According to a post on Reddit, a number of details about the upcoming Steam Autumn and Winter sales have been leaked. The news was supposedly posted on the Steamworks Developer Group, a method for Valve to communicate with Steam developers directly. It not only gave away the dates of the sales, but also some changes that might upset long time Steam fans.
The Steam Autumn Sale 2015 will begin on November 25th and run until December 1st according to the post. The Steam Winter Sale will follow afterward, beginning on December 22nd and continuing until January 4th. These dates line up perfectly with expectations, which are based on previous years’ sales from this same time period.
The changes come in the way Steam will handle the discounts that these sales feature. Previously all games in the sale would be discounted, with even bigger discounts coming when the game was featured as a part of the Daily or Flash sales. Valve is doing away with these according to the post. Now games will have a single level of discount throughout the sale. Some will be featured on the front page of the store, but the discount will remain the same from the first day to the last.
“We’ll still be highlighting top games on the front page for 24-48 hour spans, but those products will stay at their most competitive discount, before and after being featured.”
This is a pretty large shift for the sales, as the game aspect of it was what drew many people in. Checking right when the new prices updated was a big part of the Steam Winter Sales of the past, and without that it will be interesting to see how well these new sales are received. If the discounts are large enough it might make up for it, but if the perception is that games simply aren’t being discounted as much it could go poorly.
