Last month, Valve revealed its first-ever Steam Awards. They came with a twist: a final category to be plucked from user submissions, many of which ended up being tongue-in-cheek. Now Valve’s revealed their selections, and sorry, but no: none of them acknowledge fans’ many write-ins of “the game most in need of a sequel.”
Despite saying they’d only pick one user-submitted category, Valve ultimately went with four. Those are “The ‘Boom Boom’ Award,” “The ‘Love/Hate Relationship’ Award,” “The ‘Sit Back and Relax’ Award,” and “The ‘Better With Friends’ Award.”
Quite a few users wrote-in variations on “Game Most In Need Of A Sequel,” “Biggest Disappointment,” and other less lighthearted categories. Unsurprisingly, Valve didn’t pick those, but some people are still disappointed that they didn’t. Or, perhaps more reasonably, they’re sad Valve didn’t even acknowledge the gravity-gun-like force that sucked in vote after vote.
“Surprise, the GAME THAT DESERVES A SEQUEL award for Half-Life 2: Episode 2, that was probably the most-chosen write-in award by far, is not even mentioned,” wrote Steam subreddit user big-blue.
Many others echoed that sentiment, some jokingly, some with faces grim and resolved as Dog—or Gordon Freeman, I guess—himself. Others were more concerned with a hypothetical “Biggest Disappointment” category, largely because they wanted to vote for No Man’s Sky.
Given, however, that Valve has done their damnedest to pretend Half-Life never existed for years now, their non-reaction really isn’t surprising. Still, I can understand why people are feeling down. Valve, a notoriously non-communicative company, finally gave them an open channel to communicate their thoughts and feelings. They had a chance to say something and maybe be heard. Was it realistic to believe Valve would acknowledge a giant, braying trojan horse for Half-Life? Of course not. But you can see why people got their hopes up, and nothing stings more than having hopes dashed.
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DISCUSSION
After 30 years, they’ll probably just sell the rights off to Gearbox, who will make it based on the remaining assets, and everyone will be disappointed it exists.