Steam has announced that it will be changing its existing discount rules for the Store, which are expected to take effect on March 28, including changes to the upper and lower discount limits, the discount cooldown period, and more. After March 28, the discount cooling-off period for games will be shortened from 6 weeks to 4 weeks (i.e. 28 days), and this rule will apply to all types of promotions.
Steam will be adopting a set of measures starting March 28 to address a number of issues that some game development companies have been experiencing. These measures, officially posted on the Steam Partners platform, have been announced since early February.
It has happened more than once that many publishers think they can take advantage, and before a discount or “sale” date on Steam, change the values of their games to take advantage and make it look like the discounts are bigger than they actually are.
In addition, the company’s traditional policy of automatically refunding purchased games that have not been played for more than two hours within 14 days will be relaxed in certain cases.
Many players reported receiving a refund for Battlefield 2042 even though they had exceeded the playtime specified in the policy. This makes sense, as DICE and EA’s FPS are a mess.
Still, thousands of users on the change-org platform are calling for a massive refund of the game on all platforms and to everyone who bought it.
The full package of measures on Steam is as follows:
There is an introductory discount, but once the introductory discount ends, no further discounts can be given for 28 days. It is not possible to apply a discount to your product for 28 days after a price increase in any currency, and discounts cannot be applied within 28 days of the previous discount, with the exception of Steam-wide seasonal events. Seasonal sale event discounts cannot be applied within 28 days of your title’s release, within 28 days of the end of your introductory discount, or within 28 days of a price increase in any currency. You cannot change the price while a promotion is active now or planned for the future. You cannot discount a product by more than 90% or less than 10%. Personalized discounts can last no longer than two weeks and no shorter than one day.
Remember, this new policy will go into effect on March 28 next year. It’s funny that Steam had to go to such lengths to prevent publishers from taking advantage of this. But this will certainly benefit gamers, as they can buy with more certainty when there are sales.