Yesterday, Valve announced the winners of the 2023 Steam Awards, community-voted awards that began in 2016 as an advertisement for the Steam Winter Sale with categories like “Best Use Of A Farm Animal” and “Whoooaaaaaaa, Dude.” Winners this year include Starfield for “Most Innovative” and Red Dead Redemption 2 for “Labor of Love.” People are, in spite of everything, taking this very seriously.
Outside of the two aforementioned categories, most other winners are about what you’d expect. Baldur’s Gate 3 took home GOTY and “Story-Rich” (games could only be nominated for one category in addition to GOTY), Lethal Company was deemed “Better With Friends,” Dave The Diver won the “Sit Back And Relax” award, etc. But the lion’s share of discourse has centered around Starfield and Red Dead Redemption 2, with countless threads, posts, and YouTube videos about how Starfield is derivative of other Bethesda games and Red Dead Redemption 2 has been a cactus-dotted desert where updates are concerned; in other words, both run contrary to the point of their respective awards.
Many are up in arms, wondering what possibly could have gone wrong in a fully community-driven competition where literally anybody can vote – which, again, is much more an advertisement (now for both the autumn and winter Steam sales) than any kind of prestigious tradition. Broadly, there are two theories: 1) Users on boards like 4chan organized meme votes to troll everybody, or 2) regular people, lured in by Steam’s promise of chat stickers for every category they voted in, just rapid-fire picked games they recognized, irrespective of category. There are also a bunch of conspiracy theories about how the Steam awards – almost entirely sans stakes unless you are an unknown indie game, zero of which won – are rigged, but those are even stupider than the rest of this.
Odds are, it’s a mix of one and two. I made the horrific mistake of checking 4chan, and while some folks are proudly claiming to have voted for Starfield and Red Dead, the overwhelming majority are as confused and angry as everybody else, just with more slurs. On top of that, the sheer scale of the vote leaves me skeptical that even a sizable organized effort would be able to sway a category; way back in 2016, Valve said over 15 million nominations came through, and that was before the main vote. Larian, meanwhile, claims that over 40 million votes were tallied this year, so even if somebody organized a thousands- or tens-of-thousands-strong troll effort, it would have still been a drop in the bucket. Bots remain an eternal possibility, but that’d be a lot of effort for something that, again, really does not matter. Perhaps Steam users, also responsible for nominations, were feeling cheeky sans any central ringleader (that’d certainly explain Red Dead). It will likely never be clear. Valve did not respond to Aftermath’s inquiries as of publishing.
Bethesda doesn't care if it got trolled. It has accepted the award unironically. “We're thrilled to announce that Starfield has won Most Innovative Gameplay in the Steam Awards!” reads a tweet from the official Starfield account. This has, predictably, been met with an avalanche of boos and loud incorrect buzzer sounds, which have spilled over into Starfield’s already “mostly negative” Steam reviews. "No WAY this won most innovative gameplay,” reads one review. “Most innovative loading screen sim,” reads another.
Perhaps, in that sense, these awards – like that other video game award show everybody talks about – are rigged: specifically, in favor of marketing. A company like Bethesda has no reason to explain the context around the award it won, and most people will see it say “we won” and uncritically think “oh huh, it won” before carrying on with their day. That’s all any of these awards are: Marketing tools used by one company that happen to produce additional marketing tools that can be used by other companies. A popular thread on the Steam forums asks, “Have [the] Steam Awards become a joke?” But that would imply that they have meaningfully grown or changed over time, or that they even have room to. An ad will always be an ad, and it deserves the same regard as any: a brief glance because your eyes have to go somewhere, followed by instant banishment from your mind.
