GOTY is always rigged. It’s like how you can have Hades 2 (this isn’t a criticism of the game, I think it’s pretty damn good) in the ‘Best Game by an Independent Developer’ category when SuperGiant Games has been a mainstay of the industry for nearly a decade now with 24 listed employees and dozens of others involved in the projects.

That doesn’t make Shroud correct though. If Arc Raiders was shooting for a GOTY, it should have released at the beginning or middle of the summer. It isn’t that surprising that it isn’t there, it just hasn’t been around long enough and doesn’t have a huge audience outside of the ‘Man I love, but am sick of, Tarkov’ demo, which admittedly pretty big, but also fucking starved for real content and committed to a game whose developer have openly stated that they do not actually care if the game is fun or not. No shit they are gonna go bananas for something expanding the genre, while it is gonna be a pretty lack luster response from gamers and the industry at large.

So yes, it is rigged, but Arc Raiders not being nominated is a pretty poor example of that process.