Discontinue the "Steam Awards" event

[πe = 3^2 = g = 10]

The voting system is extremely flawed, and has been for years. When a user has not played any of the nominated games in a category, they will naturally gravitate towards voting for games they have merely seen or heard about the most. Using incentives to pressure all users into voting has only exacerbated the problem. This system has given games with the most visibility (i.e. the biggest marketing budgets) an unfair advantage over other games (potentially of greater quality or better fit for the award category), and has resulted in a lot of the awards going to bizarre and unfitting choices.

I think it's too late to try to rework the system at this point because the awards have lost all meaning. Its legacy has been cemented as nothing more than a glorified popularity contest. Now it just feels like a waste of Valve's resources to keep putting on this disingenuous song and dance at the end of every year.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by πe = 3^2 = g = 10:

Discontinue the "Steam Awards" event

The voting system is extremely flawed, and has been for years. When a user has not played any of the nominated games in a category, they will naturally gravitate towards voting for games they have merely seen or heard about the most. Using incentives to pressure all users into voting has only exacerbated the problem. This system has given games with the most visibility (i.e. the biggest marketing budgets) an unfair advantage over other games (potentially of greater quality or better fit for the award category), and has resulted in a lot of awards going to bizarre and unfitting choices.

I think it's too late to try to rework the system because the awards have lost all meaning at this point. Its legacy has been cemented as nothing more than a glorified popularity contest. Now it just feels like a waste of Valve's resources to keep putting on this disingenuous song and dance at the end of every year.

All awards are popularity contests, with a few games that actually deserve the award.

What incentives and from whom?

[Sciencemile]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

What incentives and from whom?

:nkCool:

The cards

[Yzal]

Originally posted by Sciencemile:

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

What incentives and from whom?

:nkCool:

The cards

What cards? they don't give those for voting since 2023. Only stickers now.

[Sciencemile]

Originally posted by Yzal:

Originally posted by Sciencemile:

The cards

What cards? they don't give those for voting since 2023. Only stickers now.

I guess people still might want the stickers although that is a much lesser incentive being non-sellable unlike the cards so touché.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by Sciencemile:

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

What incentives and from whom?

The cards

There are zero cards for the final voting.

[Sciencemile]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Originally posted by Sciencemile:

The cards

There are zero cards for the final voting.

:nkCool:

Yeah that’s been addressed.

[Tito Shivan]

Discontinue thinking seriously about the Steam Awards.
They're just a sale engagement mechanic. They're not the Oscars.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by Tito Shivan:

Discontinue thinking seriously about the Steam Awards.
They're just a sale engagement mechanic. They're not the Oscars.

They were originally joke awards anyways.

But they just went and turned them into the same generic type of Awards as all the rest.

[Tito Shivan]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

But they just went and turned them into the same generic type of Awards as all the rest.

I liked them best with the joke awards. Kind of the MTV Movie Awards of gaming:
"And the nominees for 'You've been Shyamalan'd' are...."

But I guess the dull generic categories require less work and you can just carry last year's.

[Mailer]

Originally posted by Tito Shivan:

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

But they just went and turned them into the same generic type of Awards as all the rest.

I liked them best with the joke awards. Kind of the MTV Movie Awards of gaming:
"And the nominees for 'You've been Shyamalan'd' are...."

But I guess the dull generic categories require less work and you can just carry last year's.

Agree with this. Valve should just come up with their own award categories again that make people actually have to think about what game fits each category.
It is precisely because the current categories are so generic that a lot of people either just follow the crowd or just vote incincerely or out of spite.

[Tito Shivan]

Originally posted by Mailer:

Agree with this. Valve should just come up with their own award categories again that make people actually have to think about what game fits each category.
It is precisely because the current categories are so generic that a lot of people either just follow the crowd or just vote incincerely or out of spite.

And at the end of the day it's going to result in a popularity contest anyway, partly because as a engagement mechanic most people just fills the nominees to get the freebies. At least with the joke categories it becomes less evident.

[Crazy Tiger]

It's there to drive engagement in the store. It works for that, as you showcase.

The problem is that people pretend "awards" have meaning. They don't, they're popularity contests, nothing more. The fact that games can display a gazillion awards from all the different websites, magazines, etc just shows how utterly meaningless it is.

I vote the same way no matter what, doesn't matter whether I get cards, stickers or nothing.