Valve forced to tweak its confusing Steam 'Grand Prix Summer Sale' - Engadget

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The little cooperative game Valve conjured up to go with the Steam Summer Sale this year caused some pretty big issues, enough for the company to change things up a bit. Apparently, its mechanics were so complex, confusing and even broken that players inadvertently threw away loads of points they could've used to boost their teams. In addition, Valve seems to have failed to properly explain how players can win the top games in their wishlist as a Grand Prix reward. According to Kotaku, that led to a drastic decrease in wishlist numbers.

Hey @GreyAlien - Are your games seeing an abnormally high amount of wishlist deletions? I and 4 other devs all are seeing some pretty strange stats. I've never once in 5 years seen more deletes than adds/P&A during a seasonal sale. I've always left a sale with a net increase. pic.twitter.com/v1OY4MUQW5
— Raymond Doerr (@RaymondDoerr) June 26, 2019

Steam's event page advised players to update their wish list before they play. "[T]the very best drivers will be awarded their Most Wished For games throughout the event," it said. A lot of players dropped titles from their list, thinking that could ensure that they're getting the games they want the most. That's bad news for a lot of developers, since Steam alerts players when the games in their wishlist are available or on sale. Independent developers say they're seeing more wishlist deletions than purchases, and at least one of them told Kotaku that they're losing money from being hosted on the platform.

To remedy the situation, Valve's new blog post clarifies that players only have to move the game they want to win to the top of their wishlist. "There's no need to remove other items," it says, with advice to "keep them there so [they'll] be notified when those items release or go on sale." As for the Grand Prix mechanics, the company rolled out improvements to the Driver's Dash and Manual to help clarify how to play.

We don't see any massive tweaks on the event page, but the platform seems to have given more important information a more prominent place and added actual numbers for clarity. It also made some backend changes to prevent the snowball effects that led to Team Corgi's massive lead. Finally, Valve is boosting the max points players can earn by 1,000 if they were active on day 1 and by another 1,000 if they were active on day 2. Whether all those changes can help entice people back into the game remains to be seen.