Elden Ring surpasses The Last of Us Part II as the most-awarded Game of the Year recipient

And it didn't rely on fake awards from news outlets with pink-haired people who hate men to do that.

It also allegedly surpassed The Witcher 3 for the highest percentage. The Witcher 3 won 59% and Elden Ring is currently at 75%.

Source

That's according to dedicated ResetEra(opens in new tab) researchers, who have compiled Elden Ring's total Game of the Year awards, and deduced that FromSoftware's latest currently sits at a staggering 324 wins. That officially beats The Last of Us Part 2's awards, which totalled 322 back in 2020.

Taking a slightly deeper look at things, Elden Ring appears to have won a grand total of 281 Game of the Year awards from media outlets (including us here at GamesRadar+). Additionally, the action-RPG took home 43 awards from polls voted on by audiences rather than media outlets. All told, that's 324 awards.

Interestingly enough, The Last of Us 2 took home more reader's choice awards around two years ago with 108 awards bagged from audiences. Media outlet Game of the Year awards totalled 195 for Naughty Dog's sequel though, ultimately putting it well below Elden Ring in that category at least.

Elden Ring looks to have absolutely dominated Game of the Year voting around the world for 2022, leaving God of War Ragnarok in the dust at 74 total awards. The Last of Us 2 performed a similar feat a few years ago, with Supergiant's fantastic Hades in second place with 64 Game of the Year awards (hey, including one from us!).

This is a triumph for games and a nice L for movie-games. Please, less trash like Ragnarok (that ruined a great prequel) or A Plague Tale Requiem and more games where 99% of your time is spent engaging the game rather than watching.

Ragnarok is awesome, sucks you didnt care for it.

Elden Ring deserves it all though. Easily the GotY.

Sorry, better luck next time.

That dumbshit Eric Williams ruined the game. They should have let Barlog handle it. Plus, their insistence on finishing the story in two games ultimately led to the whole thing being rushed. Too much story packed into too little time. The actual Ragnarok event was a farce. So much build-up for so little payoff.

Both amazing games, both can only be played on Playstation. What an amazing time to own a PS5.

TLOU part 2 won an award? First I'm hearing of this.

Fun fact:

74 awards still means Ragnarok has more GOTY awards than any single MS or, Bethesda game in the past 11 years. lol

Edit: The second runner up only has 6 awards? Wild. Both the runner up and, second runner up in 2019 (TLOU2 year) had 74 awards (GoT and, Hades).

@mesome713 said:

Sorry, better luck next time.

Hail to the real king.

@Juub1990: Ah, the story. Not paying attention to that too much. Love the gameplay and the world though.

Maroxad is ready to mald in this thread, and i welcome it.

Good to see a quality game get the recognition it deserves. 👍

Exactly. I feel so honored to know that my system can play both games.

What is there to mald about?

If anything this shows that game journos aren't willing to latch on to hollywood wannabes in a desperate bid to have games seen as art, as I thought it would be.

Edit: If this results in more games emphasize gameplay over presentation, this could be very good news.

I will tell you what. Elde Ring, instead of becoming more irrelevant with every month, its only becoming more and more popular. You don't want to hear this, but this title will be remembered as a more legendary game than even Bloodborne. The more attention it gets, the more annoyed you become. Just you wait until they announce the dlc. You won't like your weeks when that comes out.

Sounds like someone sore over Sony’s success.

ER can only be played on PS? What crack are you smoking?

Actually it does show that 'game journos' care a lot about hollywood wannabes/sentiment/brand/hype. ER is the combination of all of those. G.R.R. Martin's name attachment helped its sales and mainstream appeal. FROM's brand and hype around it in turn made those journos to chase clicks.

@pc_rocks: Well, in case if you'e trying attribute the critical success of ER primarily to the brand name of G.R.R. Martin and FromSoft, you are totally missing the point.

This is evident in the stark contrast in reception to ER and CP2077. Needless to say, CDPR had a much stronger brand name than FromSoft, and casting Keanu caused far more buzz than using G.R.R. Martin's name.

If "game journos" primarily went after "hollywood wannabes/sentiment/brand/hype," CP2077 would have won GOTY at every media outlet according to your logic. But what was the result?

It is clear as day that the difference in reception between those games lies most heavily in the quality of the games themselves, with brand names, celebrity names, and marketing hype being secondary that are barely addressed in those GOTY discussions.

Its activity has fallen quite dramatically. So has the opinions surrounding the game. It is still well liked, but not as well liked as it was near launch. Compare this to games I like, such as Rimworld.

ER saw a bump in December, for obvious reasons. But in November it averaged at around 46k players vs 500k in the launch month (a rise from the 24k in November). Compare this to Rimworld which started at around 4.7k and has since gone up to 23k players. Not bad for a 8 year old game.

This data is from SteamCharts. ER also has console versions, but I don't know what their numbers are. And why would I care if Elden Ring is popular, all it means is that we might be seeing more gameplay focused games. To which I say... YES PLEASE.

I just hope they are better executed. I don't dislike ER for what it stands for (other than lazy rehashing), in fact, I love gameplay focused games.

I, yes, I, the ultimate shill of the game isn't even playing it. So? Nobody is playing Bloodborne, but its extremely popular almost 10 years later. It being played means nothing. The game is almost a year old, and still hasn't had any dlc's. As soon as there's one, watch those player numbers. Not to mention that for a non mmo, competitive shooter or a gaas game, Elden Ring has done insanely well playerwise. Now i understand you're doing all you can to hate on the game, but its another L for you🤦‍♂️

There are PLENTY of games which only grew bigger over time. Again, look at my favorite, Rimworld. Which isnt a GaaS, MMO or competitive shooter (note that those also tend to drop off pretty fast, barring a few exceptional ones). Plenty of my faves only grew in popularity over the years.

https://steamcharts.com/app/294100

Looks like your excuse failed miserably. Not that I don't expect anything differnet from you.

Likewise, your narrative assumes I am in denial of ER's popularity, which I am not.

Outside of you and one streamer i follow on twitch, i never hear anybody EVER mentioning rimworld. You create your own reality to make you feel better. Its obviously not working, and hasn't worked since day one of you shitting and nitpicking ER.

Smh, Hardwenzen using personal anecdotes to try to argue against actual data presented.

Edit: Here is another game I really like, same pattern, it grew over time.

https://steamcharts.com/app/427520

You like games for ants, i know, Mr.

@pc_rocks:

It's a cow thing, it's been happening since they were relegated to last place,they post dumb shit,make themselves look dumb as f@#k,get owned and repeat

Elden ring got a 10 and TLOU2 got an 8(🤣) here at GS.

An 8 🤣🤣

@mesome713: What is this? BOTW won 189 awards, correct, but The Last of Us 2 won nearly 300 and Elden Ring has probably surpassed 300.

FYI I think the actual total for BOTW was 210-215. Could be wrong.

Its still less than Elden Ring and TLOU2. they're all three of the greatest games in history though. we're talking top 20, maybe even top 10 for all three.

But Elden Ring > TLOU 2 > BOTW.

@pc_rocks: You need to read again. In order to enjoy both leading GOTG/GOTD contenders, you need a PS5. Only a PS5 lets you play Elden Ring *and* GOWR

Already addressed the CP2077 issue in the past. The only reason CP2077 didn't get a free pass is because of the negative sentiment around it 'after release'. Your usual 'journos' were lusting over it until release and were actively hyping it as the next best thing. Just look at the reviews and scores until it was available. None of them highlighted any problems about it before. If CP2077 was bug free, it would have swept away all the awards too.

FROM didn't suffer from that issue at all. The online sentiment pre and post release was positive, carried by the soulsborne fans.

Oh and as for your claim about quality games in GOTY awards and not on branding/hype is laughable at best. Several former devs that served on the juries has came out and admitted that there's no criteria on how some games are nominated in which categories. David Jaffe was the most recent one I remember that highlighted the same issue. The decisions are all but arbitrary. Not just that, we have more than a decade of evidence on how games are reviewed and awarded scores etc. from several prominent critics or should I say former critics. Go and watch Danny O'Dwyer's video on why he left GS. He was probably the last critic worth his salt at GS.

So yeah, scores and awards are largely just a farce. Steam Reviews is pretty much where it's at.

ER is such an amazing game.

I really enjoyed all 355 hours I put into it and it was a great accomplishment when I reached level 713.

I also enjoyed TLOU 2 which took me 40 hours to do everything on the game. It’s easily in my top favorite 5 games off all time. Included in that top 5 list of all time is TLOU part 1 and GOW 2018 and Ragnorok.

@pc_rocks: if Cyberjunk was 100% bug free it would win exactly zero awards lmao, it came out the same year as the GOTG winner The Last of Us 2.

If it released in 2021 it would have won quite a few (assuming it was bug free, which it was not, it was actually the worst release of all time) since 2021 didn't have a single masterpiece.

Though no doubt It Takes Two, one of the best co-op games ever would still take the big award at TGA and have the most GOTYs. At least CP could steal some of its GOTYs. Against TLOU2, one of the greatest games in history? absolutely no chance. not a mediocre title like CP.

Well, thanks for backing up my point that quality matters more than branding and hype.

Also I find your latter claim rather laughable. Just because "several" people questioned the selection criteria of a few media outlets does not prove anything that all other media outlets are choosing their GOTYs based on branding/hype rather than quality. The claim that because some media outlets are corrupt, all the hundreds of others must be equally corrupt sounds like your typical sophistry, but it's still a pretty laughable stretch.

As for the Steam Reviews, ER literally received a "very positive" rating and won Steam's GOTY as voted by Steam users. But that only represents part of the audience for multi-platform games like ER. It is also a place where quite a few folks who use substandard PCs or don't even have the ability to update their drivers give extremely low ratings to games they can't play properly. It is just delusional to think that it represents the gaming community, haha.

I might try but it's a GP or bust!! :P

Also is anyone genuinely surprised that Elden Ring became the most awarded game in history? I already predicted this before accurately predicting Elden Ring's 96 @ MC.

Sure feels great that two of my top 7 all time favourite games are the two most awarded games in history.

And people like Juub still butthurt about how phenomenal TLOU2 was.

No I didn't back up your point at all, if anything I was saying the complete opposite. The journos didn't care about quality at all until the gamers figured it out and they have to change course to get the clicks.

Oh and those 'several' people are some of the respected ones in the space. Their content speak for themselves and those 'several' people were on pretty much most juries and it's not like they didn't look at other publications or didn't know about their own industry. That's like saying I don't know what goes on in my field just because I work at one company. Oh and not to mention that same 'several' people specifically were also on TGA - the most prestigious game awards show. That's all there's to tell you about how it works. I mean it's not like it's any secret, anyone with two brain cells can see how TGA is just an ads show with more 'world premiers' and 'ads' than awards. Hell most awards aren't even part of the main show.

Oh and I ididn't say the outlets are corrupt. I just said they do what they have to do to survive: chase clicks and ad revenue. Their content and editors speak for themselves what they actually are. Not literally corrupt that they take money from certain company to give it to a high score or award, though even indirectly that also happened (ala Geff Grubb). I would say they are only ethically corrupt not technically.

Oh and I never made the claim that ER isn't a quality game or Steam was wrong or even the accolades it received were not deserved, just that the reason for those accolades were completely different than quality. Oh and Steam is pretty much the best there is if you need to see the actual sentiment. I don't give a sh*t about multiplatform games or what happens on other platforms. I know that only Steam has a somewhat good metric to judge a quality that other platforms don't provide. So yeah, that's a stick I go with and don't have to rely on garbage/PR based/ads chasing GOTY/Reviews by publications.

PS4 be like:

Oh and you, me and that chicken cow also knows that it's coming soon to the superior and ultimate gaming platform: PC. tsk tsk tsk.

@neogeo2k2: It took you just 355 hours to reach level 713? I never attempted to do that but I feel it would take way longer than that.

This is great news for the men and women who worked hard at Fromsoftware to give us this masterful game. It probably has given them great encouragement and I look forward to what they do next. This should also, and hopefully, be a sign to other devs that minimal handholding and challenging difficulty is something gamers welcome. :)

Poor Horizon. Could've won more awards if it didn't release so close to Elden Ring.

Can't say care about game awards.

More a PR to slap on anything and everything than something to be taken seriously.

Elden Ring didn't need a pat on the back to get validation.

No, you are just pretending not to notice the contradiction in your assertion. It was those "journos", not the players, who first pointed out the poor quality of CP2077 in their reviews. It is unfortunate that you are even altering the objective timeline to hide your own inconsistencies, haha.

Again, no matter how "respected" those few are, it proves nothing that hundreds of other journalists generally pick GOTY based on brand, hype, and clicks, not quality. As for the TGA, since it is voted on by a panel of judges consisting of over 100 media and influencers, it is ridiculous to see any connection between the GOTYs decided there and the impact of the ad revenue there.

You also claim that those journalists are ethically corrupt for clicks and ad revenue, and indeed I see many articles that are aimed at them. But when it comes to game reviews, if they don't continue to rate them fairly, they will conversely lose the trust of their audience and they will lose clicks in the long run. It seems to me that with the exception of a few extreme ones, the major gaming media outlets in general understand this simple fact, which is why they don't usually give extremely unfair reviews.

I don't think the Steam reviews you apparently put your trust in are a coherent source overall. As you know, those Steam reviewers play games on quite different PC specs and skill levels, which makes them great for some and problematic for others in terms of performance and experience. And there are no obvious criteria as to which of their opinions should be trusted. Instead, I have several professional reviewers for each genre who I trust, each with a track record, and I've actually found their reviews much more informative than the reviews of random players.

The First Horizon game got shafted by BotW, the second by Elden Ring. Will the Online game be overshadowed by an FF14 or WoW expansion?

Awwww yeahhhh SONY still at the top baby.

People talk about these games as if they were involved in the development. 🤔

LMAO! I directly quoted you from the people who served on the panel and why they declined and here you're with your assumptions that those 100s of media influencers have to be objective or infallible.

Yes, I do and all you have is your feelings to disprove everything I said. As for reviewing them 'fairly', objectively it has been pointed and found countless times how those reviewers failed to properly assess the game or even knew their mechanics and docked points for that or vice versa. One instance was literally a game dev had to call out on how the reviewer didn't even know how the mechanics work (I think it was Age of Singularity). Another very recent example is that of Death Stranding where across the board it got high scores but the actual content of the reviews were either the polar opposite of the scores or sounded apologetic on how they are dumb for not understanding Kojima's 'masterpiece'. Hell, those same people and fans in general before the release kept saying that the game won't be just climbing and walking; Kojima is just trolling and the actual gameplay would be different. LMAO, once the cat was out of the bag how they quickly changed the narrative.

Another example of 'fairly', if they are afraid of losing the trust of their audience than that precisely means that I'm right and they chase clicks. The prime example of being afraid of the mob and chasing the hype/sentiment. Way to self own yourself. I think one recent example of the lady who reviewed (CP2077?) on GS I believe. What happened to her? She was mocked and harassed constantly until she quit and once the cat was out of the bag, she was proven right. That's the environment where games are reviewed.

You can continue to kiss a$$es of your so called 'professional reviewers' as much as you want than actual gamers or people with taste/integrity/no skin in the game. However, I'll continue to trust actual customers and their experience precisely because they all comes from different skill sets, setups and backgrounds. Far often they were the ones who found the problems and brought attention to fix the problems with the game or issue refunds which none of your 'professional reviewers' raised or even care about. Oh and Steam has many tools to filter down the reviews on criterion you are interested in or have some doubts about. Of course, a cow like you wouldn't know that since you never got a choice and had to be spoon fed things via marketing.

EDIT: Oh and I didn't even mention how many publications are outright owned/affiliated to actual platform owners like MS/Nintendo/Sony to pad their scores and also awards. I mean imagine if a movie is allowed to reviewed/rated by its own studio.

i'm no scientist but it seems to me that 324 is a higher number than 189

Well, I do follow most game developers on Twitter😁

Metascores and awards are useless enough. But these tallies are just extra meaningless given contextual factors.

ER obviously would have been a big success no matter the release year. But last year was anything but stacked, not like it had droves of competitors.

Not coming at you over the info Juub, just don't think this has any significant takeaways regarding gamey games vs Moovie games.

You are now officially a developer.😎