The darkside of Steam sales.

[theshonen8899]

You lack a fundamental understanding of why Steam does sales. The reason Valve pushes for incredible Steam sales is because they are currently experimenting with a market phenomenon. Everytime they put something on sale, the game begins to generate more money after the sale than before it, even though they are being sold at the same price. Valve does not do Steam sales with the intentions of giving away games for charity, it does it so it can attract attention to games with stagnated sales. The idea is that if Friend #1 buys Borderlands 2 on sale and ends up loving the game, they will push Friend #2 or Friend #3 to buy the game at regular price after the sale. Compare this to the used games market for consoles, where tons of games are displayed for used and are far to high in number to receive specialized attention. By selectively choosing different games at different times every week and every day of a sale, Steam can put certain games at the forefront of a customer's attention and remind them "oh hey, I remember wanting to play that."

 

It's a technique that I wish more in the industry would come to realize is extremely effective at selling older, forgotten games rather than them them sit and rot on store shelves.