The Game Awards players’ voice nominees cause an upset over gacha’s influence

Gamers have noticed that gacha titles have taken up three out of five top spots in The Game Awards’ Players’ Voice category, and now many of them are saying that players no longer deserve a voice.

The anticipation surrounding The Game Awards 2024 show hosted by Geoff Keighley has seemingly peaked ahead of its December 12 stream, however, that hasn’t come without its own set of controversies. This year, titles have taken top spots in key categories even though many believe they don’t deserve the hype. On Dec. 9, Keighley announced the final five nominees for The Game Awards’ Players’ Voice category were locked in. Though many fans were satisfied to see their favorites make the list, others noticed that of the five games, three of them were gacha titles that offered game rewards for their success in this category. Plenty expressed concern over what felt like companies buying gamers’ votes for a category they otherwise wouldn’t land. There’s a lot of outright disdain, with some suggesting people shouldn’t be listening to the gamers’ voices anymore.

Among other issues, The Game Awards has been criticized in the past for it’s 9:1 voting ratio favoring a jury over player votes. But after seeing gacha games fill up the Players’ Voice category, some players believe that the discourse over the issue is undue. Users like MeovvCAT wrote on Twitter/X that although players seemingly want their voice to matter, “they want 2 gacha pulls even more.”

Despite the genuine success that has followed these titles, players have scrutinized the practices of Hoyoverse and Kuro Games, since these companies offered rewards for resources their players might have otherwise had to buy, thus compromising the integrity of a voting process.

Despite the pushback against gacha titles, a vocal amount of fans have stated they don’t feel like their favorites are winning enough for all the free content and updates they’ve offered over this year alone. Others have stated that maybe the other developers should be thanking their fans in similar ways.

Historically, The Game Awards’ hype has boosted sales for nominees and winners, so much so that companies often release a “Game of The Year edition” of their titles. Many have acknowledged that The Game Awards often feels like a popularity contest, but incentivizing wins in a community vote for extra gacha pulls is a step too far for some.