Valve initiated its latest Steam Summer Sale today, and a cursory glance at the Steam Database list of discounted games suggests that developers are slapping discounts of 80 percent or more on roughly 175 titles. That number is closer to 250 if you count DLC, and includes recent releases — the first episode of Steam Greenlit horror game Coma: Mortuary is being sold for a tenth of its full price, for example, despite only being released last month. Developers, take note: for better or worse, the number of games being sold at a deep discount and the rate they’re discounted at seem to be increasing as the digital games market grows accustomed to regular sales. Selling your games at a steep discount during these events can certainly jumpstart your sales numbers — Polytron famously sold more copies of Fez during 48 hours on a Steam summer sale than in a whole month on XBLA — but it might also contribute to a subtle devaluation of games as a whole. Castle Doctrine developer Jason Rohrer wrote at length recently about why he believes selling games on a digital marketplace at a deep discount is bad for your players — and ultimately harmful to the industry at large — as more and more people become accustomed to waiting for games to go on sale, constricting the initial playerbase and the developer’s ability to quickly recoup costs.
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2014