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https://www.capcom-games.com/sale/sale16-yo4yk/ja-jp/
Edit: The blog post: https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/33273264/view/3859086513556474347
I don't know why the duration does not appear on the page of the games or the sale either.
Is that a bug or a feature? I know "Ask Capcom", sure.
Because if it's a feature, that's not good: that's not customer friendly, this is a common practice in psychological marketing to push someone to make a purchase, as said in the initial post.
Also : I'm not sure this is legal, I'm currently looking into that.
It is completely legal to not show the end dates on the store page as long as the duration is listed in an announcement they made about said sale.
Articles 5, 6, 7.
Article 7, paragraphs 1 & 2 :
1. A commercial practice shall be regarded as misleading if, in its factual context, taking account of all its features and circumstances and the limitations of the communication medium, it omits material information that the average consumer needs, according to the context, to take an informed transactional decision and thereby causes or is likely to cause the average consumer to take a transactional decision that he would not have taken otherwise.
2. It shall also be regarded as a misleading omission when, taking account of the matters described in paragraph 1, a trader hides or provides in an unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely manner such material information as referred to in that paragraph or fails to identify the commercial intent of the commercial practice if not already apparent from the context, and where, in either case, this causes or is likely to cause the average consumer to take a transactional decision that he would not have taken otherwise.
Looks like not showing clearly the dates of a promotion could be considered as an unfair/misleading practice, and according to article 5, should be prohibited.
Since it was posted in an announcement for said sale, it is not.
And the lack of direct information - and there is not even a link - on the product page is likely to cause the average consumer to take a transactional decision that he would not have taken otherwise.
On reddit you can find post/comments asking for the end of the sale, which says a lot about the transparency of that sale.
The only info I've found here is on the link given by Crazy Tiger, that I managed to find only via a Google search.
There are annoucements related to games, such as RE4, but still, without dates : https://steamcommunity.com/app/2050650/eventcomments/4302697419067650258?snr=1_5_9_&ctp=2
This is really bad practice and informations should be displayed clearly, not hidden on an obscure page, I've reported this.
Meanwhile, have a nice evening :)
I must agree. We could cut them some slack if they had put that link in the page of every game (that is on sale), but evidently that's not the case.
I've seen some Swedish and danish e-tailers doing the same because they somehow evade said "issue" by hosting their site in some tax haven or 3rd world country. Japan is still a unicorn hole country so don't expect much except on paper.
Steam is located in the US, but should conform to EU laws as they sell their games in the EU, that includes the directive regarding unfair commercial practices, and the articles 5-7 (and you can find the articles 7.1 and 7.2 above) could IMHO apply in this case as misleading omission.
Directive is here : https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32005L0029
I've reported (flagged a pair of games as "legal violation" with a short explanation) as said above.
If it's not a bug and we don't react, that could become a widespread practice here, and this is not something that I want as a player : I want my purchase decision to be made knowing all the details about a discount, I don't want to be manipulated into purchasing something.
It's not misleading. (1) As I pointed out, the dates were clearly easily found outside Steam (you could find them via social media, etc.) and (2) as someone else pointed out, the dates can easily be found within Steam, too (you can find it from the main Store > New and Noteworthy > Sale events: https://store.steampowered.com/news/collection/sales/ )
Now, the sale is indexed on Google and the dates appear on the metadata of the search, but not on the page itself : you have to make a Google search to get an answer. Not everyone will do that when browsing for games.
So there is clearly a will of not showing that information, and that's a possibility allowed by Steam.
Still, I don't understand why some are defending that kind of manipulative practice, which could clearly be seen as "dark pattern", and which is clearly done to push the user to the purchase.