The award ceremony initially focused on the
d20 System products and publishers. It has come to include "all games, supplements, and peripheral enterprises". Since 2002, the awards have been announced at a live ceremony at Gen Con. It is now considered a "signature part" of the convention. In 2007, the ENNIES were sponsored by the corporation Your Games Now, followed by Avatar Art in 2008. In 2010, 2011, and 2012, they were sponsored by both
Indie Press Revolution and
DriveThruRPG. From 2013 to 2016, they were sponsored by DriveThruRPG alone. In 2015, Campaign Coins made the medals as a sponsorship; Lone Wolf Development became a sponsor in 2017. The awards were run and owned by Morrissey until 2019. In 2015, the awards disqualified the unofficially licensed
Mass Effect RPG for copyright violations. In 2020, Massif Press withdrew its RPG
Lancer from the competition over a 2017 controversy, where a game module for the
Lamentations of the Flame Princess system, titled "Blood in the Chocolate", received a Gold award in the Adventure category, despite being widely described as 'offensive', 'particularly icky', and 'simply ridiculous' by press, industry members and the publisher itself. Charlie Hall commented for
Polygon in 2020: ==Categories==