Game price increases will prevent the publisher from discounting that game for 30 days on Steam.

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/pricing

Q: How often can I change the price of my product?
A: To protect user expectations about a newly released game, we ask that price changes wait until after 30 days from release. If you accidentally submitted a major pricing error at launch that you need to correct quickly, we’re able to accommodate that. Please contact us here for help with that kind of pricing error. After that, you can change your prices as it makes sense to you—but remember that increasing a price in one or more currencies will generate a 30 day cooldown on your ability to submit discounts. Check out the Discount documentation for more details on that topic.

Originally posted by holyl1ght:

Steam Pricing Practices

During Black Friday sales I noticed a couple of games on my wishlist that had a significant % discount (Tales of Graces f and Marvel Midnight Suns) 35% and 80% respectively. But the final price in dollars seemed high (38.99 for Tales and 15.99 for Suns) while I remembered seeing the final price be around 29.99 for Tales and 8.99 for Suns many times before. I went on SteamDB to research price history and turns out the base price was raised for Black Friday but the usual % discount was applied.

I guess what I am asking, is this allowed? Is Steam okay with shady pricing practices that take advantage of people that aren't wildly vigilant? I can't even find a discussion about this. The whole thing is a concern.

Tales has always had a $39.99 base price.

Marvel, $59.99.

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Tales has always had a $39.99 base price.

Marvel, $59.99.

:nkCool:

This just is incorrect. Check the data on SteamDB if you doubt. The whole reason I noticed this is because of how often I saw these two games on sale and their typical prices.

Nov 20 Tales was 38.99 with a 35% discount which makes base price 59.99

Nov 20 Marvel Midnight Suns was 15.99 with an 80% discount which makes base price 79.99

The data on SteamDB is a bit confusing, because the base price has never changed from 39.99 for the first game, but it shows a 35% discount that results in 38.99, but the base price was unchanged before and after.

I imagine this is some weird edge case where the base game wasn't on sale, but it plus some dlc or in some multigame package was on sale for 38.99 at a discount of 35% for the entire bundle of stuff at 59.99, so you get a somewhat confusing entry on the steamdb graph.

As far as I recall you can't put a game on discount on steam for some period of time (a couple of months?) after you change the base price, so it wouldn't have been "shady" stuff as steam freezes out the ability to do stuff like that automatically.

Edit:

https://steamdb.info/sub/1165022/

Ah this would be the package - the remastered deluxe pack which includes the original game was on sale from 59.99 at 35% off, so 38.99 during those periods, so was temporarily $1 cheaper than buying just the original version alone.

Would a DLC bundle or multigame package show those discounted prices when I am looking at it from my wishlist? I don't think that's how that works. The little box that has the price even had the 59.99 slashed-through with the 38.99 displayed.

Originally posted by sfnhltb:

Edit:

https://steamdb.info/sub/1165022/

Ah this would be the package - the remastered deluxe pack which includes the original game was on sale from 59.99 at 35% off, so 38.99 during those periods, so was temporarily $1 cheaper than buying just the original version alone.

It looks like you're right. So while this isn't shady or nefarious as I initially thought, this still seems like an odd way for the wishlist to offer something that, while similar, isn't the item on my wishlist.

Well it is showing the cheapest price you can buy that item on your wishlist currently, and if you clicked through to the page it would be more obvious as the game itself would not be discounted but one or more of the bundles would be. I guess ideally it would have some hint what was going on to be less confusing while viewing it in the wishlist, as the discount shown is correct for the bundle it is discounting, but not for the single item that the user wants to buy.

Given they still haven't added the ability to wishlist bundles, etc., I guess good luck if you expect anything to change, Steam has seemed like basically abandonware for the last 10+ years, as most of the focus at Valve seems to have been to try to get into the hardware side of things with Steam acting as the funding source so they can play, but getting little or no updates.

Linking to the bundle page from the Wishlist should be an added feature now there is this...

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/detail/524230597807178673