Steam Autumn/Holiday Sale 2015

Games
1

Steam’s autumn sale will run from next Wednesday, the 25th of November until Tuesday, December 1st.

Steam’s Xmas sale will run from the 22nd of December until January 4th 2016.

Here’s the big news that was sent out to devs:

In past sale events, we’ve asked for two discounts—a duration discount that runs for the length of the sale, and a feature discount that runs in the event that a game is featured on the front page. This year, to optimize the sale for customers and to allow us to feature and recommend your products in more ways to more customers, we’re asking for just one discount, to run the length of the sale.

We’ll still be highlighting your top games on the front page for 24-48 hour spans, but those products will stay at their most competitive discount, before and after being featured.

It’s not a major change, but it does make the sale a lot more valuable for customers, and it allows us to build sale features that recommend your product all sale long, instead of just during its front page feature.

For a brand new release, if you can’t get approval for your best discount for the full length of the sale, that’s OK and we can work on a plan for that game. But the vast majority of your catalog should be running its best discount for the duration of the sale.

tl:dr - No flash/daily sales during the two sale periods.

2

Interesting choice, and who am I to gainsay Valve’s paid marketing department, because I’m sure they’ve got reams of sales data to support their decision and reasoning here…

…but the daily/flash sales really do seem like they would intuitively drive repeat visits to the storefront page during the sale itself, and those repeat visits to the storefront page can help create buying behavior on other items. (You go to see the new flash or daily item, and eventually pull the trigger on the 66% off game you were sort of iffy on, for instance.)

3

Aw, that’s a real shame.

I always looked forward to the flash sales and whatnot - it made me excited to check the front page every X hours.

4

Me too. The flash sales are like mini adventures every couple of hours.

5

Valve sucking all the fun out of my holidays :(

6

I suspect it’s to avoid what everyone has become savvy with - don’t buy anything until it’s featured. I actually always hated that.

7

The less religiously I have to check Steam to make sure I don’t miss any potentially interesting deals, the better. If I were a new Steam user, that would be overwhelming, but the list of things I would potentially pick up is now so small that I tended to waste a lot of time checking a new set of daily deals of which I was usually not interested in any.

8

I really do enjoy flash and daily sales, but I guess this lets me decide what I want right off the bat. I’m already building a list of things I’m hoping to snag on sale, so I’d just get those day one and be done with it.

9

But then Christmas is over in one day!!! sob

10

That or to keep people from waiting until the last day. By then they may have spent their money elsewhere. Or died.

11

Don’t most people just leave all of their assets to Gabe in their will? It’s not weird to do that, right?

12

So anyone who’s into Steam will just pick up everything on day one? And later days are for people with outside lives and what have you.

13

Seems like it, barring folks that don’t have any thing to spend on Steam day one or two and have to wait a bit that now won’t miss out on the first few “flash or daily” sales.

While it’s a bummer we might not see a lot of very low prices (I can’t imagine a publisher that is willing to go 75 or 90% on a game for 48 hours would still be willing to do that for the duration of the sale event) I still like that I don’t have to sit and wait for something on my wishlist to finally go on a “big” sale - if I like the prices from day one, I can be playing something new on day one.

14

Yea, I actively wouldn’t buy games unless they were on flash sales, because I was sure I could get them cheaper later. Especially when the e-mail alert on my wishlist wasn’t reliable enough to catch the flash sales. I think, as a consumer, I appreciate that I know that the price is the cheapest it will be for the duration. Not sure if this ultimately hurts consumers or sellers though.

15

Well, I’m willing to bet that publishers were ‘okay’ with dropping a good game down to -75% for one day (two days) in sales, but happier when it was -33% or some such for the entire sale.

So I imagine that’s what most of the sale will be, pretty low discounts. I wouldn’t want my decently-selling game (unless it’s older) on sale for 1/4 it’s normal price for two weeks.

I’ll miss the old Steam sales for that reason alone.

16

This just continues the growing trend for me that Steam is the platform I play games on while I increasingly purchase them from other sellers.

-Todd

17

I think, like Scrax mentioned, the problem is that I don’t buy a game unless it was on the flash sale. If I missed the flash sale, than I would just write it off completely till the next sale, and so the publisher losses money. I think the new system will be less exciting, but much better.

18

Yeah, I am bummed about this for reasons already stated above. I will miss the morning excitement to see if one of the games of a daily deal/flash sale were one I am interested in and also I doubt we will get as good a percentage for the entire sale. Granted we have been a little spoiled with the huge discounts, but we are used to them and like them :).

19

Supposing that other sellers don’t see this as a let-up in pressure which means they too can go easier on discounts…

20

So I guess that means you can check on day one and get the games you ‘really’ want and let the other ones wait (which in my case means I probably won’t buy anything after day one). Feels kinda sad that they aren’t doing the fun daily stuff. But I will get over it!