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As expected, Steam’s 12th Annual Winter Sale will land tomorrow, December 20, bringing with it some of the best price reductions of 2018’s brightest and best games. Valve will also be opening up the ballot for its Steam Awards 2018, which now has a list comprised of the final nominees.
Valve continues its trend of selecting the categories, letting the community at large select from a narrowed shortlist of relevant games. Categories are perhaps the most straightforward they’ve ever been, with Valve ditching “Boom Boom,” “The World is Grim Enough Let’s Just All Get Along” and user-generated categories in favour of more generic groups found in other award programs. That doesn’t mean that the publisher has forgone personality, opting for “Most Fun with a Machine” instead.
| Game of the Year Nominees | Nominees for VR Game of the Year |
| PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS | The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR |
| MONSTER HUNTER: WORLD | VRChat |
| Kingdom Come: Deliverance | Beat Saber |
| HITMAN™ 2 | Fallout 4 VR |
| Assassin's Creed Odyssey | SUPERHOT VR |
| Nominees for Labor of Love | Nominees for Best Environment |
| Dota 2 | The Witcher® 3: Wild Hunt |
| Grand Theft Auto V | Subnautica |
| No Man's Sky | Shadow of the Tomb Raider |
| Path of Exile | Far Cry 5 |
| Stardew Valley | DARK SOULS™ III |
| Nominees for Better with Friends | Nominees for Best Alternate History |
| Counter-Strike: Global Offensive | Wolfeinstein II: The New Colossus |
| Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six® Siege | Assassin's Creed® Odyssey |
| PAYDAY 2 | Hearts of Iron IV |
| Dead by Daylight | Sid Meier's Civilization® VI |
| Overcooked! 2 | Fallout 4 |
| Nominees for Most Fun with a Machine | Nominees for Best Developer |
| Euro Truck Simulator 2 | CD PROJEKT RED |
| Rocket League | Ubisoft |
| NieR:Automata | Bethesda |
| Factorio | Rockstar Games |
| Factorio | Digital Extremes Ltd. |
| Square Enix | |
| Capcom | |
| Paradox Interactive | |
| BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment | |
| Klei |
While Valve has enforced a limit of 5 entries per category, it has made some changes to ‘Best Developer’ due to it being a “highly-contested” title. The publisher has instead expanded the set of nominees to 10, excluding itself from eligibility. “We appreciate the love you’ve shown us, but we want to honor the other awesome developers on Steam, so we have excluded Valve from the final tally,” explains the publisher.
As usual, seasonal Steam Trading Cards will be available throughout the sale period, and voting will remain open until January 3, 2019. Winners are expected to be announced a little later than usual, coming to light in early February.
KitGuru Says: I think it's admirable that Valve would purposefully omit itself from its own awards. Fortunately, fans won't need a whole forum to figure out what “Most Fun With a Machine” pertains to with its nominees. Who do you think deserves Game of the Year?
