Steamworks Documentation
Discounting

Overview

Discounting can be a valuable tool to help grow your audience and extend the life of your product on Steam. You can participate in official sales events and take advantage of discounting tools to run your own custom discounts.

In general, we've found that there is a customer at every price point, and an effective discounting strategy can contribute to overall long term success on Steam.

As always, this advice is generalized for a huge variety of products, developers, and customers, so take your own product and community into account when making decisions.

Configuring Discounts

Required Permissions

Discounting requires the "Manage Pricing & Discounts" permission for the relevant product. In addition, you must be a member of the Steamworks partner that is getting paid for the product you are trying to discount.

How to Configure

  1. Navigate to the new discounting dashboard here: https://partner.steamgames.com/promotion/discounts/dashboard/ (or select "Apps & Packages -> Discount Management")
  2. On this page you will see a grid of the games you have pricing permission for and all upcoming sales that your games can participate in.
  3. Simply enter a valid discount for each package and event as desired and click the 'save' button at the bottom of the page.

How to Edit a Discount

Discounts can be edited up until the discount itself has started. You can do so by visiting the same dashboard URL as you used to create the discount and simply change the discount % you wish to set.

How to Delete a Discount

Discount can be deleted up until the discount itself has started. You can delete a discount by visiting your discounting dashboard and entering the number 0 for the discount percentage. Click 'save' the same way you would when entering a discount and you will have removed that discount.

Types of Discounts

Self-Serve

Partners are able to create and manage the following discounts on their own. Any discount set to 20% or greater will automatically trigger email notifications to players with your game on their wishlist. Discounted titles are eligible to appear in various 'specials' sections throughout Steam, based on your game's tags, popularity of your game, and to users that it is recommended.

    Launch Discount

    Launch discounts start once your title is released on Steam and can be staged to run for between 7 and 14 days, ending at 10am Pacific on the applicable day. We generally suggest launch discounts around 10% to 15%, should you chose to set one. There is a limit of 40%. Launch Discounts are optional and are configured near your release date setting on your app landing page.

    Weeklong Deals

    Weeklong Deals begin every Monday morning at 10AM Pacific time and run for 7 days.

    Custom Discounts

    You can configure your own custom discounts to align with special events like a major update or the anniversary of your products's release. You can schedule a custom discount to begin on the following calendar day.

    Themed Sales

    Steam organizes various themed sales events designed to showcase certain categories of games. These events will have specific criteria for eligibility, and a process of invitation, registration, and discounting. Each of these sales will be promoted on the homepage of Steam and organized into sub-categories relevant for each event. Learn more here.

    Seasonal Sales

    There are four major seasonal sale events per year, which take over the Steam store experience in a big way. All games on Steam are invited to participate with a discount. These four events are Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Learn more here.

Curated

The following discount types are created and managed by Valve. When selecting products to fill these front-page promotional slots, we consider games of all price points and genres. While there aren't exact rules, as a base guideline we tend to focus on the most-played or best-selling games on Steam. If your title qualifies for an upcoming curated slot, we will contact you with details. These promotional slots aren't negotiated for or sold, they're just built around player data. If your game has lots of happy customers and hundreds of thousands of revenue over past few months, feel free to contact us any time to discuss promotion options,

There are three main types of curated promo slots for products. The default discount length for all three promo slots is one week, but we're happy to be flexible with shorter or longer discounts, within our existing discount policies.

    Daily Deal

    Daily Deals are featured on the Steam homepage for 24 hours, and rotate every day at 10am Pacific. There are two or more Daily Deal slots per day. The artwork used for the Daily Deal is our standard "Header Capsule" 460px x 215px, and is imported from the associated game or bundle automatically. Daily Deal discounts run from 7 to 14 days. Learn more here.

    Midweek Deal

    Midweek Deal promotions are featured on the Steam homepage for 72 hours, from Monday at 10am Pacific until Thursday at 10am Pacific. There are up to six Midweek slots per week. The artwork used for the Midweek promotion requires custom asset sizes detailed here, which will be localized by Valve. Midweek discounts default to one week, but by publisher request we can run those discounts anywhere from 3 to 14 days.

    Weekend Deal

    Weekend Deal promotions are featured on the Steam homepage for 96 hours, from Thursday at 10am Pacific until Monday at 10am Pacific. There are up to six Weekend Deal slots per week. Similar to Midweek promotions, Weekend Deals require custom asset sizes detailed here, which will be localized by Valve. Weekend Deal discounts default to one week, but by publisher request we can run those discounts anywhere from 4 to 14 days.

    Visual Example of Curated Deals

    Here's a sample display of the Special Offers carousel on the Steam homepage. Midweek and Weekend spotlights occupy the larger spaces on the left side. Daily Deals are on the right side. A user can page through this carousel, where they'll see multiple spotlights from curated sales, as well as other discounted products that are organically recommended based on current popularity with customers.

    specialoffersvisualexample.png

    Free Weekends

    Free Weekends are promotions where customers have temporary access to your game. Users can try out the game for free, but lose access when the time period expires. This kind of offer is used strategically for certain types of games or circumstances, and is usually paired with a discount to help convert trial players to paying customers. Learn more here.

Discounting Rules


Steam encourages partners to discount their products as best fits their marketing plans and product strategies, but there are several specific discounting rules to keep in mind.

A central motivation for these rules is to increase pricing transparency to customers. In general, we try to improve customer communication by posting discounts on Steam that are either 1) in reference to a base price that has been in place for at least 30 days, or 2) in reference to a bona fide launch price that will be in place for at least 30 days after the conclusion of a special introductory offer.

Steam's specific discounting rules are as follows:

    30-Day Discount Cooldowns

    A product cannot be discounted within 30 days of a prior discount, within 30 days of its release, or within 30 days of a price increase in any currency. These are commonly referred to as '30-day discount cooldowns.' There are only a two exceptions to the 30-day discount cooldown rules:
    • A Launch Discount is an optional introductory offer which allows a product to be on discount at its release, either its Early Access release or its full v1.0 Release (or both if they are at least 30 days apart). Launch Discounts can only be set up prior to the product's release date, not after. Once a launch discount ends, the product cannot run any other discounts for 30 days.
    • A Seasonal Sale is a big Steam-wide sales event, such as the Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring sales. Unlike other discounts, these do not have 30-day discount cooldowns, and they're exempt from the 30-day discount cooldown of other non-launch discounts.
      • This means you can schedule your own non-launch discount within 30 days of a Seasonal Sale - either before or after - and still join the Seasonal Sale. Product releases and launch discounts do not get this exception.
      • These exceptions only apply to the discount events created specifically for the Seasonal Sales, which appear in the Discount Management Dashboard ahead of each sale. If you set up your own discount event around the same time as a Seasonal Sale, it wont get these exceptions.
      • See Seasonal Sales for details and event timing.

    Discounts & Changes to Base Pricing

    It's not possible to increase or decrease the base price of a product during an active discount, or while a discount is scheduled in the future. It's also not possible to discount a product for 30 days following an increase to the base price in any currency. See Pricing for more details and best practices on setting base prices.

    Discount Thresholds & Durations

    When setting up individual discounts, the following guidelines apply:
    • It's not possible to discount a product by more than 95% or less than 10%. Launch discounts in particular cannot exceed 40%.
    • it's not possible to create a discount for a product that would result in the price in any currency falling below Steam's Minimum Price Thresholds.
    • Discounts cannot last longer than 14 days, or run for shorter than 1 day. Launch discounts in particular cannot run shorter than 7 days or last longer than 14 days.
    • If your product is included in any bundles, the bundle discount will be applied on top of any individual discount on bundled product(s). See Bundles for details.
    • Any discount set to 20% or greater will automatically trigger email notifications to players who've wishlisted your game and have their settings to allow appropriate email communications.

    Summary of the Above Rules:

    Price MoveTriggers a 30-day discount cooldown?Are Steam-wide seasonal sales exempt from this cooldown?Notes
    Price DecreaseNo-Not possible during active discounts
    Subject to minimum price thresholds
    Price IncreaseYesNoNot possible during active discounts
    Not possible within 30-days of product release
    Product Release YesNo-
    Launch DiscountYesNoDiscount: min 10% / max 40%
    Duration: min 7-day / max 14-day
    Standard Discount (Post Launch) YesYesDiscount: min 10% / max 95%
    Duration: min 1-day / max 14-day
    Seasonal Sale DiscountNo-See Seasonal Sales for timing

Discounting Best Practices

    Keep in mind your product's sales decay curve and content offering

    Steam's Sales & Activation reporting has a lot of data, dashboards and downloadable .csv files to help you understand how your players, your sales and your revenue are evolving over time. This can help guide your discount strategy. For instance, it can be tempting to use small discounts in an attempt to climb the Top Sellers list or gain more exposure in the early days of your title, but look carefully at how many customers are purchasing your product at full price before entering a discount. It's important for customers to feel good about their investment, so it's probably best to use discounts once you've settled into the tail of your sales curve. Conversely, an older game in the "long tail" of its lifecycle, but otherwise one with good retention and a robust DLC catalogue, may consider steeper discounts on the base game in the hopes of creating a bigger potential audience for the DLC offerings.

    Stairstep your discounts

    It's typically best to ease into discounting, and increase the level of discount over time. For example, a title might move from 33% to 50% to 66% to 75% and beyond over the course of a year or more. Rushing into a 50% or 75% discount weeks after your launch, or releasing with a very high launch discount, sends a bad message to customers who bought at full price and undermines the value of your title.

    Time discounts to content updates

    When figuring out your discounting plan, try to make as big an event as possible, ideally tying the discount to a content update as well. While the discount can attract interest, it's even better to show you are committed to your community by improving your product with content updates.

    Discount all associated packages (DLC, Deluxe Editions) at the same time

    If your product has multiple editions or DLC, discount them all together. Discounting only part of your product, or putting the base game on sale this week and the Deluxe Edition next week, dilutes your exposure and prevents you from taking advantage of all the network effects of Steam that happen as more users get excited about your product at the same time. You might not want to match the discount on every package. For example, if one DLC is a year old, and the another just came out, it probably makes sense to choose a different discount percentage for each.
Note: Discount Stacking
Please note that bundle discounts stack on top of any individual bundle component discounts that are occurring.

Discounting Examples


Here are some common examples of the above discounting rules in action. For these examples, we'll use an imaginary fishing game called Bass Ain't Bitin' 2 and follow it throughout its first year of Early Access to its v1.0 Release.

These examples aren't meant to be prescriptive. As always, partners set their own prices and discounts and are encouraged to hone their approach within the guidelines outlined above. Rather these examples are meant to illustrate how the various discounting rules fit together and interact with each other, and how these interactions will need to be accounted for when planning your price updates and discounts.

    Example 1: Early Access Release

    Bass Ain't Bitin' 2 wants to launch into Early Access on November 10. It wants to do this with a launch discount and it also wants to join the Steam Winter Sale, which starts later in the year on December 17. To run both discounts, the game decides to set up a 7-day launch discount from November 10-16. Since there are 30 days in November, the 30-day discount cooldown created by the launch discount will end on December 16, allowing the game to join the Winter Sale discount event that begins on December 17.
    • If Bass Ain't Biting 2 wanted to run a 14-day launch discount instead of a 7-day launch discount, it could do that, but then it wouldn't be able to join the Steam-wide Winter Sale discount event on December 17 (because the 14-discount would end November 23, which is only 23 days before the start of the Dec 17 Winter Sale). Remember, Seasonal Sales are only exempt from normal (non-launch) discount cooldowns.

    Example 2: Joining Multiple Featuring Events with One Discount

    Later next Spring, things are going well and Bass Ain't Bitin' 2 is invited to three featuring events in the month of June! These include a Fishing Fest which runs from June 10-14, an Indie Awards Showcase Event from June 18-20 and a Daily Deal on June 12. To do all this, Bass Ain't Bitin' sets up a single custom discount event to span all three events. It chooses June 10 - 20 with a discount of 20%. This means the game will be featured at a 20% discount in all three featuring events, and the single discount event will only generate one 30-day discount cooldown. This cooldown would begin when the discount ended on June 20 at 10am Pacific and run until July 20 at the same time of day.
    • Suppose in this scenario that the Summer Sale was beginning on June 27. Bass Ain't Bitin' 2 could also join the Summer Sale discount event if it wanted to, because the Summer Sale is exempt from the 30-day cooldown created by custom discount events.
    • Uh oh! Suppose the Fishing Fest needs to be urgently rescheduled to June 1-4. In this case, Bass Ain't Bitin' would need to choose between being on discount for the Fishing Fest or for the Indie Awards Showcase Event. It can't be on discount for both, since the two featuring events would be more than 14 days apart and 14 days is the maximum duration for a custom discount. However, regardless of which one it chooses, It could still be featured in the other at its regular (non-discount) base price and it could still join the Summer Sale discount event on June 27.
    Featuring & Discounts: A lesser known aspect of some featured Store pages, like Themed Fests or Showcase Events, is that a game can be featured in them with any discount event, or even with no discount at all. If a game is ever featured without a discount, that's fine, it'll be featured at its regular base price.

    Keep in mind, however, that's it's not possible to be featured at regular (full) price in placements that are specifically for discounts, such as a Weekend Deal or Seasonal Sale.

    Example 3: Price Increase at v1.0 Release

    Bass Ain't Bitin' 2 has had a lot of big updates over its first year of Early Access, and it feels its ready for a price increase to account for all the new content that's been added to the base game. Its v1.0 release date (aka Early Access Graduation) is approaching on October 15, but it also wants to run one last custom discount during the early access window, and it also wants to run another launch discount for the v1.0 Release. How can it manage a price increase, a custom discount, a v1.0 release and a launch discount given the cooldown timers? One potential solution would be the following:
    • On September 1st, Bass Ain't Bitin' 2 sets up a 14-day discount on its current Early Access prices. At the same time, it also announces that it intends to increase prices at the end of this sale. It's always a good idea to announce price increases ahead of time to give your community time to prepare.
    • This discount ends on September 14 and the game immediately raises prices in preparation for the upcoming v1.0 release. This means the 30-day discount cooldown from the custom discount overlaps with the 30-day discount cooldown from the price increase. In effect, the two 30-day discount cooldown timers run at the same time.
    • Then, 30-days later on October 14, both discount cooldowns end. The following day, the game releases into v1.0 on October 15 with a Launch Discount.
    • Alternatively Bass Ain't Bitin' 2 could have just as easily done its price increase 30 days after the end of the launch discount, instead of 30 days before. It could have even increased prices right at V1.0 release, although this third option would have prevented it from running a launch discount due to the 30-day cooldown from the price increase.
    • Ultimately there is no one-size-fits-all solution to discounting. It's important to manage your discounts as best fits each game's unique content, community and marketing plans. More on this in Discounting Best Practices above.

Frequently Asked Questions


  • Q: How are Steam curated promotions scheduled? Can we bring ideas to Steam?
    A: Scheduling promotions has typically been a conversation between you and Steam. We may come to you with ideas, and if you feel you have an idea of a unique Curated Promotion, please contact us. But you can also set up your own discounts whenever works best for you, or you can opt into the regular weekly sales.

  • Q: Are promotions mandatory on Steam?
    A: No. We might invite you to take part in a special event or promotion, but there is nothing that you are required to participate in.

  • Q: How are discounts approved?
    A: For Curated Promotions, Valve will come to you with an idea for your approval if we think your title is a good fit for one of these promotions.

    For Self-Serve Promotions, once you set up your discount using our Discount tool, then your game will automatically go on sale at the date and time you specified.

    For detailed information about best practices with discounts, see Discounting Best Practices.
  • Q: Can I update a discount?
    A: Yes, if your discount is not yet live, then you can edit or delete it.

    If you would like to adjust your Launch Discount, you can do so by going to your game's landing page and clicking the box next to the launch discount you have entered currently.

    If you would like to change a discount for an upcoming weeklong sale, custom discount or Steam-wide seasonal sale, then you can simply return to your discounting dashboard and change the percentage you wish for any given discount. To remove a discount, just set the discount percentage to 0%.

  • Q: Can I participate in Steam-wide seasonal sale events if my product recently launched?
    A: Generally, you cannot submit a discount within 30 days of release or until 30 days from when the launch discount ends, however, there are a couple options if your game "just released".
    • If your game launched 30 days prior to the start of the seasonal sale and DID NOT have a launch discount, then you are welcome to join the seasonal sale and enter a discount.
    • If your game launched 30 days prior and had a launch discount, then when that discount cooldown DOES prevent you from joining the seasonal sale. You could choose to join the sale already in progress after the discount cooldown for establishing your base price ends. There are always future opportunities to put your game on discount, so you shouldn't feel pressured to change your release date for the sake of a seasonal sale event.
    • You can now choose your launch discount duration to be between 7 and 14 days, so if you launch close to a seasonal sale and would like to have a launch discount extend into that sale, then you could choose a max launch discount duration of 14 days. We cannot extend a launch discount longer than 14 days, so you might miss the final days of a seasonal sale.

  • Q: Can I run a launch discount when transitioning from Early Access to fully released?
    A. You may run a launch discount and participate in the Steam-wide seasonal sales events when transitioning from Early Access to fully released, unless you have increased your product's price within the last 30 days.

    For more information, please see Early Access documentation.

  • Q: How often can I discount my game?
    A: Custom discounts must be spaced at least 30 days apart and at least 30 days after the release of your product on Steam. Custom discounts don't affect eligibility for Steam Seasonal Sales. Note that the 30-day cooldown for new releases and price increases still applies for the Steam Seasonal Sales.

  • Q. Will these new discount cooldowns apply to curated promotions too?
    A. Yes, discount cooldowns will apply to promotions like Daily Deals, Midweek Deals, Weekend Deals, Weeklong deals, publisher weekends, and any custom discounts. Any discount applied to a game must have 30 days between the end of one discount and the beginning of the next discount. The only exceptions to this cooldown are the four seasonal seasonal sales: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter.

  • Q: Is there a limit to how deeply I can discount a game?
    A: You can set a game discount up to 95% off the base price. However, the Steam store only supports a minimum unit sale of $0.49 USD or equivalent in each currency or region (see Price Minimums for a table of minimums per currency). As such, a discount on a package can only bring the discounted price down to $0.49 USD. Also, if you set prices below the suggested equivalent price in any currency or region, your discounts may be restricted by the minimum discounted price in that currency or region. If you wish to sell content below these limits, you are welcome to use the Steam Inventory service to sell items within your game.

  • Q: I got a "Server Error" when saving. What does that mean?
    A: It may mean that you don't have permission to enter a discount for that specific game or package.

  • Q: Why isn't my discount displaying to customers with a strikethrough price or a prominent tag saying "X% Off?"
    A: Discounts may display differently to customers in different parts of the world, per local laws. Please note that the discounted price is still used, it may just not be displayed as a strikethrough price in all territories.

  • Q: I thought the cooldown was 28 days, not 30 days?
    A: As of January 1, 2023, the cooldown requirement has been extended from 28 days to 30 days.