Valve Reportedly Doing Away With Steam’s Daily And Flash Sales

[Megalith]

This might actually be a good thing, assuming that the discount provided will be the lowest actual price that they can sell a title for. The next Steam sale will begin 11/25.

The report comes from the Steamworks developer group, which was picked up on Reddit, where a message was posted discussing the upcoming sales events. According to the message, it appears Flash and Daily Sales will not be returning to these two particular sales.

 

[Viper87227]

I've got mixed feelings about this. The obvious positive is that there is no worrying about making sure you catch all the daily deals, flash sales, community votes, etc. No more waiting to the last day when you want something. Load up, check the sale, buy what you want and get on with it.

The downside is that all of that, despite risking missing out on something you want, also lends to some of the excitement of the sale. F5ing when they roll over, scoping out games you want to go on sale, etc. It's no longer an event. It's a no fuss, get in and get out now.

I imagine this has a lot to do with refunds being a thing now. The "wait till the last day" mentality would have become "buy whatever you want, refund and rebuy if it gets cheaper". That's a massive headache for Valve I'm sure. This eliminates that from happening.

 

[Flogger23m]

I imagine this has a lot to do with refunds being a thing now. The "wait till the last day" mentality would have become "buy whatever you want, refund and rebuy if it gets cheaper". That's a massive headache for Valve I'm sure. This eliminates that from happening.

I think that is the main reason. The amount of trivial support tickets would overload customer support. Sadly I also think this will result in higher prices across the board. I can see a dev putting a game for $5-6 for a few days, but 7-14 days? Doubtful.

 

[sfsuphysics]

I think less sales are probably a good thing for Valve as a company, I mean who checks flash sales? But EVERYONE checks Winter/Summer sales.

 

[Tweak42]

The downside is that all of that, despite risking missing out on something you want, also lends to some of the excitement of the sale. F5ing when they roll over, scoping out games you want to go on sale, etc. It's no longer an event. It's a no fuss, get in and get out now.

I have the same opinion. It's sort of like a mini game trying to score the best deal. I got a ton of games cheap, but I hardly played any of them. From what I gather from friends I'm not alone in that regard.

 

[ZLoth]

The only game that I am active looking for is Borderlands: The Presequel + DLC for a package price of around $20. Too bad 2K hasn't announced a GOTY edition for this. The only other game is Fallout 4, but considering that it is a fresh release, a discount would be non-existant.

Still, it was fun getting a Steam achievement for participating in the Steam sale.

 

[Ocellaris]

I think I will end up buying less games if they ditch the flash sales. So many of the titles I bought (and never played ) were because they popped up on a flash sale and were only $5.

 

[travbrad]

I think that is the main reason. The amount of trivial support tickets would overload customer support. Sadly I also think this will result in higher prices across the board. I can see a dev putting a game for $5-6 for a few days, but 7-14 days? Doubtful.

Honestly a lot of the best deals you can get on games aren't from the Steam Store itself anyway, even though most of them activate on Steam. I use isthereanydeal notifications/waitlist and maybe 10% of the time it's a Steam deal.

 

[staknhalo]

A developer would be more likely to put their game(s) on sale for say 90% if they knew it wouold only be that price for the duration of 4-24 hours. If they have to set a price that will last the entire duration of the sale, we will see less and less 'amazing' sales prices.

This is bad for the consumer IMO. All so Valve can again, skimp/cheapen out on customer service.

 

[HFBallad]

Honestly a lot of the best deals you can get on games aren't from the Steam Store itself anyway, even though most of them activate on Steam. I use isthereanydeal notifications/waitlist and maybe 10% of the time it's a Steam deal.

This.
I haven't bought a product directly from Steam in a while (I think the last Xmas sale?) as I found better deals on other legitimate sites.

Still, I'm happy about this. It makes life much more convenient (as I'm sure many of us have interests besides checking Steam every few hours for a flash deal).

 

[chrcoluk]

I personally dont understand why dev's only want 1 day flash sales, as they lose sales because of them running out so quick.

To put something cheap for 1 day and then bump it for another year only serves to irritate consumers.

 

[JustReason]

I think I will end up buying less games if they ditch the flash sales. So many of the titles I bought (and never played ) were because they popped up on a flash sale and were only $5.

LOL me too. Got a lot of games like the entire Lara Croft/tomb Raider series with entire Theif series and some other games that made 34 of theme for like $50 last year. Have only managed to play a few. I like those deals, the whole series. Probably how I will by the Fallout series, don't have one of those yet.

 

[Ocellaris]

I personally dont understand why dev's only want 1 day flash sales, as they lose sales because of them running out so quick.

To put something cheap for 1 day and then bump it for another year only serves to irritate consumers.

Because when I see 3 games I might be interested in on one day for a sale, I'm buying those. If I see 15 games I want for sale at once, I'll make one purchase of maybe 5 and then not touch the rest of the sale. Also I like following the daily sales and flash sales, got me interested in the whole process.

 

[chrcoluk]

That doesn't stop me, but what does stop me is if the sale is over before I know its there.

 

[Sycraft]

I personally dont understand why dev's only want 1 day flash sales, as they lose sales because of them running out so quick.

To put something cheap for 1 day and then bump it for another year only serves to irritate consumers.

Promotion. What Vavle does is ask publishers what discounts they want and they set two of them: The normal one and the special one, which has to be lower. They don't have to do that one, but if they do it means their game is eligible to be picked for things like flash sales and so on. That of course means that it gets promoted on the front page, which leads to big sales.

Also it leads to increased sales since people feel like they are getting a special deal. Part of what makes this stuff work so well isn't just that the prices are low, but that they are abnormally low, they are only low for a little while. So people say "Oh wow! Such an amazing deal, I have to have that!" There's a lot of psychology that goes in to sales.

 

[raz-0]

I imagine this has a lot to do with refunds being a thing now. The "wait till the last day" mentality would have become "buy whatever you want, refund and rebuy if it gets cheaper". That's a massive headache for Valve I'm sure. This eliminates that from happening.

That may be part of it, but vlave has in the last year gone a lot more into the "suggested for you" style of things rather than just the featured for everyone scroll at the top of the page. IF that's their intended change of focus, tying maximal discounts to something you are deemphasizing is something that needs to go away to support the new model.

 

[Comixbooks]

Put these games on sale for me Gabe



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