Steam Sales: The Golden Age is Over

This year's summer sale on Steam ended today. I didn't buy much, despite having $70 worth of gift cards to scratch off and some leftover credit from an older gift card which I never used up. I think it's fair to say I'm disappointed. This was my chance to go nuts, and I just couldn't force myself to do it. There just weren't enough games that seemed worth buying. Needless to say, I'll have to tell people not to get me Steam gift cards anymore. If they keep it up, I'll never be able to spend it all. It's going to take me a while to burn through all these Steam bucks, and it's not even a lot of money as far as video games are concerned. Some people spend $60 on a game without blinking.

However, I've grown too accustomed to my own "never pay more than $5 for a video game" rule. To be honest, I probably wouldn't have regretted using $35.99 of my precious gift-card money for the new Doom, which, despite being a supposedly great game, was discounted an impressive 40% (from $59.99) only six weeks after release. However, if it drops that fast, it's probably going to drop even more if I wait until the next sale, and I'm not really in a hurry to play a game in which the multiplayer mode is supposedly the worst part. In any case, even though I didn't take advantage of this particular deal, I wanted to mention Doom as an example of how this Steam sale was pretty okay. It wasn't all bad. However, Doom aside, it just didn't feel special.

Every year, there seems to be a general consensus that the biggest events on Valve's digital store — namely the big sales in winter (around Christmas) and in summer — aren't as "big" as they used to be. Every Steam sale in recent memory has been accompanied by exclamations of disappointment and claims that previous sales were better. I think it's party because these events have generated a bit too much hype over the years. When there's a certain amount of hype, it becomes impossible for reality to keep up. Moreover, with every passing Steam sale, there's another sale to which every future sale can be compared. We also have to be aware of the effects of nostalgia, and ask ourselves whether past Steam sales were actually better or whether we only think so because we have fond memories of enjoying them.

Stories of the good old days, clearly, should always be taken with a grain of salt. For the record, though, I do think there's some truth to them. "Steam sales used to be better" is a subjective statement, and assessing the "truth" of such a statement is difficult to do in any meaningful way, but there are some relevant objective facts which need examining, namely that Steam sales have undergone two major changes in the past few years.

I have no intention of limiting myself to total objectivity in everything that follows, but I think I can be objective enough to make a valid point. Personally, I'm not disappointed in this sale because I fell for the hype. I wasn't really hyped at all; my expectations, actually, were rather low. I'm not disappointed in this sale simply because of nostalgia, either. My disappointment with this particular sale is related to pricing; it can literally be quantified. What might be true is that I'm disappointed in this sale largely because I've already taken advantage of so many previous sales that, of all the games which could have been expected to see deep discounts this summer, I've already acquired most of the ones which interest me. If this is the case, however, it's unfortunate that so many of the remaining games which do interest me were discounted less in this sale than they have been in the past.

I had heard good things about Dark Messiah of Might & Magic, for example, and considered buying it last night. It was only $4.99, so it even fit within my "never spend more than $5 on a game" budget which shields me from any potential buyer's remorse when I don't have more than $70 in virtual money burning a hole in my Steam wallet. However, I always want to know I'm getting the best deal (or something close to it), even when the use of a gift card limits my options to a single store, so I looked up the game's price history on SteamDB. It turns out I would have been spending twice as much as the lowest price. The fact that such an old game was discounted a mere 50% should have been a clue; the 75% discounts are usually the ones which justify any Steam sale hype, and Dark Messiah of Might & Magic had several of them (putting the game at only $2.49) prior to this year.

There were several other games which I would have bought if their price histories hadn't shown better deals in the past (leaving open the possibility of repeats in the future). The best examples I can remember (coincidentally each with a base price of $9.99) were those which, like Dark Messiah of Might & Magic, had been demoted from 75% discounts to 50% discounts at some point over the past couple of years: Lisa was $4.99 in this sale, but had been $2.49 during the most recent winter sale; Far Cry 2 was also $4.99 in this sale and in the most recent winter sale, but had been $2.49 during last year's summer sale and in several prior sales; Papers, Please was $4.99 this time but had been sold for less on numerous occasions, going down to $2.49 at least once.

In only one case, I overlooked the effective "increase" in price: Once upon a time (although SteamDB's price history doesn't seem to go back far enough to show it), Max Payne 3 had been $3.99. For some reason, I chose not to buy it on that occasion, and the price has gone only as low as $4.99 in every sale since then. I really wanted the game and I had doubts about the price ever hitting $3.99 again, so I bought it anyway. It's not a big deal, really, but the other games mentioned here were low enough on my wishlist that I could stand to forgo the purchases on principle.

Looking up the price history of every game on Steam in order to draw a scientific and unbiased conclusion about the quality of any given sale is too much work for a blog post, so I'm going to stop that here. Still, the last two major Steam sales — i.e., the one which just ended and the most recent winter sale — were different from previous sales in a far more obvious way: static discounts.

It used to be that every major Steam sale followed a fairly predictable pattern. While a large number of games would be discounted for the duration, a few games would be featured daily with greater discounts lasting only a day or two. At some point, these daily deals were supplemented with flash sales posted every eight hours, so we had those for a while too. These limited-time deals made it worthwhile to check the Steam store on every day of such an event, or multiple times per day after the addition of flash sales. In fact, doing so was practically necessary if you wanted to make sure you were getting the best deal on anything. It was under these circumstances that I posted this guide, which is totally useless now that daily deals and flash sales are no more. In my opinion, it's unlikely that Steam sales will return to the way they were before.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing for everyone. Although the sense of excitement is mostly gone for those who enjoyed checking the store every day for new deals, those with busy work schedules or unreliable internet access will find that the anxiety and frustration of missing these short-term discounts is gone as well. In many ways, the current model is better. Inexperienced shoppers (for whom I wrote the aforementioned guide) will no longer be tricked into buying a discounted game only to see the discount increase a few days later because they didn't know to wait for a daily deal. It's worth mentioning that Steam's refund policy could have helped to alleviate this problem as well, but I'm sure many appreciate the clarity anyway. Any deal you see on any given day of the sale is the best deal you'll get during that sale. Of course, as pointed out above, it might not be as good as the best deal Steam has ever offered.

And that's fine. It's normal for Steam discounts to fluctuate from year to year due to unseen forces beyond mortal comprehension. Nobody should expect every game to be at its absolute lowest price during every sale. Unfortunately, although I lack the hard data to back it up, I suspect that a game is now less likely to hit its rock-bottom price during a major Steam sale, thanks to the lack of short-term discounts.

A developer or publisher who was willing to sell a game at 75% off for 24 or 48 hours might be unwilling to sell that game at 75% off for a much longer period of time, like the 11 days of this most recent Steam sale. In choosing the discount for a promotion lasting more than a week, the developer or publisher might be willing to go only as far as 50% off. Dark Messiah of Might & Magic might be an example of this. The game hit $2.49 (75% off) for short periods of time on several occasions, but it hasn't gone below $4.99 (50% off) since Steam got rid of daily deals and flash sales.

The death of daily deals and flash sales is the second major change in Steam sales that occurred over the past few years. The first, explained in a previous post, was the death of giveaways and contests. The first three major Steam sales which I can remember were more than just sales: There were prizes to win, including lots of free games for a lucky few. In addition, badges were earned in part by unlocking special achievements in various games and by completing other simple community-related objectives. These things were meant to drive sales and build membership, of course, but people seemed to enjoy them.

After the 2011/2012 winter sale, the giveaways stopped, and so did the special in-game achievements. The next event did introduce flash sales (in which one of the games in each round was decided by a community vote), and still had community objectives as a way of earning badges. Starting with the 2013 summer sale, however, everything began to revolve around trading cards, which were henceforth required to earn each event's badge. During that sale, they were earned by casting votes for the community-chosen games in each day's flash sales. In this year's summer event (which lacked flash sales), you could earn these cards by clicking through your queue of recommended games each day. The one interesting sale in between was the 2015 summer sale, in which trading cards were earned by playing a so-called minigame, but it wasn't what I'd call fun. It was essentially a massively multiplayer Cookie Clicker, which didn't even work properly for much of the event due to Steam servers being predictably unprepared to handle the traffic load.

Anyone who thinks Steam trading cards are lame can still collect the free cards during each event and sell them on the market for Steam credit. It's hard to complain about free money. However, it's also hard to argue that the lack of free prizes makes recent Steam sales any more enjoyable for the community.

Although it might sound crazy, I do wonder if Valve is deliberately trying to kill the Steam sale hype. The giveaways were good for generating excitement, but Steam quickly became so well known for its sales that only the impatient or uninformed would ever buy a Steam game at full price. "Wait for the sale" became (and still is) the immediate response to anyone asking if a game on Steam is worth buying. Back when daily deals and flash sales were still a regular occurrence, the standard advice also included "wait for a daily deal or flash sale" (and perhaps buy the game on the last day of the sale if it never received either of these super discounts). Not only did Steam users learn not to buy games at full price; they also learned not to buy games at a discounted price until it was clear that the price wouldn't go any lower in the immediate future.

This is all perfectly rational, so it's not like Steam's customers did anything wrong. The situation might not have been great for business, though. Some developers have said they love Steam sales because it's when they get much of their revenue, but some might not appreciate the community's perception that the real price of a game is the "daily deal" price and that the game should be ignored at every other moment. The predictability of Steam sales is the problem; customers know they can get a game for 75% off if they wait, so those customers see no point in the game even being available at full price for the rest of the year.

Meanwhile, it wasn't an ideal situation for all consumers, either; I'm thinking mainly of the consumers who hadn't heard the advice about waiting for daily deals and flash sales. When a game is discounted for the duration of a several-day event only to be discounted even further for a shorter period of time within that event, the lesser discount can seem like a trick. If a game is going to be 75% off for a day, it's best to just leave it at that, instead of offering a 50% discount for several days prior. Recent Steam sales have obviously gone in the other direction, though, favoring long-term discounts. This allows for all kinds of bragging about the number of games on sale, even if this means some developers and publishers are less likely to push their prices as low as they would have done for daily deals and flash sales of years gone by.

As I mentioned above, I think it's unlikely that daily deals and flash sales will make a comeback, although it might happen if sales begin to suffer due to lack of interest and Valve decides they need to rebuild some of that hype. Likewise, I'm absolutely certain that giveaways and contests are long gone, never to return. However, even if it's true that the golden age of Steam sales is behind us, I can't really be too upset. It just means I was around for the best part of something which still, honestly, is pretty good.

I'm still disappointed, but I also know that I'm spoiled.