Why ask people to vote all together,
So they feel personally invested in the outcome.
and not just use metacritic/steam reviews, sales and hand out additional badges based on that?
What would be the point in doing that?
What's a benefit of such badge, if it's handed to a project on a basis of being already very succesful?
Awards ceremonies aren’t for us. Promotional reasons aside, they are for people within the industry so that they can receive recognition for their achievements.
If you want to see an awards ceremony with a more comprehensive review process from a select number of voters, that’s what the Academy of Arts and Science’s DICE Awards are for. I think those happen in January.
As such popularity votes indicate just that - popularity. Not a meaningless metric, but also not very helpful or informative one.
Again, this isn’t supposed to be helpful or informative. It’s for the benefit of the developers who worked on the games. Not us.
