Steam Awards and top sellers for 2021 include Cyberpunk 2077 and the usual suspects
Folks really love buying GTA5, huh
While ligament and bone were still knitting together in our Christmas vats, Valve popped out some end-of-year Steam material. That includes lists of the top selling and most played games of 2021, and the results of the user-voted Steam Awards.
The Steam Awards are always slightly odd, because they're user-voted and they often favour games with large online playerbases. The clearest example of that this year is maybe Forza Horizon 5 winning "outstanding visual style." It's a very pretty game, for sure, but is its style outstanding? The runners up included Subnautica Below Zero, Little Nightmares 2, Bright Memory: Infinite, and Psychonauts 2 which honestly probably should have won.
Resident Evil Village took Game Of The Year, but perhaps most interesting is that Cyberpunk 2077 won "outstanding story-rich game". Are people mad about that? Honestly, it deserves it. I liked Cyberpunk 2077 plenty when I reviewed it, but it has grown in my estimation over the past year of thinking about it. I finally decided to replay it over the Christmas break and its story shines - even while the RPG systems, shooting and bugs continue to disappoint slightly.
On the top sellers list, Cyberpunk 2077 could only manage to land in the "Silver" category. The top-sellers were mostly made up of long-running service games - Siege, CSGO, GTA5, Dota 2, etc. - but there were a few new entries such as Naraka Bladepoint and Valheim. Along the top of the page you'll find filters that let you look at just 2021's new releases, which presents a more interesting list albeit one still filled with longrunning series. Congrats to Wildermyth, which is in the Platinum tier for games which graduated from early access last year.
You can hit the links above for lots more lists and picks, but here's the full list of Steam Awards winners:
- Game Of The Year: Resident Evil Village
- VR Game Of The Year: Cooking Simulator VR
- Labor Of Love: Terraria
- Better With Friends: It Takes Two
- Outstanding Visual Style: Forza Horizon 5
- Most Innovative Gameplay: Deathloop
- Best Game You Suck At: Nioh 2 - The Complete Edition
- Best Soundtrack: Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy
- Outstanding Story-Rich Game: Cyberpunk 2077
- Sit Back And Relax: Farming Simulator 2022