Valve clarifies Steam Sale event after devs chart declining wishlists

Valve has pushed out a blog post meant in part to clarify how the game giveaway promotion in its Steam Summer Sale event works, a clarification much needed after developers surmised its unclear rules were likely behind players removing cheaper games from their Steam Wishlists en masse.

Specifically, the promotion in the Grand Prix event promises a random chance that some event participants will receive a game from their Steam Wishlist for free.

The theory posed by many devs this morning was that Steam users were removing cheaper or non-triple-A games from their wishlist to improve their odds of getting an expensive freebie.

In actuality, those game giveaways will grant players their top wishlisted game, so the one they’ve ranked as their most-wanted game when sorting by ranked order.

The blog post doesn’t outright say that unclear rules led to any sort of decline in wishlists (and some devs have since questioned that the event is to blame for the shift), but offers participants a clarification and a handy visual aid on how the giveaway will work, alongside a handful of other changes Valve is making to the Grand Prix event.