If you’ve been watching it long enough, you’ll know that The Game Awards are one of the most divisive parts of the gaming year. On the one hand, it’s meant to “honor games and developers” and showcase the best of the best from the gaming year. However, it’s also known for “selling out” in various ways and trying to “make itself look cool” by bringing in big celebrities for moments that take away from the games themselves. Just last year, despite record viewing numbers, the show was panned for how it rushed award-winners, including GOTY team Larian Studios, off the stage after receiving their “huge honors.”
The Game Awards is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, and based on its “Game of the Year” candidates this time around, there will be plenty of controversy to go around. As noted on its website, the official GOTY candidates are Astro Bot, Balatro, Black Myth Wukong, Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Metaphor ReFantazio.
Some of you might be confused by our “controversial” line, as you might think that many of these are “worthy” GOTY contenders, and they are. Many of these titles have the highest ratings on Metacritic for the year, and that means they’ve earned their spot on quality alone.
However, the ones that stick out are Elden Ring’s DLC and Black Myth Wukong. Just before the nominees were announced, the show revealed that, for the first time ever, DLC and expansions would be “accepted” into all categories if the “committee deemed them worthy.” The “committee” is the main judging committee that picks all the nominees and the winners. That alone has made the show controversial over the years, and this just adds to it.
On the one hand, From Software’s DLC was incredibly high-quality, but it was still a DLC, and many think that it will win GOTY just because of who made it and the fact that its base game also got GOTY. In other words, they’ll do a “Geoff Keighley move” just because they can.
For Sun Wukong’s game, it wasn’t the most beloved title critically. In fact, on Metacritic, its highest score is 81, which is nine points below the lowest of the other GOTY contenders. That’s quite a drop, and there were other games that got rated higher than that in 2024, which seems to imply that it got there because of the sales numbers it received overall.
These picks are just some of the controversies that have already been found, and more are likely to emerge as we draw closer to December 12th.
