this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2025
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Reminder that steam strong arms indie Devs into doing these big sales in order to give them visibility on the Steam store.
Basically if you don't do sales Steam wont show your game to anyone.
There are plenty of examples to the contrary of this. In particular, I know that factorio has literally never gone on sale on principle, and has only ever gone up in price upon leaving early access. Despite this, it shows up with some regularity in the store.
It's certainly the case that Steam can be a rat race for developers to get attention, but I don't believe your framing is accurate.
I thought about mentioning factorio in the original comment, but yeah as you say there is some exception, factorio. Being wildly popular and the game that more or less birthed an entire genre helps and even if you don't play the same game it's still entirely possible to succeed through word of nouth. But for less popular indie games it's still true.
UUhhhh no? Steam doesn't automatically change games' visibility if it's never on sale; it makes games on sale more visible, which encourages Devs to put their games on sale, meaning people who have never seen your game have seen it and might buy it. So in the end, MORE People have bout the game than would have otherwise, and if set at the right price, the Devs still get their cash and now have a larger market. I'm so glad I took Microeconomics in High School :)
And maybe if you studied beyond highschool level you would be aware this is a well studied thing in economics. If you sell a priority service and there is a limit to the resource in some way you are shutting out the people that don't pay. Like its the same problem as dating apps that sell priority matching, if enough people buy I to it you either have to buy into it as well just to get a fair chance, or except you will never get seem.
Yes the Devs that buy into it get more sales. The entire point is it works for those people, if it didn't they would have no reason to buy into it. But the people who don't buy into it are then inherently disadvantaged.
This post brought to you by a person who studied beyond highschool level and the phrase "buy into it".
Why would consumers want the store to not prioritize giving visibility to games on discounts during sale events?
If people want to discover games they can go to steam queue and see what is recommended that they may be interested in. But, the last thing I want a company to do is hide sales for me and pushing full retail products.
That to me would be anticonsumer. Might not be what sellers want, but visibility to discounts so my money goes further is what I want as a consumer.
That works when we're talking about big businesses and AAA games, but the problem is when we consider indie developers, who struggle to get attention so are pressured into putting their game on sale when they don't want to just get some attention.
And why would consumers who are trying to get the most value for their money care about that financial aspect? They aren't a business. They are consumers looking for deals. Not to be paying full price for games as an act of charity. Many look at the store because they are looking to see what is discounted for the day. And wishlist and use deal trackers like isthereanydeals.
People who get hyped and preorder are the ones willing to pay more because they value first access. After that its mostly value based consumers left with different price thresholds. If you want the full price paying demographic you have to front load your marketing budget before the game launches.
Its like you want the store to be advertising old full priced games and suppressing sales which is the opposite of what consumers want to see.
Sure if you don't give a shit about other people, and then you can use the same logic to justify sweatshop clothes and any other shitty businesses practice you like.
You consider sales to be equivalent to sweat shops?
So do you go out of your way to avoid sales and pay full price for everything?
Anyways, pretty confused why you expect the store part of a business to not prioritize promoting sales, since that's what consumers want in that section. The discovery queue is where titles that might be of interest is shown without regard to discounts. Its like going to the mods section and being upset there's only mods being displayed.
No, what I said was you can use that same logic to justify sweatshops. That does not mean I think they are equivalent.
The problem is the coercion, steam tells smaller indie Devs that they basically have to agree to massive sales in order to get their game seen.
Sales page prioritizing visibility to sales is coercion? Damn everything is coercion then. You must hate sites like isthereanydeals deals with them encouraging coercion. And sites like pcpartspicker encouraging coercion showing discounts. If only consumers were kept in the dark about sales. Must fill you with rage using visiting places like GOG too and seeing them showing games on sale or any site for that matter showing sales.
Again you're only listen to a part of what I'm saying to make it more convenient to argue against.
Pc part picker is not a distributer with a functional monopoly on the pc hardware market, nor are AMD Nvidia and Intel small indie teams. That's the key here.
Steam use their position as THE retailer of PC games as leverage to make small indie Devs put their games on ridiculous sales even when they don't want to, just to get featured, in order to benefit themselves by being the place that has the crazy sales.
If you want a more apt example think of companies that use unpaid or underpaid inters for work in return for "the exposure" it's very similar and widely considered exploitative.
Damn GOG is evil too for leveraging their platform to show sales? I didn't know sales were so evil. Maybe consoles...oh no sales are everywhere being promoted. The horror. Can't escape it. Where is the sanctuary where everything stays at retail price.
Honestly this sounds like some logic EA or Ubisoft CEO would make up to try to push the idea of sales as evil so games stay at retail prices longer or go up in price.
Hey man, if you don't want to engage in good faith, it's better not to engage at all.
You mean the game will only show up in the list of games that are available on sale if the games are actually in the sale? Because that's just literally how that works
Do you have a better method?
Probably wishes there were no sales at all and everything stayed at full price. They compared sales to coercion and sweat shops. They hate discounts.
That would end my gaming hobby or send me back to piracy, and I like giving hard working devs my money
Wow, it's like people want the games that are part of the big sale going on! How are you twisting the ability to sort by what's on discount into being evil?
Because the big sale only happens because steam presses Devs into it in order to get promoted. So Devs that don't buy into the sale, get sent to the back of line.
Your entire argument makes no sense
Probably because you're not reading what I'm actually saying.
Then explain better, because at the moment all you are doing is pearl clutching about people wanting a good deal on a product they want, what would your solution be?
I have explained plenty well. You are just refusing to listen because you have already set your opinion in stone and have either ignored or twisted everything I have said to fit that opinion.
If you have any desire to engage in good faith I suggest you go back and re read my comments.
You haven't explained shit, you just keep saying Valve is abusing devs with sales, you never give a solution and your logic is spotty at best. How would you solve this issue?
You say "basically" as if you are privy to how the steam store works when at the same time making up how it works
I worked for a game developer for 4 years
I have been in the business 10 years, steam insider program is not how steam store works.. it is mostly manual and if you know someone there, you have a chance. It's some people's work to curate, for good and bad... I prefer it to the inevitable short sighted collapse that a publicly traded company would
I mean.... yeah?
steam is running a business and game devs are too.
if you develop games because it's a hobby, more power to you, but the platform you're using (steam) requires capital to operate.
And same with consumers. We aren't a charity throwing away money for no reason. We actively seek out discounts to get more for our money. We want discounts to be given priority.
sure, Karen.
Sure, Ubisoft.
man I wish. that's a game company that knows how to make money.
they treat their customers like absolute shit, year after year. yet still people keep buying their garbage.
🤔 I wonder why?
By knowing most consumers don't have the self control to not spend money and fall for marketing hype. Probably call those who don't get sucked in and end up being more price sensitive and waiting or not buying karens for not being part of the initial revenue made.
The entitlement in these two words astounds me
are you certain it's entitlement?
If you're referring to how consumers were previously described, then I wholly agree. consumers should get what they paid for.
that said, if the price is too high for you don't complain. don't whine about it online. don't buy it.
I don't complain online, I wait for a sale to bring it into my buying range, it's entirely the business owners choice if I buy their product, that said that money represents hours of your life, why spend more than absolutely necessary when buying?
I mean it’s that, or pay for marketing via other means. Either way, you’re spending money for exposure.
I never buy games at retail price anyways, so I do kind of get it past launch. I don't care about buying a game until it is on sale and its a big part of why I wish list games to keep track of when they go on sale to see if its hit the price point I want.
So who would see their game if Steam didn't allow their game on their platform?
Seems like the devs would make way less money selling 0 copies