“Got some rare things on sale, stranger.”
Valve has decided it’s time for the rules for Steam sale discounts to be updated. Mostly, to stop some less-than-savory practices.
The new rules pertain to how often and for what percentage games can go on sale. These changes were announced early February, but the only thing that Valve stated about them was that there would be changes to the “cooldown period” between discounts; down from six weeks to 28 days. But now, they’ve announced the full changelist. And it’s extensive:
- You can run a launch discount, but once your launch discount ends, you cannot run any other discounts for 28 days.
- It is not possible to discount your product for 28 days following a price increase in any currency.
- Discounts cannot be run within 28 days of your prior discount, with the exception of Steam-wide seasonal events.
- Discounts for seasonal sale events cannot be run within 28 days of releasing your title, within 28 days from when your launch discount ends, or within 28 days of a price increase in any currency.
- You may not change your price while a promotion is live now or scheduled for the future.
- It is not possible to discount a product by more than 90% or less than 10%.
- Custom discounts cannot last longer than two weeks, or run for shorter than 1 day.
What this means is that devs are now able to launch these discounts more often. But the most important of these changes is probably the second to the last: “It is not possible to discount a product by more than 90% or less than 10%”. Previously, the rule was that you couldn’t discount a game 100%. The problem there being that certain unscrupulous devs would simply discount a listing by 1% to get on the sale list without actually offering much of, if any, a deal. The change forces these sorts to offer an actual deal if they want to be part of a sale, even if it’s just the new minimum of 10%.
The new changes go into effect on March 28th. Coincidentally, the cooldown rules will apply to all sales, with the exception of Steam’s big 4 seasonal sales for Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter, as well as the Lunar New Year sale.
Source: PC Gamer
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