Bring Flash Sales Back -_-

[Label07]

Steam Summer Stale 2022.

This used to be an event I looked forward to years ago. Now, each year it's the same static discount for two weeks. Typically, not at much, if any more of a discount than we have ALREADY witnessed on a game up to this point.

Please bring back "Flash Sales"!

[sfnhltb]

No thanks, it just led to games non-sale price being set high and staying high just so a bigger looking discount could be applied, already enough of a problem on Steam anyway given it gives so much visibility to highly discounted games, because that is an easy thing to do whereas trying to show games that are good value for money is difficult, but it is such an easily manipulated system and we end up in a system where the pricing of games is now more like that of furniture retailers where you can only buy the game you want in limited windows unless you are willing to pay a premium.

Making the windows of when a game is actually at its intended retail price even smaller with flash sales just would make the problem even worse.

[J4MESOX4D]

Flash sales are long gone and wont return. Not only were they unfair to users who were sleeping at the time, they were also flirting with legality and could cause havoc with the refund feature that didn't exist in its current form when these deals were in play. From a Valve and developer standpoint also, it would stall sales as users would spend ages on the fence in the hope their targeted game would reduce further.

[Callahan420]

Flash sales were great and I wish they would bring them back.

Originally posted by J4MESOX4D:

Not only were they unfair to users who were sleeping at the time,

Set an alarm or don't cry about missing a flash sale.

[cinedine]

GOG currently has them. Result: I haven't bought anything on their sale outside two of these sales yet.

Originally posted by Callahan420:

Set an alarm or don't cry about missing a flash sale.

Right ... because telling people they suck for having to sleep or no internet connection at work is the thing you want to tell your customers.

Or you can tell them "here are the deals, have a look, buy what you want in your own time".

[Unn4m3d (♥AUT♥)]

No thank you.

[nullable]

Originally posted by Label07:

Steam Summer Stale 2022.

This used to be an event I looked forward to years ago. Now, each year it's the same static discount for two weeks. Typically, not at much, if any more of a discount than we have ALREADY witnessed on a game up to this point.

Please bring back "Flash Sales"!

They were fun. But I think between flash sales and daily deals, it had a negative side effect of training customers to not buy a game unless it was on flash sale or daily deal, and/or wait until the last day of the sale to be sure it wouldn't be.

It arguably also has the side-effect of devaluing products because if the expectation is you should only buy a game unless it's 66-90% off, and the real value for most products effectively is $5. Maybe stores/publishers/developers don't want people thinking games are only worth $5.

At any rate from a business perspective I can see how those things aren't desirable. If they had so much benefit for Valve and publishers then they'd still have flash sales. But my guess is the benefit, if any, went away and so did flash sales.

[Label07]

Originally posted by cinedine:

GOG currently has them. Result: I haven't bought anything on their sale outside two of these sales yet.

Originally posted by Callahan420:

Set an alarm or don't cry about missing a flash sale.

Right ... because telling people they suck for having to sleep or no internet connection at work is the thing you want to tell your customers.

Or you can tell them "here are the deals, have a look, buy what you want in your own time".

It takes you two weeks to figure out if you want to buy something...no...There is no need to have "sales" for two weeks at the same discount. In that time, the dev could shift and offer more of discount (in the normal course of non-special events)

Flash sales were/are exciting.

Let's take SquareEnix games for example, for some reason they think their products are better than everyone else' so the discounts are usual up to 50% off, at any time. Very rarely I see them go above that amount for a discount. Now if there was a flash sale for 75% off, I for one would probably jump on that (depending on the game).

[J4MESOX4D]

Originally posted by Callahan420:

Flash sales were great and I wish they would bring them back.

Originally posted by J4MESOX4D:

Not only were they unfair to users who were sleeping at the time,

Set an alarm or don't cry about missing a flash sale.

How can you set an alarm for something you don't know is going to happen? That's the point.

I remember people buying a game (Prison Architect I think) for £9,99 in the sale and then in the early hours the game was further reduced to £2.99 because the majority of people in Europe were asleep at the time. This was before refunds so people had to take it on the chin but that then impacted people making purchases throughout the rest of the sale for not wanting to get burned again.

Great if you were in the US and it was afternoon/evening but alienating other continents isn't exactly ideal and furthermore the next flash window was when people had gone to work. In many countries, it is also a violation of trading laws to have two pricepoints for a single item within a trading day.

[Xedhadeaus]

Flash sales are probably fine now that I actually have some webhooks ready that watch and post activity around it, but when flash sales were a thing, they were just about as annoying as when games are free for one day. Only a few people told you it was free when it was still free, and after it wasn't free, people acted like it was okay to buy it despite the fact they did not.

I'm glad that marketing is over tbh. I miss a few of the deals, but I'd imagine it would make a lot of people not play their games until a sale is over just to get the buyer protection they deserve. That's pretty awful tbh.

[Dutchgamer1982]

Flash sales were the worst....
***they often happened at times in the evening for USA.. meaning almost everybody in europe including me.. was asleep during them... and that was crappy..

**I already deem steam sales need a nerf.. (in olden time base price of game.. as in the year round price.. would lower as a game aged.. ) steam sale prices are about 15% higher than the year round prices in retail at that moment....
***something need to be done to force developers to drop their base price overtime... like after a sale... halve of the discount given.. during a sale.. must be applied to the baseprice of a game.. so if you give a 50% discount on a 50 euro game (sale price 25 euro) the new baseprice after that sale must beccome 37.50... and may not be increased ever again above that..
->
more fair prices year round... with sales more like buy 10 pay 9.. or get 10% off kind... would be much better.. as you would not have to wait all year for the title you want. or be overcharged...
to buy the game you want at a fair price all year round.. should be the norm..

the only way flash sales would be fair if there was some way for users to place market offers on games....
(as in that you put money on your account and mark a game on automaticly purchase it if price drops below x)

[Hanomaly]

Originally posted by J4MESOX4D:

Great if you were in the US and it was afternoon/evening but alienating other continents isn't exactly ideal and furthermore the next flash window was when people had gone to work. In many countries, it is also a violation of trading laws to have two pricepoints for a single item within a trading day.

i thought Flash Sales rotated every 8 hours.. so there was 3 a day.. and thus didn't necessarily cater to any specific time zone.. as all time zones would have at least 1 flash sale that happened when their people were possibly asleep?

BUT beyond that i actually agree that Flash Sales being gone is good. i *did* find them exciting... but also sorta nerve wracking. And i was definitely one of those people that waited for the last day of the sale before buying because i didn't want to buy a game and have it go on Flash sale later.

Flash sales being gone let me feel comfy buying some games today/early in the sale.

[Judgmental Amaterasu]

Originally posted by Callahan420:

Flash sales were great and I wish they would bring them back.

Originally posted by J4MESOX4D:

Not only were they unfair to users who were sleeping at the time,

Set an alarm or don't cry about missing a flash sale.

Yeah just set an alarm for something that by it's nature has no predetermined time or date. Brilliant strategy.

[J4MESOX4D]

Originally posted by Dutchgamer1982:

***something need to be done to force developers to drop their base price overtime... like after a sale... halve of the discount given.. during a sale.. must be applied to the baseprice of a game

Developers are too clingy towards their lavish high (but predictable) discounts - they'd rather see their $60 game go 66% off for the 24th time in 2 years rather than lower the base price to about $40 and then have a lower discount say 55% that would actually make it cheaper than the predictable one. It also makes you wonder how unit sales stall throughout the year with products still costing what they did years prior.

Very few games seem to lower their base price over time and I feel this makes the store outside of big sale/weekly discounts a very unattractive place shop or even browse. This seems to be digital platforms in a nutshell though.

[Start_Running]

WHy do I get the feeling the IOp would look at Diablo Immortal and cry..needs more loot boxes.

[Washell]

Flash sales were a blunt tool for developers to get their game discovered. Valve developed a ton of other features for this that work better. Their data also showed that flash sales lowered the revenue of sales(*) and led to disgruntled customers that missed out on them.

* People waited for certain games to go on flash sale and only buy those, or not buy a second choice while waiting to see a first choice would go on flash sale and if it didn't, buy nothing.

I personally don't care if they come back or not. I do know that given the reasons they gave for dropping them, you're going to need a whole load more people clamouring to bring them back then the roughly dozen I see posting during each sale.