I didn't realize the fickleness of gamers in regards to GOTY awards and nominations...
Call me "old school" but GOTY, has always been an accumulation of awards from respected gaming collectives. Gamers and journalists often banded together in websites and/or blogs giving the nod to a standout ip that released that year. But recently, over the past year it seems Geoff Keighley's a ward show has become the only award "some" care about?
I'm old enough to remember Atari consoles, and I have
never known "GOTY" as being an accumulation of awards from respected gaming collectives...
It's just the last award of the series from year-end lists by magazines or websites or critics; one award of many given out by that outlet. There is no single GotY, except in personal collections or forums where people collect up how many outlets they like or consider credible gave this or that their best-of award and tallied them all up. If you consider that to be official, then okay, but the Metacritic approach to fuzzy-math = accurate does not add up to there being an "official" Game of the Year.
If anybody has ever said in conversation, "...it won Game of the Year," there's no scenario where I would not have followed up by asking, "From whom?"
Some time in the 360/PS3 era, there started to be "Game of the Year Edition" releases that re-released games in new packaging with their DLC (this was in part because games expanded in that time thanks to downloadable content and sold well in final edition for easy store longevity,) but the actual designation of what was a "Game of the Year" that allowed a company to put out a Game of the Year Edition
was always questionable.
...I'm also curious where you're seeing The Game Awards being cited as the definitive GOTYs? I never see it on like boxcovers or anywhere that popularly refers to awards. There are at least invited judges for TGAs, there's some circumstance of ruleset for it, but not much (some of the games aren't even out by the time judges need to submit,) and I rarely see anybody take the actual awards seriously after the show. That's certainly not what the vast percentage of the audience is tuning in for...
*BTW, is TGAs where that "Microsoft won Publisher of the Year 2021" thing came from that gets cited every time somebody gives the opinion that the Xbox slate is soft? I see this posted all the time, but never see anybody credit an actual outlet for awarding the company with that. Sure, MS Flight and FH5 were great, but people just post about "Publisher of the Year" as if there's an industry accolade printed in stone once a year, indeed the highest and most undisputable honor in the business... and I've never heard of it before now.
(EDIT - A
Google search seems to say it's not a thing, unless you consider MetaCritic end-of-year awards as being real awards?)