Silksong Wins ‘Best Game’ Award as Steam Sets New Record

After millions of votes, Hollow Knight: Silksong has clinched Steam’s Game of the Year award for 2025. This marks a significant achievement for the acclaimed Metroidvania Soulslike, especially after it faced tough competition from Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 at various events, including the Game Awards. Finally, the game is receiving the recognition it deserves just as Valve’s platform hit an all-time high for concurrent players to kick off 2026.

Silksong was up against strong contenders like Arc Raiders, Dispatch, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 for the GOTY title, making this victory particularly impressive. It has also been the best-selling game on the platform throughout the holiday season, consistently breaking new records for concurrent players on PC, surpassing 450,000 over the weekend.

Here are the other winners of the 2025 Steam Awards:

Are the Steam Awards essentially a popularity contest, with winners decided solely by user votes? Absolutely. Could many of these outcomes have been anticipated? Likely! However, it’s still exciting to see a variety of outstanding games celebrated across different categories where they truly deserve recognition.

The results certainly offer more intrigue than this year’s Game Awards, where Clair Obscur dominated and Silksong didn’t even secure the Player’s Voice award, which went to the free-to-play gacha action-RPG Wuthering Waves. The Steam Awards stand out as the largest community-voted accolade in gaming, open to anyone with an eligible Steam account. The platform recently announced a new record player peak of 41,746,984. While it may not be catching up to Roblox anytime soon, this is promising news for developers looking to create and sell games on Valve’s storefront.