The Steam Awards 2025 nomination period is officially open as of November 24, 2025, giving PC gamers one week to nominate their favorite titles across 11 categories before voting closes on December 1 at 1 p.m. ET. This annual community-driven awards show celebrates the best games on Valve’s platform, featuring a mix of traditional categories like Game of the Year alongside wonderfully creative picks like Best Game You Suck At and the Sit Back and Relax award that celebrate gaming’s diversity.
All 11 Steam Awards 2025 Categories
Valve has maintained the same 11-category structure that has defined the Steam Awards for several years, balancing standard industry awards with platform-specific recognition and genuinely creative categories that reflect how people actually play games. The full lineup includes Game of the Year, VR Game of the Year, Labor of Love, Best Game on Steam Deck, Better with Friends, Outstanding Visual Style, Most Innovative Gameplay, Best Game You Suck At, Best Soundtrack, Outstanding Story-Rich Game, and Sit Back and Relax.
Each category has specific eligibility requirements. For most awards, only games released after last year’s Autumn Sale qualify, keeping the nominees fresh and relevant to 2025. The Labor of Love award is the notable exception, recognizing games released before last year’s Autumn Sale that continue receiving significant developer support through updates, expansions, and ongoing improvements.
The tone differs dramatically from The Game Awards’ self-seriousness. While Geoff Keighley’s show emphasizes industry prestige and cinematic presentation, the Steam Awards embrace gaming’s sillier side. The Best Game You Suck At category hilariously spotlights brutally difficult games that players love despite being terrible at them, while Sit Back and Relax champions chill, stress-free experiences often overlooked by traditional awards that favor narrative-heavy blockbusters.
How to Nominate Your Favorites
Participating in Steam Awards nominations is straightforward. Visit any game’s Steam store page and you’ll see a banner prompting nominations, or navigate directly to the official Steam Awards page. You must have a non-limited Steam account that has spent at least 5 dollars in the store to participate, preventing spam and ensuring voters are actual platform users.
Click Choose Your Nominee for any category to open a search bar where you can find eligible games. Steam’s algorithm suggests games based on your library and playtime, though these personalized recommendations sometimes produce wonky results. You can ignore suggestions and manually search for any eligible title you want to nominate instead.
You don’t need to nominate games in every category. However, participating across all 11 categories and completing additional tasks levels up your Steam Awards Nomination Committee badge, which grants extra XP for your Steam profile. Tasks include nominating in every category, playing nominated games, and writing or updating reviews for titles you nominated.
| Category | What It Recognizes |
|---|---|
| Game of the Year | The best overall game released on Steam in 2025 |
| VR Game of the Year | Best virtual reality experience of 2025 |
| Labor of Love | Games released before 2025 with ongoing developer support |
| Best Game on Steam Deck | Games optimized for Valve’s handheld system |
| Better with Friends | Multiplayer games that shine in co-op or competitive play |
| Outstanding Visual Style | Games with distinctive, memorable art direction |
| Most Innovative Gameplay | Games introducing fresh mechanics or creative concepts |
| Best Game You Suck At | Brutally difficult games players love despite struggling |
| Best Soundtrack | Games with exceptional music and audio design |
| Outstanding Story-Rich Game | Games with compelling narratives and storytelling |
| Sit Back and Relax | Chill, stress-free gaming experiences |
The Timeline for Steam Awards 2025
The nomination period runs from November 24 through December 1 at 1 p.m. ET. During this week, Steam users flood the platform with nominations, and developers aggressively campaign through Steam News announcements begging players to vote for their games. If you check your Steam news feed during this period, expect near-constant spam from every developer whose game you’ve wishlisted or purchased.
Valve will announce the finalists for each category on December 18, 2025, at 1 p.m. ET, perfectly coinciding with the Steam Winter Sale launch. This timing is intentional, driving traffic to the store as players check nominees and potentially purchase games they’re considering voting for. The Winter Sale traditionally runs through early January, giving players time to experience finalists before final voting.
The second round of voting happens during the Winter Sale, where community members choose winners from the five finalists in each category. Winners will be announced on January 3, 2026, at 6 p.m. GMT when the Winter Sale concludes. Winning games receive special banners on their store pages, and developers often see sales bumps from the recognition and visibility.
What Happened with the Autumn Sale
Traditionally, Steam Awards nominations opened during the Autumn Sale, but 2025 changed that pattern. Valve moved the Autumn Sale significantly earlier in the year to create breathing room before the Winter Sale, which historically started just weeks after Thanksgiving. This schedule compression made cramming award nominations into the Autumn Sale impractical.
Valve’s solution was creating Steam’s first-ever Black Friday Sale, a separate event that launched on November 21, 2025, alongside the award nominations. This new sale runs through December 1, perfectly aligning with the nomination window and giving players deals on potential nominees while they’re actively thinking about which games deserve recognition.
This scheduling change reflects Valve’s ongoing experimentation with its sales calendar. The company has gradually spread sales throughout the year to avoid overwhelming consumers and give individual games more visibility rather than competing against hundreds of simultaneous discounts. The Black Friday Sale represents another step in this evolution, capturing holiday shopping momentum while keeping the Winter Sale sacred for final voting and winner announcements.
Last Year’s Winners Set High Bar
The 2024 Steam Awards recognized Black Myth: Wukong as both Game of the Year and Best Game You Suck At, a fitting double win for the challenging Soulslike action title that became a global phenomenon. The mythical monkey adventure also secured Outstanding Story-Rich Game, demonstrating how a single exceptional title can dominate multiple categories when it truly resonates with players.
Other notable 2024 winners included Liar’s Bar taking Most Innovative Gameplay for its creative multiplayer deception mechanics built around bar games. The variety of winners demonstrated the Steam Awards’ strength: celebrating both massive commercial successes like Black Myth: Wukong and smaller innovative titles that might not compete at traditional industry awards shows.
These results also highlighted a persistent criticism of the Steam Awards. The voting system inherently favors popular, widely-played titles over deserving niche games. When millions of players vote based on what they’ve actually played rather than comprehensive knowledge of the year’s releases, blockbusters dominate. This makes the Steam Awards more a popularity contest than critical assessment, though that democratic approach also has merit as representing genuine player preferences.
The Popularity Contest Problem
The Steam Awards faces an inherent challenge that The Game Awards and Golden Joystick Awards handle through curated judging panels. When voting is purely democratic with minimal guidance, most participants nominate the handful of mega-popular games they’ve played rather than exploring the full breadth of releases. This creates situations where incredible indie titles get overlooked simply because fewer people played them.
Categories like Outstanding Visual Style should theoretically reward artistic innovation regardless of popularity, but in practice, whatever game topped sales charts that year often sweeps most categories simply because that’s what voters recognize. A genuinely innovative visual style in a small indie game struggles against a competent but safe aesthetic in a blockbuster played by millions.
That said, some argue this democratic approach has value. The Steam Awards doesn’t pretend to be authoritative critical assessment. It’s explicitly about what the community loves, making popularity a feature rather than a bug. If millions of players genuinely feel a game deserves recognition across multiple categories, perhaps that mass appeal itself deserves acknowledgment even if critics might champion something different.
Vote With Your Brain Not Your Brand Loyalty
One plea from thoughtful community members is simple: vote for games that actually deserve recognition in each specific category rather than just clicking the same popular title for everything. It’s tempting to nominate Call of Duty or Black Myth: Wukong across all categories because those names are familiar, but does your favorite shooter really have the best soundtrack or most innovative gameplay of the year?
Take time to consider what each category actually asks for. Sit Back and Relax specifically wants chill, stress-free experiences, so nominating a frenetic battle royale misses the point entirely. Best Game You Suck At celebrates difficulty, making it wrong for accessible titles you easily mastered. Outstanding Visual Style should reward artistic direction over raw graphical fidelity.
The beauty of Steam’s write-in system is you can nominate any eligible game you want, not just what Valve suggests. If you played an incredible indie soundtrack that moved you emotionally, nominate it for Best Soundtrack even if it sold 1,000 copies. If a small puzzle game introduced genuinely innovative mechanics, champion it for Most Innovative Gameplay. Your individual vote matters less than thoughtfully using each category to highlight games that excel in that specific dimension.
Platform-Specific Categories Matter
Categories like Best Game on Steam Deck and VR Game of the Year represent opportunities to celebrate games optimized for specific hardware. The Steam Deck category particularly matters as Valve’s handheld continues building its userbase. Games that run beautifully on the portable system despite its technical limitations deserve recognition for that optimization work.
VR Game of the Year remains important for the struggling but passionate VR gaming community. Virtual reality still seeks mainstream acceptance, and highlighting exceptional VR experiences helps justify the expensive hardware investment for potential buyers. Games like Batman: Arkham Shadow and Metro Awakening have shown VR can deliver premium, full-length experiences rather than just tech demos.
These platform-specific awards also provide visibility that general Game of the Year recognition can’t match. A VR title that loses overall GOTY to a traditional flat-screen game can still claim industry-leading status in its specific medium through the VR-focused category, helping it stand out in a niche but growing market.
FAQs
When do Steam Awards 2025 nominations close?
Nominations close on December 1, 2025, at 1 p.m. ET. You have until that deadline to nominate games across all 11 categories.
Can I nominate any game I want?
Almost. For most categories, you can nominate any game released on Steam after last year’s Autumn Sale. The Labor of Love category requires games released before last year’s Autumn Sale that continue receiving developer support. You must own or have played eligible games to nominate them.
How do I vote in the Steam Awards?
Visit any game’s Steam store page and click the nomination banner, or go directly to the Steam Awards page. Click Choose Your Nominee for each category, then search for the game you want to nominate. You need a non-limited Steam account with at least $5 in store purchases to participate.
When are the winners announced?
Finalists will be revealed December 18, 2025, during the Steam Winter Sale launch. Final voting on those finalists happens throughout the Winter Sale, with winners announced January 3, 2026, when the sale ends.
Do I get anything for voting?
Yes, participants receive the Steam Awards Nomination Committee badge. You can level it up by nominating games in all categories, playing nominated titles, and writing or updating reviews for games you nominated. Each badge level awards 25 XP toward your Steam profile level.
Can I nominate the same game for multiple categories?
Yes, you can nominate a single game across multiple categories if you genuinely believe it excels in those areas. However, consider whether that game truly deserves recognition in each specific category rather than just nominating your favorite for everything.
What’s the difference between Steam Awards and The Game Awards?
The Game Awards uses a jury of gaming journalists and industry figures to select nominees and winners, focuses on all platforms, and emphasizes industry prestige. Steam Awards is entirely community-voted, focuses exclusively on PC gaming through Steam, and includes more creative/silly categories alongside traditional awards.
Are early access games eligible?
Yes, early access games that launched within the eligibility window can be nominated. However, Labor of Love specifically requires games that have been available longer and continue receiving substantial developer support.
Make Your Voice Heard
The Steam Awards 2025 represents one of gaming’s most democratic recognition systems, where millions of players collectively decide what deserves celebration. Whether you’re championing a blockbuster everyone knows or fighting for a hidden gem that moved you, your nominations matter. Take a few minutes before December 1 to thoughtfully consider which games truly excelled in each category, and help ensure the finalists reflect the actual breadth and quality of 2025’s PC gaming releases rather than just whatever topped the sales charts.