The 2023 Steam Awards winners sure are interesting this year

^{Image: Valve}

Red Dead Redemption 2 won Steam’s Labour of Love award? Sure, why not.

Valve has unveiled the official winners of The 2023 Steam Awards, and there are some interesting choices among them to say the least. The voting period for the player-voted awards’ ended this week to reveal a puzzling list of winners across 11 different categories, ranging from ‘Best Game You Suck At’ to the usual ‘Game of the Year’ award. Hilariously, Red Dead Redemption 2 ended up winning the Labour of Love award, which Valve describes as:

This game has been out for a while. The team is well past the debut of their creative baby, but being the good parents they are, these devs continue to nurture and support their creation. This game, to this day, is still getting new content after all these years.

I’m not sure that describes Red Dead Redemption 2 so much, but Steam users clearly disagree.

The winners of the 2023 Steam Awards

The thing about community-voted awards is that they often end with people voting for the most recognisable game available if not the funniest option, and that never ends well. Red Dead Redemption 2 won the Labor of Love award quite a while after launching on PC in 2019, but the game has been largely ignored by Rockstar besides small multiplayer tweaks and in-game gold discounts. There are a few games I can think of that would be more deserving of this award, but Red Dead Redemption 2 is a really popular game, which is likely how it scooped the win.

There are a few more eyebrow-raising winners on this list too. Starfield won the ‘Most Innovative Gameplay’ award, which Steam describes as such: “The designers of this game are at the front lines of creative experimentation, bringing a fresh perspective and brain-breaking surprises. This game delighted, inspired and entertained with newness never played before.” The game has famously garnered mixed-to-negative reviews on Steam precisely because players found its gameplay stale and cumbersome, so I’m not sure how it won this category at all.

The Last of Us Part 1 won the ‘Best Soundtrack’ award, and while it does indeed have a fantastic soundtrack, its music hasn’t been tweaked much for this remake since its original 2013 release. Hogwarts Legacy also won ‘Best Game on Steam Deck’ and while I’m sure it plays well on the Deck now, it suffered from performance issues for almost half a year on PC.

It’s not all nonsensical weirdness, however. There are a few clear winners here: Baldur’s Gate 3 picked up ‘Game of the Year’ while Lethal Company won ‘Better With Friends’, and both games fit well in their respective categories. Here’s the full list of winners: