2025 Steam Awards nominations are open, and I wonder if Valve's wonky personalized suggestions will affect the results—you'll know they did if Bongo Cat gets nominated in the 'story-rich' category

Another year on this godforsaken rock is grinding to a close, and you know what that means: award season! The Golden Joysticks just wrapped up, The Game Awards are coming, and to kill some time in between you can now nominate your games of choice for the 2025 Steam Awards.

I'd actually wondered how Steam Awards nominations would be handled in 2025. Typically it happens during the Steam Autumn Sale, but with Valve moving the Autumn Sale back a couple months to give us a proper break before the Winter Sale hits, that wasn't going to be an option. The answer was obvious in hindsight: Just make a whole other sale and cram it in there, which is exactly what Valve did with Steam's first ever Black Friday Sale.

The nomination process for this year's Steam Awards will simplify things for you by listing eligible games you've played in 2025, as well as providing a rundown of "popular and recommended games" if you're more interested in being on the winning team than in throwing your support behind something you actually enjoyed.

There seems to be some kind of obscure eligibility requirements for the recommendation listings, although I haven't been able to suss out exactly what: For the Best Game You Suck At category, for instance, I'm told I haven't played any eligible games this year, and I can assure you I suck at a great many videogames.

(PC Gamer US editor-in-chief Tyler Wilde suggested this is actually evidence that I am good at all videogames, but no. I may not know what's going on here, but I know it ain't that.)

Likewise for the Best Soundtrack Award, Steam tells me the only eligible game I've played in the category is Fresh Tracks, even though I know full well that I've played other 2025 releases with standalone soundtracks.

Fortunately, it doesn't really matter: You can write in pretty much any game you want in each category, and as long as it was released in 2025 (or prior to 2025, in the case of the Labor of Love category), it'll be fine.

And because this is the nomination process, everything is wide open: If you want to nominate Bongo Cat for Outstanding Story-Rich Game Award, well, you can do that. (And I think you should.)

On the other side of the coin, the list of games I've played under the Sit Back and Relax category is spot on: Bongo Cat, obviously (Bongo Cat is everywhere) but also Herdling, Crashlands 2, Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted, and Find My Frogs. It's a perfect list of laid-back 2025 games, and that makes me wonder why so many other categories feel so random.

Anyway, you have until December 1 to nominate your favorites for the 2025 Steam Awards—as in previous years, nominating a game will get you the "Steam Awards Nomination Committee" badge, which can be upgraded through four levels by completing subsequent tasks. Voting on the five finalists in each category will take place during the Steam Winter Sale, which begins on December 14. Winners will be announced when that sale ends on January 3.

Best PC build 2025

1. Best CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

2. Best motherboard: MSI MAG X870 Tomahawk WiFi

3. Best RAM: G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB 32 GB DDR5-7200

4. Best SSD: WD_Black SN7100

5. Best graphics card: AMD Radeon RX 9070

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