Valve has started allowing Steam developers to schedule Daily Deals via a new time-limited invite system that’s currently in beta.
As highlighted by GameDiscoverCo founder and former GDC co-organizer Simon Carless on X, the “self-schedule” approach will allow developers to stick Daily Deals onto their calendar if Valve has deemed a title eligible and sent out an invite.
“The ability for a developer/publisher to schedule their Daily Deal on the calendar is now in beta. If a game has been determined that it is eligible for a Daily Deal, Valve will send an invite to contacts for that game that have ‘Receive Steamworks Communication’ and ‘Manage Pricing & Discount permissions,'” reads the explainer.
“The Daily Deal invite will expire 30 days after being sent, regardless if it was read. Upon receiving the invite, partners can then go to the Daily Deal calendar and choose a day (within the next 6 months) to schedule their Daily Deal. After the day is chosen, a discount event will automatically be created for the Daily Deal.”
Valve emphasized that in order for a deal to go live a discount must be entered and reminded devs that any invites they receive will eventually expire–so don’t wait around for too long.
Daily Deal timing on Steam
In terms of how deals will be promoted when live, Valve noted that visibility on the Steam homepage and applicable tag pages will run for 24 hours–although the discount will be active for between 7 and 14 days depending on the duration selected by developers.
Valve also asked developers who receive Daily Deal invites to choose a discount percentage that is “at least as good as the best discount you have run in the past, if not better.”
Daily Deals and some other discounts are currently created and managed by Valve, which says it considers titles of “all price points and genres” in the current version of Steamworks’ discounting documentation.
Steam developers are currently unable to create and manage Daily Deals, but it looks like the new beta system will provide more maneuverability where scheduling and discounting are concerned.