Valve Just Changed Steam Sales Forever

Summary

Valve plans to use a personalized algorithm to choose which discounted games appear in Steam’s homepage sales section, with the change expected to begin early next year. The aim is to show more games to people likely to be interested in them—and potentially give older titles a longer commercial life.

Steam’s discoverability problem

The video argues that Steam’s current discovery system tends to reward strong launches. Games with high player numbers, revenue, and reviews are more likely to be recommended to similar players, while games that launch quietly can quickly lose visibility. A game’s initial performance, however, may not reflect its appeal over time.

The scale of the problem is illustrated with estimates for paid games: the top 1% reportedly earn 85% of the revenue, while the bottom half earn just 0.04%. In one cited week, 720 games launched on Steam; 530 received fewer than 10 user reviews. The video says the large number of releases makes it easy for viable games to go unnoticed.

How the sales change works

Steam currently handpicks the games featured in areas such as its Daily Deals. Valve says the existing program featured 2,500 games in its first year, and some indie developers report that a featured deal can sell as well as—or better than—their launch day.

Under the new system, the discounts themselves will remain available to everyone, but the games highlighted in the homepage section will be selected for each user. Valve’s stated goal is to let developers submit compelling games and deals without having to persuade Valve staff to feature them.

Valve says testing the personalized section exposed customers to 10 times more games per day and increased store-page visits, wishlists, and cart additions. The video notes that Valve has not publicly shown whether those gains translated into more sales. Hooded Horse publisher Tim Bender offered one example from a test: an indie game’s homepage visits rose from 14 in the preceding five months to more than 7,000 in the month after the test began.

Potential benefits and concerns

• For developers: Automated targeting could reduce the importance of personal connections or publisher influence in securing a featured slot, and help games find interested players beyond launch.
• For players: The homepage may show different deals to different people based on their play patterns. The video considers this potentially useful, though Steam will become less human-curated.
• Unproven outcome: More page visits, wishlists, and cart additions do not guarantee more purchases or that mid-performing games will benefit substantially.
• Pricing concern: The video raises the possibility of personalized discount amounts but says there is no indication Valve plans to vary prices by user. The announced change concerns which deals are shown, not different prices for different customers.
• Valve’s cut: The narrator argues that better discovery could help justify Steam’s revenue share, while also suggesting Valve could consider a lower cut for smaller developers, similar to Apple’s App Store Small Business Program.

The video concludes that personalized sales could improve discovery and reduce friction for developers, but the system’s real success will depend on whether added visibility leads to sustainable sales.

Guides or tutorials: None.

Main speaker and sources: The video’s narrator from Bellular News; Valve/Steamworks announcements; We Love It’s estimates of paid-game revenue; I Partners; Simon Carless of GameDiscoverCo; and Tim Bender of Hooded Horse.