Here's Why Steam Users Are Rapidly Removing Games From Their Wish Lists
Steam's Summer Sale is a major event, where PC gamers find tons of deals on games and developers move a lot of discounted software as a result. But something funny is happening this time around; massive amounts of Steam users are removing games from their Wish Lists, and it's not because they're buying them. Why then?
It seems Valve itself may be to blame for the phenomenon.
This year's Steam Summer Sale features a racing mini-game, of sorts, challenging players to join a team and play games to obtain boosts and other power-ups. These power-ups can then be used to make their team's respective mascot faster (go Corgis), or slow down an opposing team's mascot (boo Tortoises). At the end of each day, someone's mascot crosses the finish line first, and that team's members have a chance to win a free game from their Steam Wish Lists. The same goes for the second and third place teams; they, too, can win free games from their Wish Lists.
That's all fine and well. The issue, unfortunately, comes down to how Valve described the way these prizes would be handed out. The company stated that you could win your "Most Wished For" games, and while Valve meant that it would select based on your Wish List rankings, many took it to mean that the games would be chosen from their Wish Lists at random.
And so Wish List Armageddon officially got underway. And indie developers are really feeling the impact.
"Thanks to the Steam summer sale minigame, where [you] can win a free game from your Steam wishlist, @WildfireGame wishlist deletions have skyrocketed," said Dan Hindes, the developer behind a game called Wildfire. "Wildfire isn't out. You can't win it as an unreleased game. This is madness."
Another indie developer, Paul Kilduff-Taylor, shared a graph that is as equally fascinating as it is frustrating. It shows Wish List deletions for one of his titles skyrocketing — a hockey stick straight up into the sky — on the day the Steam Summer Sale began. Ouch.
We feel compelled at this juncture to make a public service announcement to any Steam users who are hoping to win a free game during this sale: you do not need to delete items from your Wish List. At all. Just move the stuff you really want to the top and you're all set.
Also, help the Corgis.