They really had Starfield competing for “most innovative” with nothing but smaller indie titles that most people probably haven’t played. No wonder it won, it looks like Valve practically guaranteed them the award.
The biggest other game on that category was Remnant 2, a fantastic game that improves on everything the previous iteration did but isn't really innovative since it's a sequel.
I agree with you, but how many people do you think played Remnant 2 vs played Starfield? Unfortunately part of these game awards, at least for ones that players vote for, is the popularity aspect. People will vote even if they only know 1 or 2 of the nominees, so a game’s popularity ends up being a huge advantage.
So in this case Starfield, for some bizarre reason, got stacked up with a bunch of indies with significantly smaller player bases. So despite Starfield having no right to win the award, it did.
It really feels like it was purposefully pit against those games to give it a free award. I can’t think of any other explanation.
Edit: Some people are speculating that people voted for it as a joke, and did the same for RDR2 winning “Labor of Love” despite having no new content since release. Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if this was true.