I dunno about cheating exactly, as it makes business sense and plenty of fans love it.
But it should be two mutually exclusive categories: Best New Game vs. Best Remake/Remaster.
Then Game of the Year could be a wider no-limits category where the winner hopefully reflects the truly best gaming experience, whatever it is. No need to exclude remasters because that’s always going to be a steep hill for them IMO.
Best remake is a good idea, it feels like cheating when a company takes 0 risk and re-releases a classic instead of working on new IPs.
I dunno about cheating exactly, as it makes business sense and plenty of fans love it.
But it should be two mutually exclusive categories: Best New Game vs. Best Remake/Remaster.
Then Game of the Year could be a wider no-limits category where the winner hopefully reflects the truly best gaming experience, whatever it is. No need to exclude remasters because that’s always going to be a steep hill for them IMO.