I feel as if the Starfield and RDR2 awards almost have to be sarcastically awarded.

Welcome to popularity contests. They are awarded irrespective of skill or effort, only if they hit the right buttons to the masses.

“What’s up” is that people are stupid and don’t know things. Popular vote awards (and national elections!) always suffer from lazy ignorance.

People will never be satisfied with awards. Let the community choose? You get popularity contest. Let the review outlets choose? Then you get only a certain kind of games to win the contest. Steam is very community focused in most of their recommendations and in this case, awards. This has ups and downs and sometimes its stupid. In case of RDR2 who knows what the reason was why they chose this game. It might be an attempt to troll in mass. Or a misunderstanding.

I take awards as one kind of view and never in isolation. Context matters. So I ignore those where I think it is stupid awards, like Starfield and RDR2, and look at the other candidates. And the other categories as well. And then move on with my life. Just like with the other award shows. Who cares what game won what award? It rarely impacts my choice.

Armored Core wasn’t even a runner up on any of the categories, while FC24 was in like 3 of them. I completely give up.