Yep. Albeit there are a lot of GOTY awards given out, so there are a lot more than one GOTY each Y.
It was, by some. GOTY awards are very rarely popularity contests among people who play the games, generally they're popularity contests among those who review games, at the entity giving the awards. And there is often a large disconnect between what reviewers think and what gamers think.
It also has to be said that (1) all too often game reviewers wish they were doing anything other than something as mundane, trivial and outright boring as reviewing games and (2) because of that reviewers are often desperate for games to be in some way Significant. Stuff with any semblance of that tends to get big ups, and treated as if it's the narrative and philosophical equivalent of Breaking Bad, even when it's closer to GoT S8 in both regards.
Are they fringe opinions- or at least, are they fringe opinions more than those of reviewers are? Reviewers certainly have a bigger soap box to shout from, but that doesn't mean their opinion is right. Personally I have little to no doubt for a game like TLOU2 that the vast majority of people played it and either enjoyed it, or didn't, but they also never really thought about it much at all, never ventured an opinion anywhere public about it, and have now more or less forgotten it. Because to most people games are entirely disposable entertainment and they spend as much time thinking about it as I have for Paul Blart: Mall Cop*. As such the most common opinion is probably some form of indifference with those who care strongly about it either way being fringe. But, of course, you're a lot more likely to venture said opinion if you care about something than if you don't.
Criticism is just human nature.
*which I rather enjoyed but have spent approximately 15 seconds thinking about since it ended, almost all of them now.