Since late 2009, Steam's regular platform-wide sales have been a major attention grabber for the downloadable game service, causing gamers to hide their wallets and developers to (presumably) see massive bumps in the sales of their work. But just how much of a sales improvement can a developer expect by being featured as part of one of these sales? That's the latest question we set out to answer using data from the Steam Gauge project, which estimates game sales based on a random sample of public user profiles.
Unsurprisingly, we found games that received featured placement during the 11 days of this year's Steam Summer Sale generally saw a sizable increase in sales compared to the pre-sale period. However, it was a bit of a shocker that larger discounts didn't always correlate with larger sales increases, and the reduced sale prices often meant games brought in seemingly less overall revenue during the sale period.
What do we mean by "sale"?
To start, we should clarify what games we're looking at specifically when we talk about games "featured" in the Steam Summer Sale. After all, practically every developer on Steam these days tries to jump on the sale bandwagon with some sort of self-imposed discount during the event. According to price trackers, nearly 4,400 of the over 5,700 games listed on Steam saw a price reduction during the 11 days of this year's sale (June 11 through 21).
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