Just guessing but it’s probably the same age old scam of the permanent sale people like to think they are getting a deal also I think you can list games by discount percentage same as all the Amazon prime day “deals” where they jack up the prices then put them on sale for the normal price
this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
54 points (98.2% liked)
Steam
10238 readers
18 users here now
Steam is a video game digital distribution service by Valve.
Steam News | Steam Beta Client news
Useful tools:
SteamDB
SteamCharts
Issue tracker for Linux version of Steam
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Who would ever look by discount percentage? Why should I care what the price used to be?
Bro balance out your privilege. I only buy games under 3 dollars if they also have 90% discount.
It's a psychological trick where people tend to view discounts by how much they're saving than what they're actually spending
That kinda breaks down at some point though. At the very least I don't look at a mixed review hidden object game and think "Sweet! It's only $2 rather than the hundred dollars it normally sells for. What savings!"
And that's ignoring all the weirdness with the third party sale tracker somehow thinking a 98% discount on a $99.99 game is $46.20, when the game is still full price.
You're right. Funny how they're all the games with "hidden" in the titles and they all look somehow similar. It's super suss. I don't think it's as simple as a cash grab. High chance they're used for money laundering or transferring funds from stolen steam accounts or credit cards.
Yeah it's really annoying, i would like a way to tag and block this kinds of games. One really funny, they would increase the price and the "discount" each week/month.
Good question. I have not seen those yet. Will keep an eye out. Thanks for mentioning it.
The reason it might not be on sale when you look it up yourself is that a lot of jurisdictions don't allow fake sales and price manipulation so they're forced to keep them at full price as the sale gets voided.
My guess would be that heavily discounted games might be getting an advantage by the steam recommendation algorithm. So they'd rather go for 99,99 and constantly discount it instead of starting with 4,99
Why make a good product and sell many copies at a low price, when you can scam just a few people with a shitty game sold for hundreds of dollars? 🤷🏻♂️