In context: Valve's annual Summer Sale events haven't been all that interesting lately, so for this year, the company decided to spice things up with a Grand Prix-style game that saw players going through various quests to earn tokens, which could be exchanged for rewards or to boost their team ahead of the competition. Over the event's duration, players finishing on the podium were selected daily and at random to receive the top ranked item from their Steam wishlist.
Steam's Summer Sale for 2019 began on June 25 with a Grand Prix-themed race that's ended today after 2 weeks with Team Corgi, Tortoise and Hare on the podium. The event had a shaky start when confusing rules and mechanics of the game led to many wishlist deletions, causing problems for indie developers. While the premise of a Gran Prix idea was simple on Valve's part, the execution, underpinning systems and "rules of the road" resulted in an unnecessarily complicated experience.
Valve acknowledged these problems and thanked the participating players. "Thank you to everyone who participated in the Grand Prix. We realize that the race track had some unexpected turns - we tried to straighten them out when we could, and we'll anticipate the curves better next time we invite you to the races."
As a welcome surprise, it also selected 5000 players at random who'll be getting their top wishlist game as an extra gift for participating in the Grand Prix, noting that selected players "will receive their gift within 48 hours from the end of the Steam Grand Prix." Players who've accumulated tokens during the event and are yet to spend them have until July 9, 10am PDT to exchange for stuff like chat emoticons, profile backgrounds, premium badges and more.
The Grand Prix 2019 standings reveal Team Corgi scoring 9 wins with 31 points (presumably the first two days haven't been considered amidst the confusion as the standings show data for 12 days) while Cyberpunk 2077 and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice remain the most awarded games across the entire event.