PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds wins Game of the Year at the 2018 Steam Awards

Valve has announced the winners of its 2018 Steam Awards which saw PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds scoop the overall Game of the Year award.

Launched alongside Steam’s 12th Annual Winter Sale in early December, the awards invited players to select their favourites across eight categories, including game of the year, best developer, and ‘better with friends’. All participants were rewarded with a set of digital trading cards as a thank you for voting.

For the first time, the winners were revealed via a Steam TV broadcast. Here’s the full list of the winners and runner-ups:

• Game of the Year: Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds (runner-ups: Monster Hunter: World, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Hitman 2, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey)
• VR Game of the Year: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR (runner-ups: VR Chat, Beat Saber, Fallout 4 VR, Superhot VR)
• Labour of Love: Grand Theft Auto 5 (runner-ups: No Man’s Sky, Path of Exile, Dota 2, Stardew Valley)
• Best Developer: CD Projekt Red (runner-ups: Ubisoft, Bethesda, Rockstar, Digital Extremes, Square Enix, Capcom, Paradox Interactive, Bandai Namco, Klei)
• Best Environment: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (runner-ups: Subnautica, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Far Cry 5, Dark Souls 3)
• Better With Friends: Rainbow Six Siege (runner-ups: Payday 2, Dead By Daylight, CS:GO, Overcooked! 2)
• Best Alternate History: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (runner-ups: Wolfenstein 2, Hearts of Iron 4, Civilization 6, Fallout 4)
• Most Fun With a Machine: Rocket League (runner-ups: Euro Truck Simulator 2, Nier: Automata, Factorio, Space Engineers)

"Best Developer proved to be a highly-contested category with a lot of close calls among the top nominees," Valve explained in its press release, expanding on why there are so many shortlisted for this particular category. "As a result, we expanded the set of nominees to ten. In addition, we’ve excluded Valve (ourselves) from this category."

Valve recently announced changes to its Steam Distribution Agreement that enables developers of the platform’s biggest games to retain more profit. Broadly in line with the profit share tiers across other platforms like Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox, Valve roughly takes a 30 per cent cut of all game sales published on its PC digital platform. Now, however, Valve has agreed to drop its share to 25 per cent once revenue surpasses $10 million, and then down to 20 per cent for sales over $50 million. The changes – which apply from October 1st, 2018 – will apply to all revenue, including in-game purchases and DLC.

"Our hope is this change will reward the positive network effects generated by developers of big games, further aligning their interests with Steam and the community," said Valve.