
Ask HN: Are misleading sales tactics rampant on Steam? - Scirra_Tom
Here in the UK I was under the impression that to claim that products are on sale, you should show the previous price and should have been selling at that price for a meaningful period of time.<p>It appears to be rampant practise on Steam to list an item and put it on sale almost immediately.  I understand why sellers do this to attract more attention to the product, but ultimately I don&#x27;t think it genuinely serves sellers and buyers positively.
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benologist
The games are only temporarily marked down, what you are observing is
discounting as a promotional tool because discounts get in front of more
people than full-price games.

These are not perpetual discounts that would make the defacto real price be
the discounted price. After the launch week/s the game price will revert and
eventually fluctuate from being occasionally discounted, included in bundles,
given away etc.

Discounts are an important sales tool for games - you can see major publishers
today are pretty much constantly offering big discounts on one store at a
time. Steam etc all have discounted game lists, websites track game deals,
there's a huge subreddit for them at r/gamedeals, there's sites tracking the
lowest-ever prices for games etc.

