TGAs confirm Elden Ring DLC is GOTY elibigle, but seems late for that

This coming Monday, the Game Awards 2024 will announce its list of nominees, selected from ballots submitted by video game publications, including a ballot from us here at Polygon. So it was a bit unusual to see that today — the Friday afternoon beforehand, and thus the final possible hour — Geoff Keighley and company have issued a clarification on nominees’ eligibility. Although previously, the rules did not explicitly forbid video game DLCs and expansions from nomination, most voters (Polygon staff included) had assumed that DLCs wouldn’t be in contention for these awards.

In the update posted today to the FAQ on The Game Awards website, there’s a new question: “Are DLCs, expansion packs and remakes/ remasters eligible?” Here’s the answer:

The Game Awards aims to recognize the best creative and technical work each year, irrespective of the format of that content’s release. Expansion packs, new game seasons, DLCs, remakes and remasters are eligible in all categories, if the jury deems the new creative and technical work to be worthy of a nomination. Factors such as the newness of the content and its price/value should be taken into consideration.

Collecting and collating ballots for an awards show of this size, particularly one with as many publications participating as The Game Awards, takes a lot of time. One could reasonably assume that by this point, voters for an event like this would have already submitted ballots and are no longer paying attention to a rule change on the FAQ that hasn’t been publicized. So, why issue the rule change at this point? The mind boggles.

For all those reasons, we don’t think it’s very likely that Shadow of the Erdtree will get a GOTY nomination, nor many other nominations, except perhaps in “Best Ongoing Game” (the place that the parent games for exceptional DLCs and expansions tend to get nominated, thereby serving as a way for those additions to be recognized). Not because Erdtree is not deserving; we loved it. We just don’t think anybody knew they were allowed to put it down. Whoops.