I feel like Larian trapped themselves with the Panel from Hell events. During early access, the only thing that people were able to do is throw their feature into a wishing well and prey that it get mentioned in the next PFH.
This for me. I know a lot of people spent a lot of effort giving feedback on the 'evil campaign' in EA, myself included and how it was rather lackluster, and Larian's silence on the matter was rather frustrating, to say the least. They talked up a lot of the aspects of parts outside of Act I, but we never really got any indication what, if anything was being done about the criticisms, or if Larian was even listening.
And it turns out the only feedback to be acted on was to the benefit of people playing good characters. The evil characters were nicened up to be more compatible with good playthroughs, and the tadpole power progression was reworked such to remove one of the only real incentives to play evil.
It seems that they might be doing something *now* but there was a lack of transparency on their goals. They might not be facing much of the backlash they are now in certain respects if they had listened to players more in EA.
There's also the honesty issue. Those parts that I mentioned being talked up in PFH etc? A lot of them turned out to be misleading or outright false, and the gaslighting over 'cut content' after all that came to light didn't help matters If a company doesn't even acknowledge the playerbase except in big PR events once in a while, doesn't seem to act on much of the feedback, and misleads them as to what is going into the game, I don't think it really instills a sense of trust.
I don't know about the other nominations for that award, but I really don't think it would be fair to give Larian that one. Only thing I got is that maybe the entertaining and excitable tone of the Panel From Hell events is holding the line on that one, because I never really saw much of substance to get behind considering them particularly great in that regard.
