What the point of both a seperate Game of the Year award and a Developer of the Year if most of the nominees for Developer of the Year only made one game - the games in the Game of the Year list. Not trying to take anything away for Witcher 3 or CD Projekt Red, but it kinda feels like they won 2 awards for the exact same thing.

Yeah, I found that part super goofy.

When they gave the award to CD Projekt Red, that kinda gave away the GOTY, lol.

It's the same reason why Oscars have best film and best director.

Which made me realize we don't have the best game designer in game awards.

Well, I personally think it makes sense.You could have developed the best game of the year, for example like CD project, but there was another developer that releases a higher number of quality games, for example sony, nintendo or microsoft.So while CD project has the best game, Nintendo would have a higher number of quality game and so a better developer.This makes sense to me at least

Maybe it would have made more sense to restrict Developer of the Year nominees to developers who made more than one game in a given year?

It really makes no sense.

The only developer in the nominees that made more than one game this year was Nintendo, and every other dev only made one game.

It just seems redundant.

I could live with that if there was more of a mix, but there were only three nominees of five that actually made more than one game this year, and all of those nominees had their one biggest game in the GOTY list. Kinda gives away GOTY when you announce that a developer who made one game gets Developer of the Year.

The category's redundant if it's only devs with one game. It either shouldn't be there in the first place, or restrict to devs with more than a single game.

If any of the gaming awards shows wants to win in terms of public interest all they have to do is give us what we really want: Gaming Platform of the Year.

I think there's a bit of a disconnect between the criteria for best developer and the relation to GOTY. Being a great developer doesn't necessarily mean that you're making the next GOTY. Being a good developer means making quality titles, making regular efforts to listen to the community to improve the final product, and having consumer friendly DLC practices in an age where DLC of some kind is a given with every big budget title.

It just so happens that CD Projekt Red made an incredible game, and then went on to be an example for basically every other developer by providing free DLC, expansive, inexpensive paid DLC, and listening to the community to provide patches to the base content that offered improvements in all the right places.

This is one year where best developer and GOTY happened to walk hand in hand, but just because CD Projekt Red was a super consumer friendly developer this year doesn't mean that another game couldn't have won GOTY. We all knew that The Witcher 3 was an incredibly strong contender though, and it was basically guaranteed as GOTY unless something could manage to dethrone it. Ultimately though, nothing did throughout the year on a critical level, and thus, the best developer of the year also happened to produce the best game of the year.

Edit: @OP - You seem to think that best developer requires game volume, which I see as odd. Why should a developer have to divide their resources and risk lesser products for the sake of praise at an award show? Should every director have to direct multiple movies a year to be best director? Every musical artist have to put out multiple albums in a year to be the best artist? That is just dumb criteria that values quantity over quality.