As Rock Paper Shotgun recently noted, Steam's publicly voted 2020 Labor of Love award went to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, while Planetary Annihilation Still quietly updating for a small but dedicated community of players five years after launch: Titans continues to quietly update for a small but dedicated community of players.

The original Planetary Annihilation was a Kickstart RTS that promised "planetary-scale gameplay inspired by Total Annihilation." When released in 2014, it was too small to be epic It was a bit lackluster, with planets like the Little Prince and attacks that could come from any direction, which felt too big at the same time you were trying to figure out multiple worlds. At the time, I played for four or five hours, decided that maybe this was simply a bad idea, and played Supreme Commander instead.

However, developer Uber Entertainment stuck with it and released Planetary Annihilation: Titans, a standalone expansion released in 2015 that included the entire original game, with various improvements The original team was transferred to the new version of the game in 2018. The original team moved on in 2018, but some of the developers formed their own mini-studio called Planetary Annihilation Inc. to take over patches and balance updates, and have been running regular tournaments for the community ever since. Currently, there is a championship series with monthly tournaments.

It may not have set the world alight at the time of its release, and it may not be universally popular even today, but it is this kind of dedication that makes "Planetary Annihilation: Titans" seem like a true labor of love. That said, at least "The Witcher 3" did not win the award, and "The Witcher 3," which was also nominated by fans, had the only update in the past 12 months announced as ray tracing and faster load times to be included in a "next-gen version" at some point in the future.

Thanks, RPS.