The Game of the Year (GOTY) award spans decades over multiple events and hosts.These games are identified as the best of the bestby professionals in the industry, gaming publications, and players both serious and casual, depending on the award. Because of this, you might assume that they’d beat the trend of players falling off before finishing a game, but it seems no game is immune.
So, looking at The Game Awards, The Game Developer’s Choice Awards, the British Video Game Awards, and The Golden Joystick Awards, which GOTY games have the lowest completion rates? Despite the obvious guess being more difficult games, games with reputations for difficulty (like Dark Souls) actually have higher competition rates compared to open-world games. We take a look at the numbers.
The research for these completion rates comes from Steam Achievements, Xbox Achievements, and PSN Trophies. Games outside these sites were left out. When faced with multiple completion rates on different consoles, we took the sample from the consoles with the highest number of players reporting.
Even with an Easy Mode available, The Last of Us has the lowest completion rate, probably due to the combination of survival and stealth elements with the intense story. Even when looking at The Last of Us Remastered on the PS4, the completion rate only jumps to 13.08 percent.
It’s interesting to note that The Last of Us Part 2, which is also a GOTY winner across multiple award hosts, more thandoubledits completion rate at 47.25 percent on the PS4. Maybe a combination of increased hype and the game developers learning from their first game made for a combination that carried more players through.
Despite not being that long of a game (taking about 8 hours if you focus on the main storyline), Shadow of the Colossus only has a 14.79 percent competition rate. It could be that it had a higher completion rate when it was originally released on the PS2, but since then, the rates of completion haven’t risen much beyond 20 percent on future consoles.
If you got stuck on one of the bosses, now might be the time to go back and finish experiencing this game’s emotional story.
15.91% Via PSN Trophies (PS3)
While it’s not known for being an overly difficult game, the open world might intimidate some would-be cowboys from finishing the game. Even though the campaign itself should only take about 20 hours, there’s a lot of space for you to get lost in the world.
The sequel comes in higher, with a completion rate of 25.32 percent on the PS4, despite it being a longer game. But the combat has been refined and the developers have focused on smoothing out the critiques of the first game’s combat style.
Far less linear than the other games because of the structure of the time loop, it can be difficult to know when you’re getting close to “beating” Outer Wilds. The game prioritizes exploration and discovery over hand-holding, so you can play for a while without discovering some of the key plot elements, depending on where you go.
For indie games that experiment with style like this, a lower completion rate is part of the risk, but that doesn’t mean the game isn’t worth attempting to find at least one of the multiple endings.
5Dishonored
16.49% Via PSN Trophies (PS3)
It may be that Dishonored’s players didn’t realize the game offered non-stealth options for those who weren’t able to complete the stealth sections with, well, actual stealth. This doesn’t mean that the game is really easy, even in Easy Mode, and you’ll have to be creative to make sure you aren’t killed.
Following the trend of sequels to popular games outperforming the originals, Dishonored 2 has a completion rate of 25.02 percent on the PS4. It seems that the power of a franchise shouldn’t be underestimated when it comes to completing a playthrough.
If you’re focused on the main storyline, the game only takes around 30 hours to beat, but there’s so much more going on in Grand Theft Auto 4 (and the rest of the games in the franchise). This game is made for those of us who are distractible, and you’ll probably spend as much time running around doing side quests as getting into the story.
For this reason, a lot of the Grand Theft Auto games have a low completion rate, as players are probably getting lost in the world for hours instead of finding an ending.
With three cities to explore, it’s no wonder that players got derailed from the main plot lines. The initial game was also critiqued for having some technical issues, but the design of the missions, despite other elements, like the characters and visual design, won it acclaim.
Since its initial release, the game has been re-released multiple times, with the latest version being a remastered version in 2021. These editions have higher completion rates (closer to 30 percent) than the PS3 version, so the game remains popular despite how much time has passed.
This game gives you the chance to rise to the top of the criminal world, but apparently not everyone made it that far. Vice City won GOTY preciselybecausethere’s so much to do, but finding the time to fully experience the game remains something that not everyone can do.
Even more recent versions of this game, like the definitive editions, hang at around 20 percent for the main story across different consoles like the PS5. And that’s before we even think aboutcompleting the games 100 percent.
Anyone who’s started Baldur’s Gate 3 knows that the game offers a truly intimidating amount of choice, and that can feel quickly overwhelming.Each of the game’s three actsfeatures hours of NPC dialogue, side questing, and combat. This is no doubt the reason that a lot of players have fallen off before defeating the final boss.
An interesting note, this is the only game on this list from The Game Awards which has been popular in recent years. Their choices tend to have higher completion rates than the others, and as time passes, the completion rate for Baldur’s Gate 3 might also rise to match.
Despite being a linear game with a main story that clocks in at around 15 hours, something about Uncharted 4 just isn’t getting its players through to the end. That’s not to say that the game isn’t worth playing, far from it, as the game is highly rated by the people playing it, even if they aren’t fully completing it.
A rate of completion between 20 to 30 percent is common for the Uncharted game series.
