Congratulations to our Day 4 winning teams, Tortoise, Hare and Pig!

Today at the Indie Motor Speedway, we have some brief special announcements to make.

The Grand Prix Badge is no longer infinitely upgradable. If you've already upgraded your badge beyond level 2000, you are in luck! All upgrades will be honored. Badges obtained through exploits have already been removed.

Additionally, in an effort to balance team sizes for the event, we are rolling out a new random drop: Switch Teams. Once received, players will find it below the Attack buttons on their dash. Clicking this button will randomly re-assign you to a different team while also granting you 1000 more max points so you can complete quests and claim achievements for your new team. No need to use it, though if you are interested in making a switch you will need to act soon, as this one-time offer will expire within 48 hours of receiving it.



Best of luck to each of the drivers and teams, from all of us on the Steam Team, here on Day 5 and throughout the remainder of the Grand Prix!

Congrats to the winners at Magic Mountain on Day 3, and a special welcome to the podium to Pig... in a Blanket! Corgi would appear to be unstoppable, but the Grand Prix can still be taken by any of the teams.

The first few days of the Grand Prix have been dynamic and dramatic, to the point that some of you have started to wonder what's going on under the hood. We want to assure you that we are not manually intervening in the outcome of a given day's race. Each team's progress is fueled by its active number of players and the points and boosts they contribute.

Racers, we’ve heard your feedback – you want to race! We have added more ways to participate in the Grand Prix for free. Introducing: Qualifier Tasks. Now in addition to grabbing deals in the Summer Sale, players may join the races for free by first completing one or more of these objectives. Each completed task increases a driver's max points by 500, enabling you to complete Grand Prix Quests and claim Achievements.



Also, you know those Achievement points we made you throw away rather than claim? Those are now back in the hopper, ready for claiming. Additionally, whenever you claim Achievement points, any available beyond your current max points will now be saved. You can increase your max points and then return to claim them at any time throughout the Grand Prix races.

We've also tried to clarify the team positions with some changes to the track – let us know what you think!

Lastly, we've heard you on the Grand Prix Badge. Man that thing is hefty! It is awarding *signficantly* more XP than intended. We'll be fixing this bug soon, lightening the value of the badge. While this may be dissappointing in the short term, we want to respect the value of past and future badges earned and feel this correction is the fairest measure we can take to make things right. If you no longer love your Grand Prix Badge, you will be able to exchange it at the Pit Stop for the number of of tokens you've spent on it.

EDIT: Thanks everyone for your feedback. We appreciate hearing from all of you. We are glad everyone is enjoying earning and leveling up the Grand Prix badge. We are re-evaluating options on handling it.

Best of luck to all the teams in the Rainbow Ring during Day 4!

We're continuing our new monthly series with a look at the top games released on Steam during the month of May. As with last month's post, this list looks at all games released during the month and grabs the top 20 by revenue earned in the first two weeks following release.

In this list, there really is something for every kind of player. From narrative single-player games to open world first-person shooters. Deep real-time strategy games to realistic simulation games. Pixely RPGs to Super-high-definition action games. Family-friendly racing games to dark horror experiences.

Here is this month's list of top new releases ordered by release date (we've put this list on a handy store page too):

• Rise of Industry - a single-player, strategic, tycoon game with a living, breathing, and procedurally generated world set in the 1930s. released May 2, 2019.
  
• Swag and Sorcery - a very pixely pingle-player RPG, released May 9, 2019
  
• Yakuza Kiwami 2 - a high-def update to the classic story-driven beat 'em up with full controller support, released May 9, 2019
  
• A Plague Tale: Innocence, a single-player story rich adventure with full controller support, released May 14, 2019
  
• RAGE 2- a post-apocalyptic open world shooter, released May 14, 2019
  
• Beat Saber - a VR-only music rhythm game, released on May 21, 2019 after 12 months in Early Access.
  
• Team Sonic Racing™ - a cute, fast-paced arcade racing featuring Sonic and friends, released May 21, 2019
  
• BATTALION 1944: a realistic WWII multiplayer shooter, released May 23, 2019.
  
• Total War: THREE KINGDOMS - a turn-based empire-building and strategy game with stunning real-time battles, released May 23, 2019.
  
• Minion Masters - a free to play fast-paced strategic card game, with 1v1 or 2v2 battles. Transitioned out of Early Access on May 24, 2019.
  
• XERA: Survival - a multiplayer open world looter shooter, featuring a global gear stash accessible from any server. Launched in Early access on May 24, 2019
  
• FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY'S VR: HELP WANTED - a VR-only first-person survival horror game, released May 28, 2019.
  
• Layers of Fear 2 - a psychological horror game filled with unique puzzles, released May 28, 2019.
  
• SpellForce 3: Soul Harvest - a standalone expansion to the RTS/RPG hit SpellForce 3, released May 28, 2019.
  
• Void Bastards - a stylized action strategy game with loot scavenging and full controller support, released May 28, 2019.
  
• Assetto Corsa Competizione - the official Blancpain GT Series racing game, rendered with realistic simulation and including official drivers, teams, cars and circuits. Transitioned out of Early Access on May 29, 2019
  
• Conan Unconquered - a real-time survival strategy game set in the world of Conan the Barbarian, released May 29, 2019.
  
• Conqueror's Blade - a free to play, medieval multiplayer action strategy game. Transitioned out of Early Access May 30.
  
• Deathgarden: BLOODHARVEST - a dark, dystopian, multiplayer survival game in which a ruthless hunter tracks and guns down scavengers. Launched in Early Access on May 30, 2019.
  
• Warhammer: Chaosbane - a hack-and-slash set in the Warhammer Fantasy world. Features solo, co-op, or multiplayer and full controller support. Released May 31, 2019.

The above list is generated by looking at revenue as one measure of popularity. But we know that this measure doesn’t fully capture the popularity of free games that many players may be enjoying but that don’t generate revenue the same way as the kinds of traditional paid games listed above. So this month, we’re also adding a list of the top five free games released in May, measured (and ranked here) by peak player count within the first two weeks following release.

• Conqueror's Blade - a medieval multiplayer action strategy game.
  
• Splitgate: Arena Warfare – a multiplayer first-person-shooter that uses player-controlled portals to create a new dimension of arena combat.
  
• Minion Masters - a free to play fast-paced strategic card game, with 1v1 or 2v2 battles.
  
• Eden Rising – a solo or multiplayer open-world tower defense game.
  
• Never Split the Party – a multiplayer social rogue-like that depends on cooperative adventuring.

As we were building the above lists, we got curious about what popular games came out in previous years. So we looked back to a year ago in May 2018, and found the top 5 releases (in order of release date) were Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia, Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, Conan Exiles, Raft, and DARK SOULS™: REMASTERED.

Cheers!
-The Steam Team

We’ve heard your feedback about the complexity of the Steam Grand Prix event. We designed something pretty complicated with a whole bunch of numbers and rules and recognize we should’ve been more clear. 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.

Based on your feedback, we’ve made some updates to the game, which should make it more fun to play:

• 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 clarify one point: if your team makes it to the podium and you are randomly chosen to win something off your Steam Wishlist, then we’ll grant you the top item. Just move your favorite item to the top of your wishlist and you should be good to go. There's no need to remove other items from your wishlist -- keep them there so you'll be notified when those items release or go on sale.



We’re hoping some of these changes will help make the event more clear and enjoyable. We’ll keep an eye on things and continue to adjust the game as needed. Our goal is to host a fun event where you get to explore and use Steam in new and interesting ways, but it’s clear that this time around we could’ve done better. To help make up for all this, for everyone who was active on day 1 we’re going to increase the max points you can earn by 1000, and further increase this by another 1000 for everyone who was active on day 2 (so if you were active on both days, you’ll be able to earn another 2000 points). This will increase the maximum number of points you can earn through completing quests or achievements in your games, which you’ll then be able to spend as tokens at the Pit Stop after boosting your team.

This will all roll out during today’s race on day 3, at Magic Mountain. Thanks for your patience and best of luck!

Sincerely,
The Steam Team

Start your engines, everybody… the Steam Summer Sale has begun! For the next 14 days, enjoy great savings on a huge selection of games and join in the Steam Grand Prix 2019 event until July 7th 10AM PDT.

Choose your team from a selection of five fabulous racers: tortoise, hare, cockatiel, pig, and corgi, each with their own unique style of vehicle. Compete with your rival teams to earn points by participating in quests or earning achievements from games in your library. Every day is a new race, and a chance for a new team to win! As a daily reward for burning rubber on the track, contributing racers from teams that come in first, second or third place have a random chance to win a game from your wishlist. For Teams that place in the final, all contributing racers have a chance to win!

In addition to helping your team race to the top of the podium, you can swing by the Grand Prix Pit Stop to exchange tokens you earn for rewards such as emoticons, backgrounds and more at the Grand Prix Pit Stop.