There was a lot of drama over The Game Awards in 2021, where for hours Xbox fans have criticized Forza Horizon 5 for not being included in the ‘Game of the Year’ category among The Game Awards 2021 nominees.

Xbox Game Studios had two game titles among the game of the year nominees, these were Deathloop and Psychonauts 2, on the other hand, the game Forza Horizon 5 was only nominated in three categories, these categories were ‘Best Audio Design’, ‘ Innovation in Accessibility’ and ‘Best Sports/Racing’.

The reason

It was later known through Windows Central, who mentioned the reason why the game Forza Horizon 5 was not nominated in the Game of the Year category at The Games Awards 2021, they mentioned that this happened because game journalists had to submit their picks by November 4, and Forza Horizon 5 Early Access was set to launch the next day on November 5, making it difficult for this game to be included among the picks that were made.

However, according to the reports obtained, the journalists had until November 11 to modify their selections that they had sent, and it was mentioned that “this information [wasn’t] highlighted clearly enough, and not enough time was given in general.”

It was definitely a total shame that Forza Horizon 5 was not included in the Game of the Year category at The Games Awards 2021, however, the Xbox games that were nominated were among the favorites and were expected to win, as well as Forza Horizon 5, was nominated for three categories, which was eagerly expected to win one of those, especially the ‘Best Sports/Racing’ category.

We can also take into account some of the scores that Forza Horizon 5 had at launch, this game was the highest rated game of 2021, and among all 2021 games, Forza Horizon 5 was the only new game release of the year that scored higher than the average score of 90 from critics. Forza Horizon 5’s score was 92, when the average was 90, and reviewing the games that were nominated for Game of the Year, none of them had a similar score or reached 90 points.

Mentions of discontent 

On the platform and social network Twitter, various opinions were found about the nominees for Game of the Year, and taking into account that Forza Horizon 5 was not nominated at The Games Awards 2021. Let’s see some tweets that were published at that time:

• “Forza Horizon 5 has universal praise and cruising to 10 million players in 10 days

Meanwhile…..”The Game Awards”.” And the tweet shows a video that you can check by clicking here. 

“Long day announcing #TheGameAwards nominations, but love to see the record engagement and votes from fans around the world! I’m not sure there’s a front runner, going to be very interesting seeing the results on December 9! Player’s Voice category coming up!” This tweet was posted by Geoff Keighley, who is a game journalist and the host of The Games Awards. The tweet received many critical responses, including the following:

“Your teams need to do better in terms of racing game representation. Each year is the same cycle, either snubbing them when they deserve GOTY praise like Forza Horizon 5, or relegating them to “Sports” titles. Absolutely ridiculous how games media portrays racing games.”