Nomination went to Path of Exile for obvious reasons. There aren’t a lot of devs that can even come close to GGG in this category.
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Tbh No Man’s Sky should just automatically win this category every year
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Yeah look. I love this game, but Fatshark is incredibly, unceasingly, reluctant to change the major issues in a timely fashion.
I’ll not complain about Swedish Vacation because all workers deserve that. But failing to admit that they’re spending most of their resources on a port and constantly bombarding the players with horrifically overpriced cosmetics while slow-rolling change has been the bulk of Darktide’s history.
Maybe next year, assuming they turf out the idiots responsible.
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Thats it in a nutshell.
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No, do complain. It is a major blow against Fat Shark that they release content that is broken (like the original launch) and then take a month long vacation where nothing gets fixed.
If Swedish law requires these vacations, they should be taken before launch / content drops so the team will be on station to fix the issues.
The way this game was launched would have killed other studios completely. Release broken game… take month long vacay, do interviews on how good it is while community is in uproar and it’s mostly negative on steam.
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VT2 had the same development cycle (and had it worse), so that implies the decsion makers responsible are entrenched high up. DT at least had updates when console was being worked on. VT2 had none when FS was working on Xbox port; and the game was left in such a bad state then people started to think FS had abandoned the game as there wasn’t even dev communication.
At least this year they’re releasing a major update two weeks before vacation instead of the day before.
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Vs was such a monkey’s paw for me, I just wanted an homage to VT1 where the heroes have no abilites just weapons and their aim. And you get to play as rats that have a decent chance of doing damage and not jank kills. But no gotta kill WP 40 times a game and probably still fail to do that.
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While I do feel that Darktide has improved drastically since launch, most of the changes were hard fought changes by the community rather than a “labor of love” by the devs. With many requestedchanges/promised features being blatantly ignored (solo mode) or given the “give us feedback on why you want it.” with no actual follow up (mission select).
I personally nominated Forever Skies. I bought the game in Early Access back in April and the dev team has been very vocal on their forums, created a “feature request” site with dev tags for the requests like “in progress”, “under consideration”, and “implemented”. They’re laboring on the game out of love and listening to community feedback. I couldn’t think of a game more deserving of my Labor of Love nomination
Edit: I’ll also add that the Forever Skies team adds opt-in beta branches and take feedback from the testers to improve it prior to launching that patch, which is something more devs should do hinthint
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Remnant 2 because while it’s far from perfect it’s very much a game with a dev team that’s very active with its playerbase and they’ve consistently shown they give a crap about the actual game being fun.
Even if I’m sad they did a boss rush mode instead of survival from Remnant 1.
Darktide is pretty much at the point of where it should have been at launch… two years later, and has basically just been them fixing their own poor design choices trying to shove FOMO in. (And Havoc mode once again is a huge “Why?”)
I’d vote for VT2 over Darktide anyway as it’s very clearly more of a labor of love over Darktide, if I was to pick a Fatshark title.
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They got rid of the RNG that was gate keeping me. I’ll nominate for that alone.
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Perhaps when they actually listen to the community about the store and cosmetics.
Its Baldur’s gate 3 for me on this especially with more free content (the upcoming subclasses look awesome) and community modding support coming next year
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Thanks for bringing it up! I always miss this stuff. Vote added! 
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I actually did vote yes, though let me start by listing reasons that i agree with for why other games should be ahead of darktide.
- Cosmetic store prices
- Clownery from launch to now regarding everything from crafting to content, weapon mods, and so on
- The never-ending feeling that momentum might start gathering once side projects/platform ports are done, and all the stumbling and sometimes backward steps when we get some progress
- Locks (that in fairness are now gone)
With that said, what game time i have is limited, and these days i don’t even get to play darktide as much as i might want.
But to be honest, over the last two years the game i keep returning to even with decent gaps is DT, and it’s a game i look forward to playing even without any social reasons.
Examples of the opposite these days, FFXIV and battlefield to name two.
Games/franchises i used to love playing, even solo, but these days I only drop into if a friend asks/to help with something, etc.
Not because they’re bad, but the want to keep playing/grinding just isn’t there anymore.
So yeah, it got my vote simply because it’s a game i enjoy playing more than most others.
There’s 100% better games out there if looking at it from a review perspective, but i simply really enjoy the darktide loop even if it’s an objectively “worse” game than several others i could mention.
Played/finished a few other games over the last two years that i really enjoyed, but just can’t seem to shake the want bug when it comes to DT and i keep coming back (which is more than can be said for other, “better” titles), so yeah, why not.
Also, Kyd not winning something for the soundtrack was and is an abomination.
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I agree, also solo mode.
But like you it’s simply my favourite multiplayer game with friends. And they didn’t abandon the project. They have addressed the big issues (from my point of view). I don’t care about premium cosmetics in a first person game, don’t care for single mode, I play quick play or with friends. But I can see these things being a requirement for those that want them, especially with solo mode being promised.
Looking forward to the curio rework, weapons that go to 100%, balancing, DLC classes/weapons, better/customizable bots (lead into solo mode?), etc.
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Sorry, but Larian just announced a new patch with more content than Darktide would ever get in 5 years, my labor of love vote goes to them 
I mean all we get for the darktide anniversary are 3 weapons and overpriced cosmetics recolor. Not saying no effort was done, but I have the feelign those 3 years were only about correcting mistakes that should not have been made in the first place.
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No, because FOMO cash shops aren’t love. Ill change my tune when you do FS.
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real
powder that makes you say “real”.
(i agree)
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Because the Fatshark Dev team has worked in the face of a very … there’s no polite word for this… incendiary fanbase at its worst. In spite of this and the optics that as a company they’ve endured and still push content out. I do not think that the Dev team would not endure as much as they have if it was not a labor of love. I find it difficult to call something a labor of love when everyone’s already cheering for you (as with some other examples that others have posted who they believe is more deserving - which I’m sure they have their reasons and is completely valid.)
Second, by how far the game has come from what it was originally and the work it must have taken to get there. I’m pretty sure that at this point we’ve doubled the number of weapons you can use, we’ve gained 25 more talents to choose from, we’ve gained a multitude of levels, several new game types, several reworks to the crafting system, a brand new penance system and several additions onto that, as well as a few story-centric levels as well. In the span of two years.
TL;DR With a fanbase throwing incendiary comments at the worst it had been, along with the steady, if not slow, stream of content that we’ve been provided, I can’t think of anyone more deserving.
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I wonder why it happened with DT and Fatshark, as if there were no reasons and on top of that any context of previous releases.
Damn, why it’s not happening with GGG for example, probably pure luck. So sorry for Fatshark lost rng and now they have to deal with toxic community.
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No, and further my opinion - why would I give my vote to a game where the management barely hear the players, and if they do, they don’t understand. For example (again my opinion) - why and most importantly why will a two-handed sword be added to the psyker? Why add a really necessary and interesting thing in the form of a staff, when you can add something that was not asked for. Although I do not play ogryn, but I do not think that deep down they are happy about another machine gun, instead of knuckles, say, or axe two-handed. I liked the weapon on the veteran - will be added in 2025 around these dates 1.01-31.12. Total of new weapons in the patch we have only two-handed on Zealots (really good).
Paid cosmetics - how many times I wanted to dress psyker in something other than the basic prison robe, and really want to buy something, but I keep waiting and waiting and do not spend money, thanks fomo system))))) A prime example is the recent weapon cosmetics pack, anyone who has seen it will know what I’m thinking.
And even more I like that 05.11 published information about the upcoming patch, and many I think with hope wrote reviews that inappropriate and so on, so that by the release of the patch - these dissatisfactions were eliminated. And the result we are told that the work on changes on feedback will be done 2-3 weeks after the patch, and attention to the question: why in principle publish information and do nothing about the dissatisfaction, if you can return to the old familiar system - came out the patch and its description on the same day.
And about the technical work that was launched yesterday, I will not say anything at all
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