this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2026
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VR Game of the Year - The Midnight Walk
Labor of Love - Baldur's Gate 3
Best Game on Steam Deck - Hades II
Better With Friends - PEAK
Outstanding Visual Style - SILENT HILL f
Most Innovative Gameplay - ARC Raiders
Best Game You Suck At - Hollow Knight: Silksong
Best Soundtrack - Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Outstanding Story-Rich Game - Dispatch
Sit Back and Relax - RV There Yet?
Anyone know what makes arc innovative?
Nothing. Steam Award are sadly popularity awards.
How else would they be picked?
People picked the nominees then picked the best of those.
Should Steam have just told everyone who was best by their own choice?
No, people should pick by considering the nominees, not by whichever name they recognised most.
But if you seriously tell me that ARC raiders is more innovative than for example a game where you yell into a microphone to activate your spells in a wizard Team Deatchmatch, I doubt your sincerity.
I would hate a game where I have to yell into a mic and also a game including the word "extraction" is part of its description (ARC Raiders).
I voted for the games I played and enjoyed like Dispatch and voted for games I haven't played but would want to.
Good thing that the award is not (or rather is not supposed to be) about you or me liking it but instead about INNOVATIVE gameplay. That's exactly what I'm trying to explain.
If a game is more innovative but people don't want to play it more than another game that is considered by few to be less innovative but more playable then the one to win the award is going to be the less innovative, but more played game.
Two cars with automatic transmission one with a manual choke vs a car with an automatic choke are both an innovation but the automatic one is going to win an award because more people are going to buy it.
It feels like they really dialed in the extraction shooter gameplay with ARC. It combines gambling mechanics (looting = rng, they even play a little tone when you get an epic item to really drive it home) with a solid third person shooter and makes pvp optional. It's less intense than tarkov and more serious than duckov, and lots of people seem to enjoy it.