Steam removing highest and lowest discounts

Buyers of games on Steam will want to take note of these changes the platform is making on their discount system. 

According to Steamworks Documentation blog, Valve is amending rules on discounts. Primarily, they will alter the “discount cooldown period,” reducing the cooldown to just four weeks (28 days) from the original six weeks.  

Next, they will also remove the ability of publishers and developers to create discounts of over 90% and below 10%. These changes will take effect on March 28.

While this may seem like bad news to some and not that big a deal for others, what it really means to do is prevent game publishers from fooling the platform into giving more attention to their offers. It also prevents them from tricking the public into thinking the discount is more substantial by artificially raising the game price beforehand. 

Here’s a rundown of the changes:

• You can run a launch discount, but once your launch discount ends, you cannot run any other discounts for 28 days.
• It is not possible to discount your product for 28 days following a price increase in any currency.
• Discounts cannot be run within 28 days of your prior discount, with the exception of Steam-wide seasonal events.
• Discounts for seasonal sale events cannot be run within 28 days of releasing your title, within 28 days from when your launch discount ends, or within 28 days of a price increase in any currency.
• You may not change your price while a promotion is live now or scheduled for the future.
• It is not possible to discount a product by more than 90% or less than 10%.
• Custom discounts cannot last longer than two weeks, or run for shorter than 1 day.

With that, keep in mind that the next Steam sale is happening on 28 February 2022 with Remote Play Together.