Discounts fixed for the full sale period. http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2015/11/23/valve-ditches-daily-deals/1
I'll wait until the sales start to see how wary the publishers are of giving out sale-long discounts. I'm of the thinking that they make the bulk of their sales during the flash and daily deals. If the discounts last the duration, I don't see as many people making that impulse buy.
That's an interesting change. I would have thought that having short lowest price sale periods would encourage impulse buying by creating a sense of urgency. If you dont buy now it won't be at this price again until the next big sale. Perhaps the new method takes into a count that people have budgets and might hold out on a purchase waiting to see if something they would prefer is going to drop in a daily deal. Which might not turn into a sale because their preference never made it into a daily deal. The new sales method would allow them to plan, prioritise and spend all of their budget on titles they like best from the sales.
I bet this is a result of their new refund policy. There are always quite a few who buy games just before they get discounted even further who would refund the game and buy it again for the lower price now. Source
Must admit I spent most sales doing this - Is it on daily? Nope Is it on daily? Nope Is it on daily? Nope Is it on daily? Nope ... and the sale's over...
Yeah I know. But think about it from their end. All these refunds while justified would still increase their workload by a significant ammount over the holidays. For Valve these costs might be higher than the additional revenue by impulse purchases.
That's what in wondering. The Flash and Daily deals were the best. Unless the new sale-long prices are similar to the former Flash and Daily prices, I don't think this will result in as many sales.
I've pretty much stopped caring about Steam sales these days, because I have far more games in my library than I have time to play as things stand, so the last thing I need is to spend more money on even more games that I'm never going to play
I see your point but if they wanted to stop something like that happening they would not have okayed it in their TOS. They could also easily automate a check for people refunding a game and rebuying on sale and issue them with warnings or flag the account for no refunds automatically. It doesn't make sense to change their business model to enforce some rule. I think you could be right.
Exactly! I've also pretty much stopped buying Humble Bundles because my steam catalogue is so bloated.....
I wonder if this'll mean more lukewarm 20-35 percent discounts, or if publishers see it as worthwhile to take the plunge and go the whole duration with the 75-85 percent figures typically reserved for flash sales.
I'd kind of assumed that if I bought a game, and it got discounted the next day, that I could get the difference refunded, is/was that not the case?