Cyberpunk 2077 wins Steam's “Outstanding Story-Rich Game of the Year,” more than a year after its release

After a rather long voting process, the 2021 Steam Awards winners were finally revealed last night, where Cyberpunk 2077 was crowned number one in the category of “Outstanding Story-Rich Game of the Year.”

The award came almost a year after the game’s launch. And while die-hard Cyberpunk 2077 fans are rejoicing with this victory, not everyone in the gaming community feels that the award was something that CD Projekt RED’s latest tile deserved.

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Cyberpunk 2077 might have only won a popularity contest on steam

Cyberpunk 2077 had a disastrous launch on December 10, 2022, when the community felt that the game was almost unplayable on the consoles, because of just how many bugs there were. The outcry eventually forced CD Projekt to hand out refunds to those who did not want to own the game anymore.

However, even with all the issues, the game had a rich and vivid world, i.e Night City, along with an incredibly innovative way of telling a story. But the story and the lifeline path choices themselves fell short of community expectations.

Cyberpunk 2077’s narrative did have some moments of brilliance, however, the story as a whole, with parts of the main quests and the entire Pacifica arc did not sit well with many of the players.

There is a lot of hype around the game’s upcoming 1.5 patch update, and fans are quite excited to see the soft relaunch and the changes that CD Projekt RED will be bringing to their title down the line.

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Hence, as the game stands today, a good portion of the community does not feel that Cyberpunk 2077 winning something such as the “Outstanding Story-Rich Game of the Year” Steam Award was justified. This has also lead many to go on and proclaim that winning in Steam's Awards is nothing more than winning a popularity contest.

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How does the voting process at the Steam Awards work?

Unlike other annual game awards, the Steam Awards work a bit differently when it comes to picking their winners. Community voting takes place during the Steam Autumn Sale, where users get a chance to nominate their choice of games across different categories.

However, players will only be able to nominate one particular game for only one category, so once they enter a title for a certain award, they will not be able to nominate it again for another.

This is one of the biggest flaws in the system, because ideally, as seen in awards like the DICE, TGA, and BAFTA, a particular game can be a strong contender for multiple categories.

The fact that Steam does not allow this, makes way for inadvertent vote splitting, which is not an honest representation of the Steam userbase’s opinions. This has further lead many to question the authenticity of Cyberpunk 2077’s win in the category.

Moreover, Steam Awards have historically been referred to as popularity awards, because users always tend to favor triple-A titles with large marketing budgets over the smaller ones. The above community sentiments that are seen in various subReddit forums just go to show how unfair such awards can be for games like Psychonauts 2.