This year's Game Awards will accept DLC, new game seasons, expansions, and presumably Kojima’s MS Paint doodles
Long shadow
As per a recent update to their FAQ page, The Game Awards have confirmed that DLCs, new game seasons for live service games, and other such releases are eligible for their game of the year award.
The FAQ itself - which appears to have been accessible over the weekend but now links to a ‘coming soon’ page - says the following. Thanks Neowin for quoting it in its entirety:
Are DLCs, expansion packs and remakes/ remasters eligible?
The Game Awards aims to recognize the best creative and technical work each year, irrespective of the format of that content’s release. Expansion packs, new game seasons, DLCs, remakes and remasters are eligible in all categories, if the jury deems the new creative and technical work to be worthy of a nomination. Factors such as the newness of the content and its price/value should be taken into consideration.
For this year, this means that releases like The Silent Hill 2 remake or Shadow Of The Erdtree would be eligible for the GOTY category. A win for either would mean the first time The Game Awards’ GOTY went to anything other than a full release. Previously, things like well loved expansions have factored into, for example, Cyberpunk 2077 winning ‘Best Ongoing Game’ last year, no doubt in part to its excellent Phantom Liberty DLC. Resident Evil 4’s remake was also nominated in the GOTY category last year.
Whether you feel this is an understandable decision given the quality of some expansions, or change that only further benefits a few obvious favourites at the expense of more interesting titles, I’ll leave that up to you. Whoever wins, I lose anyway: Tactical Breach Wizards and Mechabellum will doubtless get no love. Plus, Alice Bell (RPS in peace) already summed up the Games Awards better than anybody, imo. Hey ho! Reveals are nice at least! The nominees themselves are being announced later today at 9am PT/12pm ET/5pm GMT.