News video games 03 January 2024, 03:59

Steam Awards Results; Baldur's Gate 3 is GotY, Starfield Most Innovative

Steam awards have been handed out. Among the winners there is no shortage of surprises. Starfield was named the most innovative game, and Red Dead Redemption 2 was named the best-supported title.

Source: Microsoft

We got to know Steam Awards winners for 2023. The awards were decided by gamers themselves, voting for their favorites in December.

Most of the winners come as no surprise. Baldur's Gate III won the statuette for game of the year and best story. The revelation of recent months, cooperative Lethal Company was recognized as the title with the best multiplayer, and Dave the Diver triumphed in the "sit back and relax" category. The developers of the latter boasted that its sales have already exceeded 3 million copies.

Steam Awards Results; Baldurs Gate 3 is GotY, Starfield Most Innovative - picture #1

Larian and Bethesda studios were pleased with the wins. Source: Twitter.com.

There were also a few surprises, including the victory of Starfield in the category of most innovative game. Objectively looking, this award should go to Shadows of Doubt, which presented a revolutionary approach to detective gameplay. Nevertheless, the victory of Bethesda should not come as much of a surprise. Starfield was, after all, one of the biggest commercial successes of 2023, and the Steam Awards stands by the votes of gamers.

On top of that, although all elements of Starfield had already appeared in earlier titles (sometimes even in better form), no one had combined them in such a way until now, so it was quite a fresh game for many people. Of course, it's just as well that this win could also have been due to the fact that players voted for Starfield as a joke, to give vent to frustration with the game's quality and the slow pace of its improvement.

A much bigger disagreement is the recognition of Red Dead Redemption 2 as the best-supported game. After all, the title was almost abandoned by Rockstar Games a long time ago. The online mode hasn't received real, fresh content in two years, being able to count only on repetitions of old events and technical fixes. So why the win of RDR2? It may be due to the fact that new players are joining the game all the time (in November the title set a new activity record) and many of them are just discovering this classic. However, it seems more likely to be trolling, aimed at creating a ridiculous situation in which an abandoned game wins an accolade in this category.

In the category of best-supported game, the obvious leader was Cyberpunk 2077. The game received the RT Overdrive mode and the big patch 2.0, which completely revamped the RPG elements. On top of that, it saw the debut of the excellent Phantom Liberty expansion. CP2077 could not be voted for, however, for a simple reason - the base game won in this category a year ago and was therefore excluded from the 2023 competition.