Shroud questions awards after Arc Raiders snubbed for Game of the Year; Donkey Kong Bananza nominated
Clair Obscure Expedition 33 is a turn-based, story-rich RPG released in April of this year to an incredible reception, making it a genre-defining entry in the JRPG category by an independent French studio. An instant hit with the fans, the game has now been nominated for 12 different awards, the highest the ceremony has ever seen.
Arc Raiders, on the other hand, is a PvPVE extraction shooter that was released on October 30th, not too long before the award ceremony. The game, developed by Embark Studios, has been exceptionally well-received, with a Very Positive rating across over 67,000 positive reviews on Steam. Players from all over the world are absolutely intoxicated by the gameplay and have been singing its praises across the internet. Among them is Michael Grzesiek, better known by his streaming handle, Shroud.
Shroud had expressed his love for Arc Raiders on multiple occasions and tried to rally gamers who watched his streams and followed him to vote for it to win Game of the Year. Despite this, Arc Raiders was only nominated for Best Multiplayer, a single category versus Expedition 33’s 12.
The nominations for Game of the Year are Clair Obscur, Donkey Kong Bananza, Death Stranding 2, Hades 2, Hollow Knight: Silksong, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. All of these are very well-received and critically acclaimed titles, but Shroud felt differently about some of them, claiming that Arc Raiders deserved to be on that list, and one of the current nominations does stand out. “Who the **** is playing Donkey Kong Bananza? Nobody's playing Donkey Kong Bananza. Nobody," he commented.
Even though Arc Raiders' single nomination seemed to bring the streamer some relief, he wasn’t pleased with the direction the awards were taking. "But, hey, at least they nominated it for something, I genuinely thought they wouldn't nominate it for anything because they were scared to get backlash," he said. "But at least they nominated it for something, so that's good."
An already-disgruntled take?
Shroud has previously stated that he felt that the awards were “rigged” and shared his thoughts on why Arc wasn’t selected, revealing he felt it had to do with their use of AI voice lines in the game, about specific features, like pinging or pointing out things to others that trigger an AI voice line, so players can keep voice chat clear. "The world is just not ready for AI in video games, not yet. They're just not ready," Shroud claimed.
Shroud also expressed some other widely shared beliefs about the titular Game of the Year award. He felt "sequels have no right to be Game of the Year," except for "game-changing sequels like Grand Theft Auto 6, Grand Theft Auto 5, Grand Theft Auto 4, the Witcher 4, for example." He added, "Remasters shouldn't be on there either," a sentiment shared by a large portion of his audience and gamers in general.
For those waiting on results, only the nominees have been revealed so far; the winners will be announced on December 11 at 4:30 pm PT.
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