Key Takeaways
- A new clarification on The Game Awards FAQ page has revealed Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC is eligible for Game of the Year.
- It says that “expansion packs, new game seasons, DLCs, remakes and remasters are eligible in all categories”, though this clarification was added only today.
- That means it’s unlikely that Shadow of the Erdtree will be nominated, or The Game Awards is bracing itself for the potential fallout.
It’s been a pretty good year for video games, as it feels like most of us are desperately playing catch up before the next deluge of games hits in February 2025. We’ve had bangers like Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Helldivers 2, Metaphor: ReFantazio, Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero, Astro Bot, and even this year’s Call of Duty was pretty good too.
It feels like this year’s grand prize at The Game Awards is going to be a tough one to call, but it turns out there could be a surprise challenger in our midst, as The Game Awards recently confirmed that “expansion packs, new game seasons, DLCs, remakes and remasters are eligible in all categories”, meaning a certain Elden Ring DLC that came out earlier this year is in the running to be nominated for Game of the Year.
Elden Ring Shadow Of The Erdtree DLC Is Eligible For GOTY At The Game Awards
This clarification was first spotted by Polygon, and can be found on the FAQ page of the official Game Awards website. It claims that while DLC is eligible in all categories, it also stresses that the jury has to find its “new creative and technical work to be worthy of a nomination”. We all know that Shadow of the Erdtree was brilliant, and an improvement on the base game in some respects, so there’s no doubting its quality.
However, it was also noted by Polygon that this clarification was added today, as a trip to The Game Awards website on the Wayback Machine reveals this clarification didn’t even exist until recently. That means a lot of video game publications that submitted ballots for potential nominees wouldn’t have known whether Shadow of the Erdtree was eligible for the award or not, meaning it’s unlikely to show up. It’s still possible though.
That’s one way you could take this strange update to the FAQ page, though another is that this could be The Game Awards predicting the potential fallout for when Shadow of the Erdtree is nominated for Game of the Year next week. The idea of some DLC being nominated for Game of the Year over full titles would undoubtedly stir up trouble, so this little clarification could’ve been added as something for Geoff Keighley to point to.
Either way, we won’t know for sure exactly which games are up for Game of the Year until the nominees are announced. Thankfully, we won’t have to wait too long, as Keighley recently announced on Twitter that a stream to reveal the nominees is taking place this coming Monday at 12pm ET / 9am PT / 5pm GMT. We’ll then get to see which games are battling it out for the grand prize, and even Shadow of the Erdtree will be among them.
Shadow of the Erdtree is the first and only DLC expansion for FromSoftware’s groundbreaking Elden Ring. It takes players to a whole new region, the Land of Shadow, where a new story awaits the Tarnished.