When gamers talk about Valve’s Steam e-commerce platform, the conversation almost inevitably comes to sales. The company’s massive quarterly discount extravaganzas have become legendary for both their value and their ability to assist customers in parting with their money.
Now, every day could be sale day on Steam. According to screenshots and images from the company’s Steamworks Developers forum posted to Reddit, game makers will be able to create their own sales for products outside the bounds of Valve’s usual quarterly and weekly offerings. The rules for the system are fairly simple: developers can set a percentage discount and duration for any of their software packages that are set up to use Steamworks, Valve’s API that provides integration through Steam.
Valve spokesperson Alden Kroll confirmed the accuracy of the documents in a statement emailed to GeekWire, saying that the new initiative was designed to help developers better coordinate with major announcements, launches and updates.
In order to avoid Steam turning into a department store, with products that are always discounted, Valve has decided that developers can only run a sale for a product once every two months. The system should provide developers with enough freedom to boost their sales, and enough space between sales to make them count. By Valve’s own math, sales can be a major boon to a game’s revenue. In one case, Valve head Gabe Newell said discounting a game by 75 percent increased revenue by a factor of 40.
In the past, developers could only offer sales at particular times through Valve’s quarterly sales, daily deals and Midweek Madness and only if the Bellevue-based thought their product and discount were a good fit for an organized promotion. Now, that power also rests in the hands of developers.
