Here’s a story many of you likely didn’t see coming, so we’ll give some context. The way that The Game Awards work is that a panel of judges decide the majority of the winners, with fan votes accounting for 10% of the vote for each category. Many people have complained about that because if they only have 10% of the vote, the judges can easily overrule them, and thus the “obvious choice” will win over what some people would say is the “right choice.” One topic is 100% fan-voted via the “Player’s Voice” category. A category that Genshin Impact is dominating.
What is driving players up the wall currently is that Genshin Impact arguably shouldn’t win the category for various reasons. Not the least is that it wasn’t released in the last year, and when you look at how quickly the game has risen in the polls, something feels off.
If you don’t believe us or those speaking about the “conspiracy,” check out this post from December 2nd. It shows pictures of the first two rounds of the polls, and between those two rounds, the gacha game went from 5% of the vote to 17% of the vote and went from 9th place to 1st place.
If that wasn’t enough, the third round of voting, which is going on right now, has the title at a whopping 53% of the vote! That’s 20% more than the 2nd-place game in Sonic Frontiers.
Sonic fans aren’t happy about this in the slightest, and many feel that the dev team behind Genshin Impact is trying to bribe players into voting for them. That’s not as crazy as it sounds, and it could be happening without the dev team saying anything overtly. In the past, when the gacha title won an award, they rewarded players with Primogems so that they could do free summoning. It’s been shown that multiple players on social media post about The Game Awards fan vote so that the game can win, and they’ll get rewards as a result.
During an AMA on Reddit, Geoff Keighley was asked about this potential and noted that “this was the reason every category isn’t a fan vote.” Of course, many will view that as a cynical way of looking at things. But he did admit that he’ll look into whether bots or “improper methods” were used to help secure this vote.
If it is legitimate, the fan votes we mean, then that shows the power that this community has.
