Steam announced the winners of its 2023 Steam Awards. Steam's annual set of awards recognizes various categories like Game of the Year, Labor of Love, Better With Friends, Outstanding Visual Style, and more.

2023 was a good year for games, with masterpieces like Baldur's Gate 3 and Alan Wake 2 being released to widespread acclaim. The Game Awards 2023 rewarded these games for their achievements, while also recognizing more niche categories like Best Community Support and Innovation in Accessibility. While the Steam Awards aren't as robust as The Game Awards, its list of winners still does a great job at highlighting some of the year's most intriguing games.

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Steam announced that Baldur's Gate 3 was the platform's Game of the Year, which probably won't come as a surprise to most. The VR Game of the Year award went to Labyrinthine, the Labor of Love award went to Red Dead Redemption 2, the Best Game on Steam Deck award went to Hogwarts Legacy, the Better With Friends award went to Lethal Company, and the Outstanding Visual Style award went to Atomic Heart. The Steam Awards differs from The Game Awards in a key way, which is that regular Steam users vote for the winners, instead of The Game Awards' collection of industry representatives. And since Steam is a PC platform, console exclusives are not eligible to be voted on.

What Were the Winners of the Steam Awards 2023?

• Game of the Year Award: Baldur's Gate 3
• VR Game of the Year Award: Labyrinthine
• Labor of Love Award: Red Dead Redemption 2
• Best Game on Steam Deck Award: Hogwarts Legacy
• Better With Friends Award: Lethal Company
• Outstanding Visual Style Award: Atomic Heart
• Most Innovative Gameplay Award: Starfield
• Best Game You Suck At Award: Sifu
• Best Soundtrack Award: The Last of Us Part 1
• Outstanding Story-Rich Game Award: Baldur's Gate 3
• Sit Back and Relax Award: Dave The Diver

Following another win from the Steam Awards, Baldur's Gate 3 rightfully swept most of 2023's awards shows as Game of the Year, due to the game's unprecedented level of detail and player freedom. In addition to winning Steam's flagship award, it also won six awards at The Game Awards 2023, including Best Multiplayer Game, Best Performance, Best Community Support, and more. However, the nice thing about user votes determining the Steam Awards' winners is that more low-budget games get to be recognized as well.

Lethal Company won Steam's Better With Friends award. The game allows a group of friends to travel from one lethal planet to the next as they gather resources for an evil corporation. The game's comedic approach, endearing art style, and interesting gameplay mechanics led Lethal Company to consistently surpass 100,000 concurrent Steam players after its release, a milestone that it still maintains at the time of writing. In 2023, gamers were fortunate to have a wide offering of quality games to play.

Data suggests that 2023 was one of the best years in gaming history, with the year having more games with a 90 or higher review average on Metacritic than ever before. Unfortunately, one of the best-received games of 2023, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, was not a factor in the Steam Awards since it's a Nintendo Switch exclusive.

Steam

Steam is a digital video game storefront and program developed by Valve that allows gamers to purchase, play, and mod their titles all through one convenient program.

Brand

Valve

Original Release Date

September 12, 2003