No Flash/Daily Deals for Steam Sales this Winter

[KingIsaacLinksr]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-11-20-no-flash-or-daily-deals-during-steam-autumn-winter-sales

tl;dr: Valve will no longer be running flash/daily deals and will be implementing different practices this year.

I'm of two minds on this decision. On the one hand, this is probably better in the long run because keeping up on the multiple flash/daily sales every day was a chore for what were often pretty limited discounts in the grand scheme of things. Running my Steam Sale Series was fun but also really demanding, both on myself and on consumers to shop for the best deals every 8-24 hours. Now, I can just buy the games I want for the next year in one day and not worry about saving a couple of dollars.

The other part of me thinks this is in response to Steam Refunds (and this seems to be what others are thinking that I've talked with) and limiting people's ability to abuse the refund policy to get a deep discount. I'm hoping developers will compensate by giving us a better long-term sale this Winter instead of the not-so-good and way-too-good policy that we've been doing for a while.

Though to be fair, I honestly think games have been getting a little too good of discounts for the past several years. There were several purchases from Steam I got last year that were less than $3 for feature rich games that I put in way too many hours. I won't dispute the $60 titles being more expensive this time around but really, how many of those are you planning on buying anyway?

It'll be interesting to hear reactions this year either way.

[Toranth]

I can't help but feel like this will result in worse discounts, which is (sort of) a bad thing.  The excitement of a 90% discount that was only good for a few hours - Buy now! - now gets replaced by the need to only check the sales once, and be done with it.  I've made a lot of impulse buys on flash sales over the past few years.  (Some of them I've even played).

On the other hand, flash sales had upped expectations too high, perhaps.  I know this past summer sale, people were complaining about the "merely" 50% and 66% off titles.  Without the random 90% titles thrown in there as reminders, people may be more willing to accept the lesser discount.

On the gripping hand, publishers still seem to be keeping PC/digital prices artificially high.  Take Lords of the Fallen, for example.  It is still $49.99 for the base game on Steam.  The PS4 Complete Edition, with all the DLC, is $29.99 MSRP.  You need a 40% discount just to get to the console MSRP!  When publishers are doing pricing tricks like that, it makes sense for consumers to demand 66% or 75% off sales.

Honestly, half of my excitement for any of Steam's seasonal sales is for the gimmick.  Gambling on last year's gem market, or this Summer's Wormholing (I got my badge!), are almost as much fun as finding a really good deal on a game (over a merely good deal).  In any case, Steam has pretty solidly established itself, so I doubt they have much to fear from this change.

[Cyborg]

I think this is turning into a debate on steam sales and digital pricing. In the 90s, I might be able to buy three games a year. In the early 2000's, it was about the same, as I was a college student. I still relied on birthdays and Christmas. When I got my career started, I was able to purchase a little bit more but not a lot more. And then something wonderful happened. The prices dropped like a wet sack of hammers!


It was wonderful. 90% off. 50% off even. Suddenly my gaming library went from maybe 20 to in the hundreds. Like a lot of people, I don't even have time to play all of them. My goal is that hopefully I will be able to give every game a play at the very least.


My spending on games, though, has dramatically increased from the old days that I was describing. It's true that publishers are less likely to get $60 from me (although it does happen from time to time, I still remember $49.99 as the popular price point). But by sheer volume, more publishers are going to get money from me that they otherwise never would.


And I think that's the game that steam sales play. I know that I spend a lot of money to get a lot of titles, and I have nearly every year. Because I think the value is there, and I have been able to play more games than I ever would have in the past. If prices ever returned back to the old days, I know for a fact I would go back to my five games a year or less spending. And be pissy about it.


And I don't think that publishers are hurting all that much. How much money have been made from volume purchasing? Is it such a bad thing that they sell a game for less money if it makes a lot of money by selling to more people? I think they would be glad to get their products into the hands of more people. That's how you discover new products and new publishers. That's how you discover independent developers.


Flash sales are going away, but I think the deals are here to stay. There are just too many games to compete with, you have to be competitive. And those good deals will invite volume sales.

[Draco18s]

I think I agree with all the points mentioned so far.

I probably wouldn't try to abuse the refund system to get a few dollars (think about the effort:benefit ratio, you spend half an hour and save an extra $3.  Good job making less than minimum wage there).  But the 90% discount can't survive.  The consumer has already come to think of 50% off or 60% off as typical.  I know I do.  I've got games on my wishlist that I am interested in, but not interested enough in to spend $8.  But $4....I might spend $4.

The gimmicks are something I'm always interested in, but at the same time always resent.  Yes, I got my wormhole badge, and I did my best to help some friends get it too.  But I sort of felt that the...way in which it needed to be done required an excessive level of cooperation with a closed group of people; too many random joiners and you couldn't coordinate.  Some of the other gimmicks were even less rewarding (the board game one was particularly viscous).

[Coppermantis]

Is this going to mean that fewer games get large discounts, though? It said that games will remain at their most competitive prices for the whole sale, but I'm not quite sure what that means. As it stands now, most games get minor discounts and go much lower on flash/daily deals. The daily deals are usually bigger, more popular games, though, and smaller titles only get big discounts during flash sales (Long Live the Queen, for instance, usually gets a lot of sales when it's on a flash deal, but it's never to my knowledge been a daily).

I just hope this means that they'll increase the number of daily deals that go op, both for the sake of consumers getting good deals and the developers getting front page exposure.

[Draco18s]

What I imagine it would be is that each day the "daily deal" collection changes out, a mix of big titles and small, but the price on those titles stays constant the whole week, just that the daily sale is when the exposure happens.

Sort of how the daily deal lasted 48 hours as the "yesterday's deals" section.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

There's also the potential for some sort of mini/meta game that they've done in the past to give people discounts as well. Similar to what they did in the Summer Sale this year. But otherwise, yea, what Draco said.