Steam is holding a new awards thingamagig this year, allowing gamers to nominate their favorite titles for a variety of awards, including “Test of Time” and “Best Use of a Farm Animal.”
But one game that’s meeting everyone’s ire is No Man’s Sky, the overhyped and ultimately terrible open-world space-faring survival sim that promised a lot but delivered little. With no multiplayer to speak of and errands that become stale within the first few minutes, No Man’s Sky is the culmination of everything that’s wrong with the hype cycle in the game industry.
Gamers who purchased the title were of course upset by how its developers at Hello Games misled them through deceptive marketing—an issue currently being brought up with the authorities in the UK, where the studio is based.
Another way they’re attempting to express their anger and disappointment with the game is through the Steam Awards, which allows for players to suggest their own category. And they’re doing so through campaigns conducted on Steam and Reddit.
It’s difficult to see Steam going through with the proposal, of course, but I would argue that doing so would be good, because Steam would do well to present itself as a consumer-oriented platform and not just one designed in favor of corporate interests.
After all, Steam recently issued a decree stating that all games being sold through the platform must produce screenshots representative of the game, and not “bullshots,” or fake, photoshopped images with awards plastered all over them.
