Can a game win GOTY twice? One title is going to find out this year

The Game Awards are upon us once again, recognizing and celebrating the finest games of 2024 across a wide variety of genres. The nominees for this year’s ceremony were just revealed, and a controversial entry could lead to a first for the ceremony.

Shadow of the Erdtree, the DLC expansion for FromSoftware’s Elden Ring, has been nominated for Game of the Year. The expansion stands alongside five other standalone games that were nominated: Astro Bot, Balatro, Black Myth: Wukong, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and Metaphor: ReFantazio. Elden Ring already won Game of the Year back in 2022, which means that if Shadow of the Erdtree takes home the top prize, it would be the first time in the ceremony’s history that a DLC expansion won the award, as well as make Elden Ring the first game to win the Game of the Year award twice.

But is Shadow of the Erdtree is the favorite to win Game of the Year? There is some pretty stiff competition this year, but being connected to a previous winner does bode well for the expansion, as well as the fact that it gathered four nominations overall (although both Astro Bot and FF7R got seven each, and Erdtree was also behind games like Metaphor: ReFantazio and Balatro in nominations). It also helps that the content within Shadow of the Erdtree is so dense that many could consider it a standalone title on its own, which could be a good way to justify its nomination to those who find it unfair.

Regardless of whether or not Shadow of the Erdtree wins on Dec. 12, having the expansion being in the same conversation as Elden Ring as one of the year’s best games has further cemented the latter’s legacy as one of the greatest games ever made, setting new standards for the industry over two years after its release.