Forum: gaming.stackexchange.com
Tags: <steam>
Title: Are Steam price cuts predictable?
Question: From observation, can I expect that a game will get a permanent price cut (or a weekend special deal) X weeks after its launch, or after the sales dropped by Y percent or whatever other reason?

Answers:
sents: text: If nothing else, you can be sure that if you pay attention and wait long enough, the game you so look forward to will be on sale eventually.
text: I have yet to buy a game on Steam without a significant discount.
text: I've had to wait quite a bit for some of them, but the vast majority will come on sale after a while.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/1393/Aeo
score: 10
sents: text: It's common for them to discount GAME X in the run up/at the release of GAME X2.
text: So, for example, expect the Fallout 3 pack to get a price drop pretty soon because New Vegas is due in October.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/3404/Drew
score: 8
sents: text: Short answer: no.
text: Slightly longer answer: price cuts Noooooo, sales yes.ie the Summer sale (no way to tell what tho) or discounts on iD games during QuakeCon
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/206/Tyronomo
score: 7
sents: text: Because the discounts and prices are negotiated with the publishers, you'd be better off trying to analyse on the publisher level rather than across Steam as a whole.
text: Additionally, because people would put off buying a game if they knew it was going to be discounted shortly, Steam will most likely purposefully avoid any such pattern (to ensure maximum revenue).
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/3383/Stu Pegg
score: 6
sents: text: The summer sale and winter holiday sales are predictable and always offer insane/awesome sales.
text: Your best bet would to check Steam every week and see is on on sale for that week.
text: For example I picked up Borderlands and its first three expansions for $22 one random week.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/1770/Elpezmuerto
score: 3
sents: text: I haven't seen a pattern on new games but, I have seen that Valve will reduce the price of the previous version of their own games (and some that they distribute) just before a sequel comes out.
text: They also tend to offer discounts/packages on holiday weekends.
text: This is mostly on independent games and retro packages.
text: Finally, they tend to offer free games when celebrating an event like the release of Portal when the Mac version of Steam was released.
text: In the later case they like to drop hints that something is coming but like to keep the details a surprise.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/1120/Chris Nava
score: 2
sents: text: In addition to what others are saying, I've noticed independent games are often given discounts relatively shortly after their release (like a month or two), while big-publisher titles maintain their price for a longer time.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/122/Oak
score: 2
sents: text: When a similar or better game of the same genre is about to launch, it will become very likely that the older game will get a discount.
text: Modern Warfare 2 got a 33% discount in the week of the launch of Medal of Honor.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/3375/Jader Dias
score: 1
sents: text: bad, old, and boring games will get discounts :)
text: Usually it happened on Thursday, so people could buy them on Friday to play at weekend.
text: Often presales are cheaper, because people don't know how bad is game, so they buy it to try.
text: Another time is when most players stop playing multiplayer game, so making 50-70% discounts bring more people(and money) as servers are already working and there is capacity for players.
text: And one more case: when new game is almost released (e.g. civ5), then previous versions get discount, because almost nobody will buy them after release.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/3686/kusoksna
score: 0

Summary of the answers:
No. Summer and winter sales are predictable times. They will often discount the first game just before its sequel comes out.
Whereas price-cuts per se are probably not predictable, sales are. Furthermore, educated guesses can be made at the publisher level or around the release of successor games.