It was off to a rocky start, but the Steam Grand Prix is officially over after today. All though the event was meant to be a fun generous treat from Valve, it had its issues, so much so that Valve promised to polish things up for next years event. Team Corgi completely dominated the competition and some vague instructions caused confused users to delete games off their wishlist causing quite a stir with indie developers. In the end, Valve’s big apology statement was their generous offering of 5000 games to all random players who participated, and best of all, you didn’t have to be on team Corgi.
The confusion with Steam’s Grand Prix seemed to stem from this quote, “Be sure to update your wishlist before you put the pedal to the metal, as the very best drivers will be awarded their Most Wished For games throughout the event.” In the end, this caused all new players entering the competition to pick the winning team they observed (Team Corgi) and then delete games from their wishlist rather than simply moving their favorite to the top. The deletion of games were shocking to see for indie developers as wishlists are a huge part of knowing how a game will perform. The truth of it all was that the top 3 teams would be applicable to win games so players who picked other teams rather than Corgi, could have had better chances of receiving a game as they had much less contestants to randomize the prizes.
Thankfully, Valve is fully aware of the trouble the event caused and released this statement as an apology.
As an extra gift for those that participated, we have randomly selected 5000 users that contributed from any team in the Steam Grand Prix to receive the top game from their wishlist. Users that were randomly selected will receive their gift within 48 hours from the end of the Steam Grand Prix.
It’s nice to see when such a big company admits to their faults and then compensates those that were affected. For those who took part in the event you might just have a free game waiting for you very soon. It is unclear at this time whether Valve will do something similar next year with tweaks or if they will attempt something completely different. Those who have not spent your tokens for the Steam Grand Prix, be sure to visit the Pit Stop and do so before it’s gone!