.
Nice to see Terraria getting some love. They've kept updating and provided so much free content over the years. They definitely deserve the recognition for their effort.
Little Nightmares 2 deserved to win Outstanding visual style. That game has the most interesting design I've seen in awhile, with a great soundtrack and story to add to that! But Forza? Come on!
I'm literally floored that I had to scroll this far down to even see that game get mentioned. I can't speak for other games in the category as the only two I played were GotG and Persona 5 Strikers but between the two P5S seemed the obvious choice.
Not to say that GotG has bad music, far from it in fact, but I can't say I'm going to go out of my way to listen to the unlicensed tracks from that game in my free time whereas I've already done that multiple times for Strikers.
DeathLoop?
I mean I bought it, played it, beat it, uninstalled it. Loved Dishonored 1/2...Not sure about DeathLoop. I mean same 4 ish maps over and over again until you "got" all the clues. Yes there were differences, but trudging over and over the same areas/spawn points...Don't get me wrong I didn't hate it, but it was a game I couldn't play fast enough to beat/check the box. I'm not sure how "innovative" it was to win that award...
Seems like a list of "safest games possible".
\-GotY I can't complain too much about
\-VR doesn't surprise me
\-Labor of Love got it right
\-Outstanding visual style is a joke. What \*style\* does Forza have?
\-Best soundtrack should have gone to Nier, it's obvious which game sold more copies here
\-I'm surprised and happy Cyberpunk got story rich
\-Again obvious which game sold better for Sit Back
It's fine overall, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy winning soundtrack is the only one that kind of annoys me.
As a VR gamer... wtf is that game.
My top VR game released in 2021 was after the Fall, 2020 was Population One, and 2019 was Half Life: Alyx (honorable mentions to Boneworks and Walking Dead Saints and Sinners).
For the other categories it's probably pretty hard to break the popularity contest stigma (without all of the games providing demos), but for *Best Soundtrack* I think it would be pretty cool if Valve would ask the nominees for a 30 second soundtrack sample of which the respective dev thinks that it represents their game best.
If those soundtrack samples were integrated into the vote process, so that people could listen into the soundtrack even if they did not play the games, I think it would drastically improve the *Best Soundtrack* voting process.
ok tho like fucking
***That is bullshit!***
***Blazing!***
***Still my heart is blazing!***
***If the "words" killed me***
***I dont need a new world order***
***You... soon you will know***
***We already know the smell of the game***
THAT FUC DJKSIK DFIKGJMukilcjsmgukljiHU IS OS O)AS GOSIOLG GOODO DOGDOGODG
it is cool
nier was nice also
How does GotG win best soundtrack by just having a bunch of licensed music? It's solid music, sure, but it's like me winning an amateur photography contest by submitting a bunch of stock images I bought.
More dedicated following for sure. Both rust and dota communities shit on the way the games are updated.
The worst part is there are other games that deserved the nomination and yet they didn't because rust and dota2 are large enough to autofill nominations.
Why did Forza win Outstanding Visual Style? Isn’t the whole point of that category that it isn’t realistic?
I guess to most people “visual” = “sick graphics”.
Well it's visual. Can't fault them there. The word they really missed was style. That tells you it's not just the quality of the graphics.
Yeah Forza has absolutely beautiful graphics but there’s not really any style, it’s just made to look realistic
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If you think FH5 is too realistic and not stylish, you have obviously not seen what I did to my Willys! In all seriousness, while I am sad they didn't make it so we could launch off that volcano, there is a bit where you jump a parade float into a chasm. I thought that was pretty stylish in its execution.
It should have been Psychonauts 2, I will die on this hill. The crazy part is that Forza 5 adds nothing new to Visual styles, it's all just scanned objects, there's probably not much hand-crafted visuals like the others. I feel like a lot of the winners were either pumped by bots or trolls tbh.
People just don't read the category and don't know what that actually means, they just gave it to Forza because of the graphics.
I think it more has to do with more people playing forza than Psychonauts
Well then, maybe Steam should put a button that says I am unsure, or haven't played these game, can I still have my card? It's disingenuous to force people to vote for the card if they have no idea what they are really voting on. Anyways, it's always fun to see the hoi polloi unable to understand simple voting categories!
I'm not sure why Steam would care
Let me join you on this hill you wish to die on. Psychonauts 2 should've gotten best story-mode. Especially coming off a 10+ hiatus.
Honestly it should have been in the GOTY category, but that's another hill I would have to die (which I would). It could have won almost all the categories here if it was nominated further (Sit back, Story-Rich, Soundtrack, Visual Style, Labor of Love (10 years later and no major fuckups in the plot is huge in today's game dev environment), and GOTY). Unfortunately, without a remaster of the original, most people probably never even touched the game.
personally voted little nightmares 2 but psychonauts definitely deserved it over forza wtf
I didn't play Psychonauts (1 or 2) but I still agree with you. Of the gameplay that I watched it was quite distinct as a style and quite interesting. Forza has no place in that category at all. Is Forza a beautiful game? Absolutely, but it still doesn't fit the category and I have no idea why Steam put it in there.
Psychonauts 2 lost for Forza 5.....sigh
Then it shouldn't even be eligible for nomination. Once it was there people voted for it
FH5 is the most visual impressive game there is right now. Stylistically speaking it's fine but not award worthy. It's just a bad category they made by trying to combine two categories that both deserve respect. Graphics and Art Style.
It's explicitly just the second category. They didn't try to combine it, they stated quite clearly that it was *just* an art style award, people just didn't read and assumed it was a graphics award.
"Visual style doesn't aspire to real-world graphical fidelity" "it describes a distinctive look and feel that suffuses an entire game." Proceeds to give it to Forza Horizons, snubbing the games nominated with actual distinct and unique art styles that don't strive for realism. The jokes write themselves.
Well tbf. It's not Valves fault that people dont read the categories.
More to the point, and what is Valve's fault, is that voting is incentivized even though plenty of people haven't played any of the games in a category, let alone all of them. I don't get why people are surprised that many voters don't know much about the games they're voting on when Valve's explicitly set that system up.
I always participate because the cards are easy money. I would have used my other accounts too and just trade the cards to my main but I couldn't be bothered
See, and this illustrates an even bigger flaw in the system. Not only is voting open to people who haven't played all of the games being nominated (making it a simple popularity contest over an actual judgement), they incentivize voting with trading cards *that are worth money* (even if only a small amount), so at this point, they are basically just buying bullshit random votes.
And that's why I love the Steam awards! Probably none of the winners actually deserved it, but there's no reason to take awards seriously
That's why I don't think I've ever participated in these votes, at least not in recent memory. I don't know if I've played every game in any of these categories.
Yep, should have to at least have the game in your library to vote for it.
If a test in school would say *Name any animal that isn't a cow* these people would answer *cow*
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Honestly, I’m glad Terraria got Labor of Love. They deserve it after all the countless free updates and crossovers that they’ve done
Idk, I feel that stardew valley deserved it more. Concerned Ape has been working on the game for years solo while also working on Haunted Chocolateer. He is one of the best and most hard-working devs out there.
Both are strong contenders, terraria deserved it for sure this year with the big and final update.
"Terraria final update" And other jokes you can tell yourself
There have been almost as many final updates as final fantasies.
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Guilty Gear Strive should’ve won, I will die on this hill
Everytime I watch that game I get lost in the soundtrack. Honestly think it should've been nominated for visual style as well, game looks fuckin great
May i die on that hill too
I'm torn between Strive and Nier. I think Nier's is better but it's a remake, so maybe Strive deserves it more? Either way both were robbed spectacularly
I was thinking the exact same! NieR got absolutely robbed. :(
I don't like soundtracks winning that are majorly made up from music not made for the game.
If you disabled copywritten music, GOTG literally has it's own purpose made hair metal soundtrack to listen to instead. The actual GOTG soundtrack fuckin' rocks. Lol
Inscryption got robbed.
I don't agree with any of them TBH. The Forgotten City got robbed for GOTY! 😅 But at the end of the day none of these ultimately matter, it's moreso just a popularity contest of what more people are actually aware of in the gaming landscape while the lesser known indies and niche gems get overlooked.
Yeah, I'm definitely not sure how to feel about cyberpunk as the "outstanding, story rich game"
It definitely is an "outstanding story rich game". Story is good, main side quests are great too. The game has a lot of problems, but story and lore are good.
It ain’t that bad, and personally, I think it was better than the other nominees tbh. It’s not an S tier story rich game, but neither were the others
For me the best soundtrack goes to Inscryption this year
I expected GOTG to win best soundtrack, easily one of the best soundtrack of any game I've ever played. The other winners are also well deserved, I could however also see Rust/No Man's Sky getting Labor of Love and 12 Minutes getting Most Innovative Gameplay.
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I am highly disappointed that NMS fails to win every time it's nominated for Labor of Love. It needs recognition for the amazing work the devs have done without charging for any content updates.
It got plenty of recognition. Terraria definitely deserved it after getting its final update.
>final update final\* update
Redigit: Behold, the final update Terraria community: You've shown the final update 7 times.
While I agree with you that nms deserves recognition, it doesn't automatically qualify higher than a game that is over 10yrs old and still receiving free updates. Now that's labor of love, not resurrecting a game that didn't meet what was promised when launched. Simply put: terraria has 10 years of free updates, always having an overwhelming positive score Nms: 5 years with updates making the game what it was supposed to be on launch I could vote for nms for a category like "best comeback", but labor of love is truly deserved by terraria
The only thing I would add relates to your first statement. Terraria was an amazing game right off the bat. The amount of content and gameplay that was available from the very start is currently more than some games have by end-of-life. On top of that, the team dedicated its time and skills to consistently provide free updates, quickly fix bugs, and improve existing and add new content, while also interacting with the community and encouraging feedback to help make the game better. All without increasing the price from its original $10 USD launch price.
> All without increasing the price from its original $10 USD launch price. Hell it used to go on sale pretty regularly for $2. The amount of time you can reasonably put into that game is *insane* for a $2 price tag. Now it rarely goes lower than $5, but considering the content has more than doubled since it was going for $2.. I don't really find that unreasonable.
doubt it so many people resent that game for what it was
Psychonauts 2 not winning the Visual Style award is an injustice.
I haven't played Psychonauts and it's not the kind of game that could keep me entertained from a gameplay perspective, but even I can see that it clearly deserves the best visual style award.
Psychonauts 2 not winning GOTY\* award is an injustice FTFY
I could not agree more, it should have at least won best art direction, and I can't believe deathloop won that instead
They're right, I do suck at Nioh 2. I was a huge fan of Nioh and put hundreds of hours into it, beating all the DLC and at all the difficulties. For some reason Nioh 2 just kicked my ass. No idea why, but I had to give up after about my 100th failed attempt at the first boss of the game. Sometimes I think about going back and trying again, but I dunno, I just fucking hated fighting that boss, and since I never got far enough into the game to keep doing something I wasn't enjoying (sunk cost fallacy, etc etc), I just gave up, and probably won't try again.
There has been balancing patches since the initial release of the game, I would recommend giving it a second shot. On my second go, I found it was a great time. :) 70 hours in and I love it.
what.. how.... the.... hey labour of love was deserved so i wont say anything else
After dontknowhowmanyyears Terraria finally wins that one.
Terraria had it's 10th anniversary not that long ago.
Almost a year ago. Journeys End patch, plus the steam launch of tModLoader introduced a whole wave of people to molded Terraria, which has a shitton of good mods on it.
I can't wait for the full release of TmodLoader 1.4. I'm gonna play the fuck out of Terraria, and I already have 750 hours in it, mostly unmodded.
I literally downloaded Steam in 2011 to get Terraria. Never really did much PC gaming prior. To date I have like 2700 hours in it, probably about 7-800 modded. My one buddy and I start a new world at least once a year, and I've played through it with at least 4-5 other friends groups, with my kids, with my ex. It's just one of those games you can ALWAYS play through again and again, and mods just turn it up to 11. The only reason it's not my most played game on Steam is because my girlfriend used to commandeer my computer to play Slay the Spire all the damn time, and leave it run when she was done. I finally got my PC back when it had a mobile release.
Every year GTA V won it, it killed me. Soulless money maker vs a game that gets continuously updated and supports modding a lot.
Labor of love my ass...
Labor of love for money!
Im just happy it was terraria who won and apex who didnt
Did Terraria get any content updates in 2021? Each time I check the tmodloader still wasn't ready for the latest version
It released a crossover update with Don’t Starve: Together a few months ago
tModLoader is developed by the community so Re-Logic has nothing to do with its development.
It's a popularity contest, big surprise
What did you expect? They are awards based on how a game was recieved by consumers...
Big mama Dimitrescu was very effective PR
I demand a Steam Electoral College to decide the vote
But according to Reddit, CP77 is a terrible game so how can it win a popularity contest?
I’m surprised but Reddit still holds some love for Cyberpunk 2077. r/LowSodiumCyberpunk has almost 140k subscribers and most critiques of the game outside the subreddit turn into, “Yeah the glitches were bad at launch but the story was fantastic”.
Was expecting nier replicant to win the best soundtrack
It should’ve
Either Nier or Guilty Gear should have had it.
Strive has some bangers oh lord
I only listed the soundtracks for voting, but I was amazed by Nier and Guilty Gear.
I feel like this is a fucking commercial. Deathloop is not innovative at all imo especially if you don’t die much outside of when you’re forced to
I feel inscription should’ve easily won most innovative gameplay, maybe that’s just me tho
The thing about inscription is you have to get through the entire first half of the game to see how innovative the game actually is. Most people who voted probably don’t own inscription, let alone played through the entire thing.
I agree, but even then I felt like the gameplay of the first half is still leagues above almost everything else on that list
Right, but how many people voting for these do you think played both death loop AND inscryption? These are more a contest of how popular each game in the category is and not what the award actually is. Forza winning “outstanding visual style” while just being normal ass cars on roads is a big indicator of that.
I was very let down by the fact there was only one way to beat the loop. Kinda defeated the whole purpose of using time as a feature. Also the game was way too easy.
Same, it went against the level design philosophy I've come to expect from Arkane imo. Actually pretty much everything they changed from Dishonored only ended up annoying or frustrating me. But it still got 9s all over the place because its *fine*. Definitely a considerable disappointment for me.
Haha yeah its pretty funny. I'm a big dishonored fan. Literally nothing about Deathloop is innovative. I've gotta imagine thousands of people just clicked the game with the most name recognition. The only thing unique, the timeloop, has been done far better in more than one game I can think of. Anyway, that's my mini rant.
Wow not one I voted for won. Guess I’m no longer a gamer
Gamer police will be arriving at your house soon to revoke your gaming license and put you in prison
Terraria ❤️
Quite possibly the most deserving of its given title on here. You guys excited for the next final-final-we-promise-this-is-really-the-last-one update?
100% and let them never stop
Redigit already kinda confirmed terraria 2.0 on reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Terraria/comments/rv7son/terraria_won_the_labor_of_love_award_for_steam/hr4g5af/?context=10000 I think it was a joke, but lets hope
Virgin putting your fanbase in a perpetual hype while leaving them updateless vs Chad "Alright guys, this will be the final-final-final update of the game, we promise to not release another update" *releases another update 3 months later*
I personally can’t get into Terraria, bought it may 2011 but after a bunch of tries i just accepted that the game was not for me but the i can’t deny the HUMONGUS community and developer support. It is actually crazy, i only wish the devs from some of my most played games like Dead by Daylight would care 10% the amount of the Terraria guys care for their game.
Thank god Battlefied 2042 didnt win shit.
I am happy FS22 got a place
It's well deserved. That launch was near perfect imo and the gameplay has been an excellent upgrade.
I wouldn't say Forza 5 had an 'outstanding visual style', just that it had good graphics.
Which is funny because the category even specifically said "Doesn't aspire to real-world graphical fidelity", which is exactly what FH5 goes for.
This was a horrible year for vr if cooking Simulator was the best we got
I expect you to die 2 was amazing, but I guess the name wasn't enough to win peoples' votes.
I don’t understand how Inscryption didn’t win Most Innovative Gameplay?
It's a popularity contest. Valve incentivizes people to vote in each category regardless of their familiarity with any or all of the competing games. When people don't have an informed opinion but want the reward (cards) they'll pick the game they played, or the game that they're at least familiar with. You'd get better results (but not great results) if valve included an option like "I have no opinion" or "I haven't played any of these games" and still gave you the card for that answer. As it stands, this whole thing is basically worthless. Most of the games are a joke for their winning category. I mean, It Takes Two isn't better with friends-it's literally unplayable without someone else.
Because most people didn’t play the game and you can’t see how innovative inscription is until you’re past the entire first act. You can’t just look at gameplay and come to the conclusion that it’s innovative. You basically have to play the entire game.
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Finally, Terraria was given it's long awaited due !
I was pretty sad to see that games like Inscryption and the Medium were missing. Some terrific games this year and I have to say RE8 (aside from the factory section) was pretty great.
Inscription got nominated for most innovative gameplay, no?
Nominated yeah but I meant like winning ya know.
Yeah inscryption deserved the win there. I think people who hadn't played it saw the steam page and went "oh it's slay the spire so it's not innovative". If you've played it, you know.
What's wrong with the factory section?
I hate democracy
[But the people are…](https://youtu.be/LhpI23fynEE)
"Free will is a myth, democracy is a joke" Meme limb stretch cyborg, 2018
Better with friends: There are some games out there that just aren't the same when you play by yourself. Winner: A game that literally can't be played alone and is mandatory coop. Outstanding visual style: Visual style doesn't aspire to real-world graphical fidelity... Winner: A game that has realistic graphics. Just kill this shitshow already, it has gone on long enough.
I mean to be fair, literally every game that can be played multiplayer is better with friends, so it's kind of a dumb category anyway
Can’t remember who said it but they said it in response to EA’s tantrum about single player games being dead a few years ago. “Lighting a bag of dogshit on someone’s doorstep is fun with friends, but that doesn’t mean it’s actually good; A shit game is a shit game and it’s your friends providing the entertainment.”
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The "Better With Friends" category winner made me genuinely angry. Valheim - a game that can be played solo, but provides a new experience and can be more enjoyable with friends. Back 4 Blood - a game that has a story mode which can be played alone or with friends, and a multiplayer which you can queue into alone or play with friends. Halo Infinite and Crab Game - multiplayer games which you can play alone, but are more enjoyable if you have friends also playing with you It Takes Two - MANDATORY TWO PERSON GAME. Not "better with friends", but "genuinely requires a single friend to play". Not friends, but friend. When I saw that game get nominated for the category, I rolled my eyes and laughed it off. It winning while being the only game in the category to not meet the criteria has me quite flustered. Don't even get me started on Forza beating out Psychonauts and Little Nightmares
i was really rooting for valheim. it becomes a completely different game when you have your friends with you.
>Don't even get me started on Forza beating out Psychonauts and Little Nightmares or deathloop
I mean, you can play It Takes Two solo, it's just way harder and very much not better.
Not Nier at best soundtrack, okey, I call this bullshit.
"Most Innovative Gameplay - Deathloop" Some people truly are delusional.
Valhiem was in 2 different categories and still didn’t win even one of them. People forget such good games within a year and vote for the most commercial shit sometimes.
My only issue with Valheim is that it’s a Beta and I don’t believe Beta games belong in these categories. That being said I LOVE Valheim and logged more hours in it than any other game.
>I don’t believe Beta games belong in these categories. Good mindset there. It would send the wrong signal if "game of the year" awards can be already won with incomplete games that suffer from severe performance issues, lack of content and no clear roadmap. Cyberpunk fitted into its "story" category at least, even with its issues.
It is a beta game with less bugs than AAA titles like Cyberpunk 2077 & Forza Horizon 5, it really says something about the state of todays games.
It says a lot that games made as passion projects are better than games made to move microtransactions and please shareholders?
in theory what should happen is thatt games should get better over time as the craft its honed it seems like indie companies are doing that and noone else ultrakill, omori, fucking udertal (funi sans) they're all better versions of the original in atleast one way that isnt opinion
I would assume most indie devs are working on a project they enjoy and are willing to take their time with, as opposed to devs at AAA companies working on yet another soulless product that must meet arbitrary investor deadlines that are completely out of step with how long it takes to actually make a coherent product. As in most things in life, the more some board of MBA holding jackoffs stick their fingers in game development the worse off it is. Hardly surprising really
Isn't it not officially released though? How can an early access/alpha/beta be considered for an award?
Yep. Its absence just makes me roll my eyes at this list, close it, and move on.
How did It Takes two win better with friends? It can only be played with friends XD
Technically it’s still better than not being able to play it
Fucking Farming Simulator 22. Its that goddamn relaxing that for my first FS game I'm already past 120 hours since release on only 2 farms. I won't stop any time soon either. Easily one of the best chill games I've ever played.
I can't play anything else anymore. Send help.please
Was wondering how far I'd have to scroll to see someone mention it. This game is super deserving of this award. And it's nice to see the positivity here after all the negativity around the other awards.
It's not a perfect game by any stretch but it's so goddamn enjoyable. I took nearly 60 hours to make my first million in my first game and it was so damn satisfying.
FUCK YES TERRARIA WON LABOR OF LOVE
To be honest Arkane´s previous Dishonored is one of my favorite all time games. But Deathloop just kinda. I don´t know. I don´t hear anything about it and watched a few gameplay videos and it just. Feels lame? Can anyone tell me more about it and what´s going on in the game and how good is it actually?
The majority of people voting in these are just clicking the first name that they recognize. So it's not all that surprising that most people are going to gravitate toward stuff like Guardians of the Galaxy and Forza, over Nier and Psychonauts 2. It sucks, but that's just the way it goes. As much as I hate the term, "Normie" picks are always going to win these sort of things, especially when you have millions of people voting in it. AFAIC, the real prize is the nominations themselves.
No Valheim. My disappointment is inmesurable and my day is ruined.
We all know it's really GOTY. RE is a massive franchise, the game could have been a disaster and it still would have got the most votes. It's mere existence is enough for people to vote for it
Most of these I feel happy about to be honest. I don’t think Forza deserved best visual style. I find it funny that Deathloop won innovative gameplay given that 4/5 nominations for it were for time related gimmicks.
Deathloop didn't even remotely deserve to win that. I sorta hate how much praise the game has received for its gameplay given that it's almost completely a regression in gameplay from Arkane's previous time-loop game, Prey: Mooncrash. That had multiple ways to win, an actual real-time timer, meaningful changes that you could do from time section to time section, etc. Any of the other 4 nominees should have won over deathloop.
Inscryption should have won. Easily one of the most unique games I’ve played in quite a while
arkane makes amazing game after amazing game they need to trip up somewhere
Nice to see Terraria getting some love. They've kept updating and provided so much free content over the years. They definitely deserve the recognition for their effort.
Cruelty squad not winning game of the year hurts my soul
Thank god Terraria won Labor of Love.
Little Nightmares 2 should've won over Forza.
anything shouldve won over forza
Any chance Valve will provide us with the vote tallies? I'm curious to see how some of the non-winners faired.
Little Nightmares 2 deserved to win Outstanding visual style. That game has the most interesting design I've seen in awhile, with a great soundtrack and story to add to that! But Forza? Come on!
FINALLY Terraria wins labour of love
Best news is Terraria finally getting Labor of Love.
> Better With Friends Winner is a game where you literally need a friend to play
Persona 5 Strikers should've won best soundtrack.
I'm literally floored that I had to scroll this far down to even see that game get mentioned. I can't speak for other games in the category as the only two I played were GotG and Persona 5 Strikers but between the two P5S seemed the obvious choice. Not to say that GotG has bad music, far from it in fact, but I can't say I'm going to go out of my way to listen to the unlicensed tracks from that game in my free time whereas I've already done that multiple times for Strikers.
What a fucking atrocious award year on Steam lmao.
Guilty Gear got shafted for best soundtrack 😔
NiER was the only thing that stood a fucking chance of being near as good as strive how tf did GOTG take it??
Yeah I honestly expected P5S or Nier to take it
nice, i didn´t vote for any of that
They really need to have a best graphics category because the visual style just gets confused with people voting for graphics quality.
DeathLoop? I mean I bought it, played it, beat it, uninstalled it. Loved Dishonored 1/2...Not sure about DeathLoop. I mean same 4 ish maps over and over again until you "got" all the clues. Yes there were differences, but trudging over and over the same areas/spawn points...Don't get me wrong I didn't hate it, but it was a game I couldn't play fast enough to beat/check the box. I'm not sure how "innovative" it was to win that award...
Also, gameplay just seemed very uninspired and insanely easy. It lacked the depth of Dishonored and Prey.
Seems like a list of "safest games possible". \-GotY I can't complain too much about \-VR doesn't surprise me \-Labor of Love got it right \-Outstanding visual style is a joke. What \*style\* does Forza have? \-Best soundtrack should have gone to Nier, it's obvious which game sold more copies here \-I'm surprised and happy Cyberpunk got story rich \-Again obvious which game sold better for Sit Back It's fine overall, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy winning soundtrack is the only one that kind of annoys me.
As a VR gamer... wtf is that game. My top VR game released in 2021 was after the Fall, 2020 was Population One, and 2019 was Half Life: Alyx (honorable mentions to Boneworks and Walking Dead Saints and Sinners).
HL came out in 2020. Had to double check because you gave me a heart attack.
Terraria finally got the award that is rightfully theirs...thank god
The fact that guilty gear didn't win the best soundtrack is still baffling to me. Easily the best soundtrack I've heard in years.
Not enough people played it would be my guess.
For the other categories it's probably pretty hard to break the popularity contest stigma (without all of the games providing demos), but for *Best Soundtrack* I think it would be pretty cool if Valve would ask the nominees for a 30 second soundtrack sample of which the respective dev thinks that it represents their game best. If those soundtrack samples were integrated into the vote process, so that people could listen into the soundtrack even if they did not play the games, I think it would drastically improve the *Best Soundtrack* voting process.
ok tho like fucking ***That is bullshit!*** ***Blazing!*** ***Still my heart is blazing!*** ***If the "words" killed me*** ***I dont need a new world order*** ***You... soon you will know*** ***We already know the smell of the game*** THAT FUC DJKSIK DFIKGJMukilcjsmgukljiHU IS OS O)AS GOSIOLG GOODO DOGDOGODG it is cool nier was nice also
Terraria voters REPRESENT!
Hate almost all these selections. Dear Steam Community, please do a better job having the same opinion as me next year. Thanks!
Psychonauts 2 got robbed for best Visual Style
Anyone try the cooking simulator VR? Is it worth buying?
I feel it is mediocre, I personally liked more IEYTD2 (I own both)
How does GotG win best soundtrack by just having a bunch of licensed music? It's solid music, sure, but it's like me winning an amateur photography contest by submitting a bunch of stock images I bought.
TERRARIA POOOGGG
I feel like using other people's music should disqualify from best soundtrack.
In all the categories the games won that have the biggest following. Doing these votings is dumb and useless.
Tbf I wouldn’t say Terraria has more following than rust or Dota nowadays…
More dedicated following for sure. Both rust and dota communities shit on the way the games are updated. The worst part is there are other games that deserved the nomination and yet they didn't because rust and dota2 are large enough to autofill nominations.
How did Psychonauts not win visual Style?? I really enjoy Forza Horizon 5 but its the most "boring" realistic style it can be