Honestly..? I am pretty sure the game won without them throwing money at the people giving the awards. I genuinely believe that they genuinely believe the game to be that good since it is precisely the kind of game they can brag about having chosen as winner and smell their own farts after the fact. I never had GOTY awards held on a high regard in the first place, so this is just par for the course.

They need no money to choose crappy games as GOTY. They gladly do it for free.

Most likely a a combination of being paid off and TLOU2 being the most "political" game this year. Much like how the Oscars jerk off any movie owned by Disney or makes Hollywood look less racist than it actually is.

It's just funnier here because of how blatantly fixed it is due to the malice from the consumers and embarrassing drops in sales.