Valve has recently announced all the 2025 Steam Awards winners, and while there are no shocking developments, some results are curious nonetheless. Hollow Knight: Silksong, the long-awaited sequel to 2017’s masterpiece, won the Game of the Year prize.
Silksong won the top prize over a finalist lineup that included Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, ARC Raiders, and Dispatch.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, in particular, are this year’s most-awarded games, so overcoming such titans is a major achievement.
Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 did, however, win its most deserved award: Best Soundtrack. This score by Lorien Testard will go down in history alongside such titans as Nobuo Uematsu, Koji Kondo, Yoko Shimomura, Mick Gordon, and other legends.
The Steam Awards are entirely user-decided, so it’s not a big surprise when such a highly anticipated title that delivered in spades receives acclaim from fans and critics alike. Team Cherry deserves all the plaudits it receives.
Hollow Knight: Silksong is a challenging Metroidvania, and it reconfirmed this status by winning another award – Best Game You Suck At. It challenged even those who mastered the previous game by introducing gameplay changes that went against many people’s muscle memory.
Another major indie masterpiece, Hades II, was crowned as the Best Game on Steam Deck. As someone who played at least 50% of it on said device, I can confirm that it’s genuinely perfect. No slowdowns, no issues, amazing gamepad controls, and decently lengthy charge time. Every single Supergiant Games title is perfect for a handheld form factor.
One of the games that the audience felt was snubbed at Geoff Keighley’s Game Awards was AdHoc’s Dispatch, and Steam Users were quick to correct this perceived error by awarding it the Outstanding Story-Rich Game title.
Full list of 2025 Steam Awards winners:
- Game of the Year: Hollow Knight: Silksong
- VR Game of the Year: The Midnight Walk
- Labor of Love: Baldur’s Gate 3
- Best Game on Steam Deck: Hades II
- Better With Friends: PEAK
- Outstanding Visual Style: Silent Hill f
- Most Innovative Gameplay: ARC Raiders
- Best Game You Suck At: Hollow Knight: Silksong
- Best Soundtrack: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Steam Awards tend to surprise us with their winners, but this was a year stacked with GOTY-caliber games, so we had a few “fair enoughs” at best.
