In case you missed it, the 2025 Steam Awards were announced the other
day. Here are the results:

Game of the Year: Hollow Knight Silksong
Outstanding Visual Style: Silent Hill f
Best Soundtrack: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Most Innovative Gameplay: ARC Raiders
Better With Friends: PEAK
Labor of Love: Baldur's Gate 3
Best Game You Suck At: Hollow Knight: Silksong
Outstanding Game Story: Dispatch
Sit Back and Relax RV There Yet?
VR Game of the Year: The Midnight Walk
Best Steam Deck Game: Hades 2

Now, we can make all the usual comments about the pointlessness of the
awards, or the bias, that it doesn't reflect the habits of the 'real
gamer', or how they obviously hate <GAME X> because it definitely
should have won game of the year... you know, the usual bitching about
these awards. But instead, I want you to look at that list and notice something.

Do you see it?

There's not one triple-A game on that list. Not one game from EA, or
Ubisoft, or MicroActiSoftVision or any of the rest of the 'big name' publishers.

There are some triple-A quality games, certainly ("Clair Obscura", for instance) and some games that come from sizeable developers ("Silent
Hill f" and "Baldur's Gate 3")... but the big guys make a very
conspicuous absence.

Now, you can make excuses for this, with varying legitimacy. For
instance, this list only includes games sold on Steam, so exclusives
to other platforms (or even games that may be sold on Steam, but most
people buy and play them on other platforms) will get short shrift. If
most people playing "Call of Duty XCCLVI: More Call, More Duty" on
XBox, then fewer fans will visit Steam to vote for it.

And of course Valve has an agenda to push with their selections (the
awards are based on which games people voted for most... but Valve
suggests the contestants). Hence the category for VR and 'best on
SteamDeck', for instance.

Still, for /no/ triple-A game to make it to the top of the list is
telling. It's not that those publishers don't still make quality or
popular games... but their once undeniable hold on the industry is
definitely being whittled away. People no longer look to the Big Names
as their first source for games-that-must-be-played. Sure, Assassins
Creed is fun... but you can get just as much enjoyment from games from
tinier developers... and often you pay less for the privilege and
suffer less annoyances.

If I were a C-level exec at these businesses, I'd be getting worried.
Because while many of us here have bemoaned the lack of comparative
quality coming from triple-As for a while now, the Steam 2025 Awards
shows that it's becoming apparent to hoi polloi too!







--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

There's not one triple-A game on that list.

that they tend to be sequels that play it safe with padding or utransactions doesn't help

rms


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 1/5/2026 8:18 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

In case you missed it, the 2025 Steam Awards were announced the other
day. Here are the results:

Game of the Year: Hollow Knight Silksong
Outstanding Visual Style: Silent Hill f
Best Soundtrack: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Most Innovative Gameplay: ARC Raiders
Better With Friends: PEAK
Labor of Love: Baldur's Gate 3
Best Game You Suck At: Hollow Knight: Silksong
Outstanding Game Story: Dispatch
Sit Back and Relax RV There Yet?
VR Game of the Year: The Midnight Walk
Best Steam Deck Game: Hades 2

I hope it's not more an indication that Steam/PC Gaming isn't relevant.
Or maybe I'm just an old curmudgeon.

Most of these games seem questionable to me. GotY is a super hard side scrolling fighting platformer.

Arc Raiders devs use AI at least in creation of their DLC packs.

Dispatch and COE33 look interesting at least, not enough I've bought
them yet though.

BG3 really deserves their award, I've never seen a dev support their
game and community that much. Even Cyberpunk '77 while continuing to
work on it for years and turning it into a great game doesn't do half of
what the BG3 devs have done to enable modding, online play, and much
much more in a much shorter period of time.

--
-Justisaur

?-?
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
?ª'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Tue, 6 Jan 2026 08:52:46 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

On 1/5/2026 8:18 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

In case you missed it, the 2025 Steam Awards were announced the other
day. Here are the results:

Game of the Year: Hollow Knight Silksong
Outstanding Visual Style: Silent Hill f
Best Soundtrack: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Most Innovative Gameplay: ARC Raiders
Better With Friends: PEAK
Labor of Love: Baldur's Gate 3
Best Game You Suck At: Hollow Knight: Silksong
Outstanding Game Story: Dispatch
Sit Back and Relax RV There Yet?
VR Game of the Year: The Midnight Walk
Best Steam Deck Game: Hades 2

I hope it's not more an indication that Steam/PC Gaming isn't relevant.

That seems unlikely. It's monthly user count (2025) is 132 million
active users, with an average 69 million people logging in daily. This
compares well to the Playstation userbase (PS4/PS5/PS+) with its 124
million monthly users, and (I've read, but seen no numbers for) XBox
users. Epic reportedly has around 65 million monthly active users
(mostly Fortnite), although supposedly these numbers have peaked and
are starting to slide. The only real competitor in monthly users is
Roblox (110 MUA).

Steam remains the pre-eminent PC gaming platform, and remains
extremely competitive with consoles too.

Whether it will maintain that position is debatable (it really depends
if it can convert Roblox gamers to its service as they 'age out' of
the Roblox market, and how much of a bite subscription services and
mobile will take) but for the moment, Steam is extremely relevant. If
you want to sell games on PC, your best path to success is to put your
game up on the Steam marketplace.

Most of these games seem questionable to me.

Well, that gets into the sort of "these awards suck!" debate. Which I
won't really involve myself into, because I'm not sure I can disagree.
_All_ such awards suck. But it's besides the point, because even in
past years we saw the triple-As make /some/ appearance.

Note that the triple-A games /were/ in the running. EA Sports F1 2025, Battlefield 6, Split Fiction, Helldivers 2, Doom: Dark Ages, Final
Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Spider-Man 2, and Last of Us 2 (from EA, Bethesda,
Sony and others) all made an appearance on the list. They all lost out
to small- to medium-sized publishers.

As with any awards, you can argue that these don't reflect the likes
and dislikes of 'real' gamers. You'd probably be right about that too.
But neither are they completely disassociated from what that group
prefers either. Maybe the majority still prefer triple-A games... but
if so, that majority is getting narrower. That's what these awards
show.




--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 1/6/2026 11:26 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Tue, 6 Jan 2026 08:52:46 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

On 1/5/2026 8:18 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

In case you missed it, the 2025 Steam Awards were announced the other
day. Here are the results:

Game of the Year: Hollow Knight Silksong
Outstanding Visual Style: Silent Hill f
Best Soundtrack: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Most Innovative Gameplay: ARC Raiders
Better With Friends: PEAK
Labor of Love: Baldur's Gate 3
Best Game You Suck At: Hollow Knight: Silksong
Outstanding Game Story: Dispatch
Sit Back and Relax RV There Yet?
VR Game of the Year: The Midnight Walk
Best Steam Deck Game: Hades 2

I hope it's not more an indication that Steam/PC Gaming isn't relevant.

That seems unlikely. It's monthly user count (2025) is 132 million
active users, with an average 69 million people logging in daily. This compares well to the Playstation userbase (PS4/PS5/PS+) with its 124
million monthly users, and (I've read, but seen no numbers for) XBox
users. Epic reportedly has around 65 million monthly active users
(mostly Fortnite), although supposedly these numbers have peaked and
are starting to slide. The only real competitor in monthly users is
Roblox (110 MUA).

Steam remains the pre-eminent PC gaming platform, and remains
extremely competitive with consoles too.

Whether it will maintain that position is debatable (it really depends
if it can convert Roblox gamers to its service as they 'age out' of
the Roblox market, and how much of a bite subscription services and
mobile will take) but for the moment, Steam is extremely relevant. If
you want to sell games on PC, your best path to success is to put your
game up on the Steam marketplace.

Most of these games seem questionable to me.

Well, that gets into the sort of "these awards suck!" debate. Which I
won't really involve myself into, because I'm not sure I can disagree.
_All_ such awards suck. But it's besides the point, because even in
past years we saw the triple-As make /some/ appearance.

Note that the triple-A games /were/ in the running. EA Sports F1 2025, Battlefield 6, Split Fiction, Helldivers 2, Doom: Dark Ages, Final
Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Spider-Man 2, and Last of Us 2 (from EA, Bethesda,
Sony and others) all made an appearance on the list. They all lost out
to small- to medium-sized publishers.

As with any awards, you can argue that these don't reflect the likes
and dislikes of 'real' gamers. You'd probably be right about that too.
But neither are they completely disassociated from what that group
prefers either. Maybe the majority still prefer triple-A games... but
if so, that majority is getting narrower. That's what these awards
show.

I still can't believe the majority preferred a super hard fighting
platformer. All I can imagine is they're extremely vocal or had a
community campaign to vote for it.

Dispatch and Peak both have similar numbers of reviews but much higher
numbers of positive reviews. 96-97% vs. 91%. I could understand if the casual gamers won it, but probably being casual they probably can't be bothered to vote as much. So I guess it makes sense that Hollow Knight
2 got the top at the intersection of vocal and good.

Another interesting metric to look at is the sales this year, though
most of the games on the top weren't released this year and have lower %
of positive reviews.

https://store.steampowered.com/charts/bestofyear/2025?tab=2

--
-Justisaur

?-?
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
?ª'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com> wrote at 16:52 this Tuesday (GMT):

On 1/5/2026 8:18 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

In case you missed it, the 2025 Steam Awards were announced the other
day. Here are the results:

Game of the Year: Hollow Knight Silksong
Outstanding Visual Style: Silent Hill f
Best Soundtrack: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Most Innovative Gameplay: ARC Raiders
Better With Friends: PEAK
Labor of Love: Baldur's Gate 3
Best Game You Suck At: Hollow Knight: Silksong
Outstanding Game Story: Dispatch
Sit Back and Relax RV There Yet?
VR Game of the Year: The Midnight Walk
Best Steam Deck Game: Hades 2

I hope it's not more an indication that Steam/PC Gaming isn't relevant.
Or maybe I'm just an old curmudgeon.

Most of these games seem questionable to me. GotY is a super hard side scrolling fighting platformer.

Silksong literally took down the Steam servers and was from what I heard extremely extremely quality

Arc Raiders devs use AI at least in creation of their DLC packs.

great...

Dispatch and COE33 look interesting at least, not enough I've bought
them yet though.

Watching a lets play of Dispatch, I legitimately think Telltale finally
made a good game with actual gameplay, it was REALLY good.

BG3 really deserves their award, I've never seen a dev support their
game and community that much. Even Cyberpunk '77 while continuing to
work on it for years and turning it into a great game doesn't do half of what the BG3 devs have done to enable modding, online play, and much
much more in a much shorter period of time.

It's always nice seeing game devs supporting modding.
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)