[News] No more Flash/Daily Deals during Steam sales

[machomuu]

The Autumn Steam sale is in full motion, but those of you who have bitten into it may have noticed that something was missing. Specifically, the Flash and Daily Deals (and the Community Vote, but that's always been a wildcard). This is because Steam has changed the way sales will work from now on.

We'll still be highlighting your top games on the front page for 24-48 hour spans, but those products will stay at their most competitive discount, before and after being featured.

It's not a major change, but it does make the sale a lot more valuable for customers, and it allows us to build sale features that recommend your product all sale long, instead of just during its front page feature.

For a brand new release, if you can't get approval for your best discount for the full length of the sale, that's OK and we can work on a plan for that game. But the vast majority of your catalog should be running its best discount for the duration of the sale.

In short, this means that games' prices are going to be at a fixed price for the duration of the sale, and though Steam will feature and cycle sales on the front page, it's merely for promotional purposes and even after they leave the front page their prices will stay the same for the duration of the sale.

Valve considers this a less than a big change, and really, it is. The absence of Flash and Daily Deals won't make overall deals worse, it will basically just do away with the illusion that you're getting a real deal when you buy the game at normal sale price. Taking a look at the current sale, this is immediately noticeable as the price cuts are much deeper than usual. The downside to this, however, is that it makes choosing what to buy, finding deals for games that you otherwise wouldn't have known about, and making decisions more difficult.

Overall the change is a give and take, but what do you think about the new sale format?

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