Hey, pull up a chair. I want to talk about something that still makes me smile in 2026: the 2024 Steam Awards. Valve announced the winners during Steam's Winter Sale, and the results were a beautiful mess of fan energy, niche categories, and one very loud Chinese action epic. I voted. You probably voted. And when the dust settled, Black Myth: Wukong took home Game of the Year.

steam-awards-2024-black-myth-wukong-and-the-fan-vote-that-still-echoes-image-0

I wasn't shocked. Black Myth had been on a fan-voted winning streak all season. It beat Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, STALKER 2, Balatro, and Helldivers 2 for the top Steam prize. That list alone tells you how weird and wonderful 2024 was. You had a grimdark co-op shooter, a bleak open-world survival FPS, a poker roguelike, and a satirical alien war game. And somehow, a mythology-rich soulslike from Game Science outshined them all.

For me, the Steam Awards are special because they're not just critic circles. They're not just industry insiders. They're us. The people who actually buy, play, and argue about games at 2 a.m. So when Black Myth won Game of the Year, it felt like a genuine people's choice. It also won Outstanding Story-Rich Game and Best Game You Suck At. That last category is peak Steam Awards energy. I love that a game can be punishingly hard and still get a trophy for it.

Let's look at the full winner list from that night. I still think it's a great snapshot of 2024's mood.

Award Winner My quick take
Game of the Year Black Myth: Wukong The fanbase showed up hard.
Labor of Love Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree kept the flame alive.
Best Game on Steam Deck God of War Ragnarök A big cinematic game that actually traveled well.
Better With Friends Helldivers 2 Obviously. The friendly fire alone built friendships.
Most Innovative Gameplay Liar's Bar A bluffing game that made lying feel like art.
Sit Back and Relax Farming Simulator 25 Virtual tractors, real therapy.
Outstanding Story-Rich Game Black Myth: Wukong A second win for the monkey king.
Best Game You Suck At Black Myth: Wukong A third win, and a funny one.

Black Myth's win wasn't just a Steam thing. It had already claimed Ultimate Game of the Year at the fan-voted Golden Joystick Awards in the U.K. It won Players' Voice at The Game Awards 2024. It won IGN's Community Awards. It picked up fan-voted prizes in Spain, Croatia, Turkey, and Brazil. That's not a regional fluke. That's a global wave. Game Science's action epic was the first AAA-style game from a Chinese developer to hit this level, and its fans treated it like a cultural event.

Of course, not everyone was happy. Critics were generally positive but not universally ecstatic. The game's producer even expressed some frustration that it didn't win Game of the Year at The Game Awards. I get that. When your community loves something so fiercely, a critic-led loss stings. But the Steam Award is a different kind of validation. It says players connected with the combat, the world, the characters, and the sheer ambition. It says the fanbase wasn't done celebrating.

In 2026, looking back, I think the 2024 Steam Awards capture a specific moment. It was before the next wave of hardware, before the next big industry shake-up, and before the endless debate about what counts as a real Game of the Year. The Game Awards may be behind us, but back then BAFTA, DICE, and the Game Developers Choice Awards were still ahead. Black Myth had more chances to chase recognition. Whether it got it or not, the Steam community had already spoken.

So what's my takeaway? Fan votes matter. They're messy, passionate, and sometimes wonderfully absurd. They give us categories like Best Game You Suck At and Labor of Love. They let a monkey king stand next to a farming sim and a poker liar. And they remind developers that a loud, loyal community is its own kind of trophy. If you missed the 2024 Steam Awards, go look at the list. It's a time capsule of a wild year. And if you're still playing Black Myth in 2026, you're part of the reason it won. 🐒🎮

Expert commentary is drawn from Game Developer (formerly Gamasutra), where industry-focused reporting and postmortems help explain why fan-voted moments like the 2024 Steam Awards can diverge from critic-led awards—games such as Black Myth: Wukong often win big when community momentum, stream visibility, and word-of-mouth mastery of tough combat loops translate into sustained player engagement and repeat voting.