The Game Awards Left One of 2023’s Surprise Hits in the Dust

The annual Game Awards event is a huge celebration of some of the best games each year. However, the recent Game Awards ceremony missed out on one of the biggest hits this year. In the short time since its release on PC, Lethal Company has been a breakout success, surpassing some of the big titles that appeared at the 2023 Game Awards, though strangely, Lethal Company didn’t make an appearance at the Game Awards.

Unfortunately, it all seemingly comes down to a scheduling issue between Lethal Company’s release date and the cut-off point for why it wasn’t included in the 2023 Game Awards. For reference, Lethal Company was released in early access on October 24, and generally hit its peak popularity in mid-November, whereas the Game Awards debuted this year on December 7.

Lethal Company Is One Of The Hottest Games On Steam Right Now

Lethal Company is a multiplayer horror exploration game that’s become extremely popular since it was released late this year. The player’s goal in the game is to work together as a team to explore through procedurally generated buildings on abandoned moons to collect valuable loot in hopes of meeting a constantly increasing profit quota. The main appeal of the game is how difficult, scary, and silly the game can be because of some of the planet conditions and monsters in Lethal Company that force players to make risky and desperate decisions.

At this point, it’s too early to say whether Lethal Company will show up at next year’s Game Awards in 2024, which is unfortunate considering that it’s one of the games that didn’t show up at the 2023 Game Awards. Although Lethal Company is available to play right now, it’s still in early access. Consequently, between the Lethal Company’s modding community and the developers’ ongoing support, it’s still a possibility that the game will get the recognition it deserves in due time, perhaps even an award nomination at the 2024 Game Awards.

As of the weekend immediately following the 2023 Game Awards, Lethal Company is one of the most popular games on Steam. Specifically, it’s within the top 10 most popular games according to the current Steam Charts. Also, player reviews for Lethal Company on Steam are sitting at a 92% rating, which is considered “overwhelmingly positive” by Steam’s standards.

How Lethal Company Compares to Other 2023 Game Awards Nominees

For context, Party Animals was another popular game from this year that made an appearance at the Game Awards as a nominee for the Best Multiplayer Game. Between these two games, Lethal Company has reached a total player count of over 100,000 players, while Party Animals has less than 7,000 total players on Steam.

Another indicator of Lethal Company’s success is that it occasionally surpasses even Baldur’s Gate 3 in current players on Steam, which is the game that won Game of the Year this year. So far, Lethal Company even has a higher peak player count than Baldur’s Gate 3, which is quite an impressive accomplishment for an indie game going head-to-head with the current Game of the Year from a triple-A studio.

Lethal Company very well could have been a contender for the Best Indie Game, as well as the Best Multiplayer Game awards. Although, since it didn’t appear at the 2023 Game Awards at all, it wasn’t nominated for any award categories this year. As an Indie game, Lethal Company was never expected to steal the show away from the big reveals at the Game Awards, but it’s a bit unfortunate that this game didn’t get acknowledged or even mentioned at all given its massive success.

Lethal Company

Released

October 23, 2023

Developer(s)

Zeekerss

Publisher(s)

Zeekerss

Number of Players

1-4

Steam User Rating

97% (November 21, 2023)

Steam Deck Compatibility

Playable