Fake discounts are an actual business tactic some retailers and sellers do. Think of Black Friday’s absolutely massive sales, and you could notice prices for products going up beforehand. Then, these prices wind up being massively discounted going into the sale period. Valve, owner and developer of Steam, is looking to combat this with a new policy that cracks down on these practices. Starting on March 28th, Steam’s new rules against fake discounts are as follows:
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.
As stated above, these rules do not apply during the big four sales every year: the Lunar New Year Sale, Summer Sale, Autumn Sale, and Winter Sale will still allow these, with some limitations. With this new ruling, Valve aims to bring more transparency to its storefront. Steam is available to download for free on PC and comes preinstalled on the aptly titled Steam Deck.
