Black Myth: Wukong Sweeps 2024 Steam Awards As Narrative Gaming Makes Strong Showing Overall
Every year, Valve holds The Steam Game Awards, a community-driven initiative to recognize the best games that were launched in that year. Valve has just released the results for the 2024 Steam Game Awards, which are determined by community vote—as opposed to events like The Game Awards, which feature a jury selection—and split into individual categories. This year, though, the overall winner for Game of the Year was Black Myth Wukong, which beat out other finalists: Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, Balatro, and Helldivers 2 for top spot. Game of the Year wasn't Wukong's only victory, either, with the game also taking home the "Outstanding Story-Rich Game Award," which seems logical given its overall victory, and the cleverly named "Best Game You Suck At Award," which is meant to highlight the best difficult game of the year. In this category, Black Myth Wukong was up against Dragon Ball Z Sparkling Zero, The Finals, Ghost of Tsushima, and Tekken 8, which is again a very diverse mix of games and genres, so it's somewhat interesting to see a narrative-driven game like Wukong come out ahead here.
The rest of the Steam Game Awards 2024 was less of a one-man show, with Metro Awakening VR taking Best VR Game of the Year, Elden Ring nabbing the Labor of Love Award, and God of War Ragnarök taking the Best Game on Steam Deck Award. Helldivers 2 won Better with Friends, while Silent Hill 2 took home the Outstanding Visual Style Award, Liar's Bar won Most Innovative Gameplay, Red Dead Redemption won Best Soundtrack Award, and Farming Simulator 25 was crowned with the Sit Back and Relax award, beating out the likes or Webfishing, House Flipper 2, and Tiny Glade. One of the more surprising "minor" awards winners here is God of War Ragnarök taking home Best Game on Steam Deck, since you often hear in discourse around the Steam Deck that it's not suitable for AAA gaming, and God of War is only two years old at the time of writing, meaning it is still very demanding, with an NVIDIA GTX 1060 6 GB quoted as the minimum recommended GPU to play the game.
The rest of the Steam Game Awards 2024 was less of a one-man show, with Metro Awakening VR taking Best VR Game of the Year, Elden Ring nabbing the Labor of Love Award, and God of War Ragnarök taking the Best Game on Steam Deck Award. Helldivers 2 won Better with Friends, while Silent Hill 2 took home the Outstanding Visual Style Award, Liar's Bar won Most Innovative Gameplay, Red Dead Redemption won Best Soundtrack Award, and Farming Simulator 25 was crowned with the Sit Back and Relax award, beating out the likes or Webfishing, House Flipper 2, and Tiny Glade. One of the more surprising "minor" awards winners here is God of War Ragnarök taking home Best Game on Steam Deck, since you often hear in discourse around the Steam Deck that it's not suitable for AAA gaming, and God of War is only two years old at the time of writing, meaning it is still very demanding, with an NVIDIA GTX 1060 6 GB quoted as the minimum recommended GPU to play the game.