Steam Awards 2016 latest news: Valve announces finalists; voting starts on Dec. 22

Valve has recently announced the nominees for the 2016 Steam Awards.

As reported by PC Gamer, this year's Steam Awards was announced last November, and gamers were asked to submit nominations for eight pre-set categories. For the ninth category, "We Didn't Think of Everything Award," voters were asked to suggest a nomination category of their choice. Hence, four new categories have been added to the original 8 categories, totaling to 12 finalized categories for this year's Steam Awards.

Valve did not limit the field of potential nominees to games that were released only in 2016. Hence, the majority of the nominees for the categories were released prior to 2016, such as game classics "Portal 2" (2011) and niche titles like "Euro Truck Simulator 2" (2013).

According to Valve, 15 million nominations were submitted, and they have managed to trim it down to several nominated games per category.

For example, for the "Villain Most In Need of A Hug" Award, nominees include "Borderlands 2," "Dead by Daylight," "Far Cry 3," "Far Cry 4," and "Portal." For the community-selected category the "Boom Boom" Award, nominated games include "BroForce," "DOOM," "Just Cause 3," "Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes," and "Kerbal Space Program."

According to Polygon, most of the finalists selected are games that were launched further into the past. In fact, one of the nominees — Facepunch Studios' "Garry's Mod," a "Half-Life 2" mod that became a stand-alone game — was released a decade ago, back in November 2006. Another nominated game is "Age of Empires 2: HD Edition," which is a 2013 remaster of a video game that was launched in 1999.

Voting for all 12 categories for the 2016 Steam Awards starts on Dec. 22, and it will conclude on Dec. 30. Each of the eight originally-set categories will be up for voting for 24 hours each. The voting for the four community-selected categories will take place all at once on Dec. 30.

Valve is scheduled to announce the winners on Dec. 31, the last day of 2016.