At the end of next March, Valve will make changes to the way development studios and companies that publish video games can offer their games at a discount in Steam. What sounds like a minor administrative issue is also something homebuyers will want to be aware of. games of Steam more attentive to their finances.
Posted earlier this month, a publication on the blog of back-end called “Discount Rule Changes” says that as of March 28 Valve will “change some rules for discounts”, the most important being a revised “discount reuse” period and the removal of the ability for developers to and publishers “discountn a product in more than 90% or less than 10%”.
It’s easy to look at a move like this and feel like it’s a bit unfair to users. But these changes appear to be made to stop game price makers who might be gaming Steam’s algorithm to make their games more prominent or relevant, and might also be trying to trick users into thinking that a discount is larger than it really is, by artificially inflating the original pre-discount price. And these changes apply to all types of games, from the most suspected of being cheats or made to get the most money from users, to the biggest AAA games.
The details of the changes are:
– You can run an introductory discount, but once your introductory 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 executed within 28 days of their previous discount, with the exception of seasonal events across Steam.
– Discounts for seasonal sale events cannot be executed within 28 days of your game launch, within 28 days of the launch discount ending, or within 28 days of a price increase in any currency.
– You cannot change your price while a promotion is active now or scheduled for the future.
– It is not possible to reduce a product by more than 90% or less than 10%.
– Personalized discounts cannot last more than two weeks nor last less than 1 day.
Will this really work? Who knows! But it sure looks promising in theory, at least.
