The 40th Annual Golden Joystick Awards (opens in new tab) took place yesterday. On the software side, Elden Ring deservedly got an armful of gongs, but the award for Best Hardware went to Valve and Steam Deck (opens in new tab). The award was accepted by Gabe Newell, who made a point about something we all take for granted with our wonder machines.

"On behalf of everyone at Valve, I want to thank you for giving the Steam Deck the Golden Joystick award for Best Gaming Hardware. My PC has an AMD CPU, Nvidia GPU, Falcon Northwest PC, Corsair mouse, Logitech keyboard, and Samsung monitor."

Falcon Northwest is an American company that makes some pretty phenomenal custom PCs (opens in new tab). I'm wondering who received the build order with the customer name "Gabe Newell" at the top.

Newell was referring to Final Fantasy 14 director Naoki Yoshida's acceptance speech at last year's Golden Joystick.

"But more importantly, after hearing Yoshi P's acceptance speech last year, I was impressed by his community focus. He said, "If it weren't possible, if it weren't for the gaming community behind us that drives the entire industry forward, products like Steam Deck wouldn't be possible. So I would like to accept this award on behalf of the gaming community."

All credit for Steam Deck goes to you. Gabe has recently been delivering Steam Deck, reminiscing about his days as a telegram boy, or passing on favors via potato phone.

Here's the full list of 2022 Golden Joysticks winners, and if you don't want to watch the show in full, here's a handy clip of the winners' acceptance speeches.