Valve apologizes and revises Steam Summer Sale Grand Prix event following complaints

The Steam 2019 Summer Sale kicked off several days ago putting thousands of PC games on discount, and alongside it came another mini-game, Steam Grand Prix, that usually lands with these major sale events. However, unlike previous ones, this event proved to be a little difficult to understand, even with it having a wall of text explaining the mechanics.

Following complaints, Valve has now updated the game to be more user-friendly and implemented new mechanics to make it more fun to play. The company also apologized for the game's original complexity and gameplay issues on the revising announcement.

"We designed something pretty complicated with a whole bunch of numbers and rules and recognize we should’ve been more clear," said Valve. "We want to apologize for the confusion that this has caused, and also apologize for the broken mechanics that have led to an unbalanced event."

Here are the main changes that have been made to the Grand Prix mini-game based on user feedback:

• We've made improvements to the Driver's Dash and Manual, to help clarify how to play.
• We’ve made some back-end changes to help mitigate some of the snowball effects we’ve seen that have led to Team Corgi running away with the first two days of the races despite their tiny legs.
• We’ve changed some code to help deal with the imbalanced team sizes across the board.
• We've added a new random drop drivers can receive upon boosting called STEAL BOOSTS. If another team is way ahead, use this attack against them to help close the gap by stealing their boosts for your own team.

To make up for the two botched days of the mini-game, Valve is giving away 1000 points each to all players who were active on Day 1, with another 1000 going to players who were active on Day 2. Those who participated on both days should now have 2000 extra Boost points waiting for them.

Moreover, Valve again clarified that when a user is randomly selected to win a game by playing the mini-game, the top-ranked title in their wishlist is the one they will receive for free, and that there's no need to remove any games. This seems to be in response to some indie developers suggesting that Steam users may be removing their titles from wishlists after confusing the original instructions.