Steam Winter Sale 2025 why does it feel like it isn't though?

Has anyone else felt like Steam Sales just.... aren't the same as they used to be? And I've felt this way for a really long time. As in, I feel like if I go into a brick and mortar store I'm more likely to see a stupid deal such as some random game for 78 Pence.

We're going to take a look through archive.org and look at how the steam sales appeared. I'm hoping it challenges my perception that things were better back in my day. And we're going to see if it does, when it flips. I believe largely it's going to be just down to perception and design of these sales. Let's find out!

2024

So for 2024, we've got three AAA Games, all at prices I would describe as not at all sale prices. Under that we've got ancient games with 90% discounts. This would also have been a year that I would have looked at this going "I've already got all those 90% off games on previous sales, and those AAA games are still too expensive"

2023

Here I don't think this is too bad, two decent games sitting at 75% off, front and center, with an AAA game sitting at 30%. I still think again that's too low but the perception to me is at least better weirdly here. Despite the Deep Discount section not being present. Guess Valve wanted to ship those OLED consoles.

2022

I mean, we all agree this looks terrible right? 25% and a 60%? Not even 75? Poor showing here for 2022.

2021

In the words of the great Touker Suleyman. I wouldn't get out of bed for 10% and I don't think this sale qualifies as great either. We can see Siege on sale here same as in 2022. Boring.

2020

Again, uninspired, boring. It should be noted this was around the time I started saying "wow steam sales have fell off".

2019

If you buy CIV for anything less than $5, you've been had.

2018

The Steam Layout changes as you can see after 2018 to go from this grid style to the three card layout. Safe to say it wasn't the design that made it worse, because all these discounts look pointless. Wildlands for $17, maybe? But the top deal being 25% off? ehhh

2017

I like how many $10 games appear here. I don't like that there's very little in terms of AAA.

2016

Okay! Now we're talking. 2016 I safely like. $2 game, $8 game, 85% off, 80% off, the game I don't care about being 15% off and $25. This is a screen I enjoy looking at! And I can care about all these titles.

2015

Overall this FEELS weaker, but I still prefer it out of every other screen bar 2016. I think the inclusion of big names here helps, the 33-70% feels better.

2014

Ding Ding, new winner. Look at all those discounts, all $5. Look at 2018, look at how Tomb Raider "Franchise" is just like some range, no numbers no dollar amounts next to it. It feels worse somehow than this screen.

2013

What can I say here? Incredible. Firstly the flash sales giving it the big discounts is nice, I get that the deep discounts probably replaces this, but I feel like these titles are more notable. Secondly, the includsion of so much triple A on the discounts above is pretty nice. Although they aren't heavily discounted, they are mixed in with ones which are. Makes me again feel better about this page.

Safe to say, I think if I like 2012 aswell, we've probably got our line for when things changed for the worse (in my opinion)

2012

2012 in my view safely also feels like a pretty decent sale. So, let's look at the numbers in a table.

The Data

The important thing to note with the below table. I went back to the steam page a couple days after. I've been drafting this article over the holidays so the data doesn't match the screenshots above. But I believe that's also important to note. I actually noticed going back on some of the 2020-2025 years and going "Hang on, this doesn't seem bad" and it's because the deals at least on the surface seemed better. Whatever dynamic nature or scrolling animations valve is using to show different deals. Absolutely has a material impact at least to how I view the page. You give me a bunch of 40% off deals I'm not gonna care. You give me stuff that's 90% off it just impacts better. Simple as. And weirdly they seem to hide those behind either an animation, a different point in time loading the page, or simply a button click behind a chevron.

We can kinda see where it all starts going off the cliff a bit. Instead of showing as many titles as possible, the design of the page changes. Big blocks, showing the title art of the game, typically taken up in a usual web fashion of 3 slots, with a scrolling action so you can see more featured titles. Below that then comes a pretty endless list of discounts.

I'm not knocking Valve on their design here. They have the numbers behind the scenes. They're the ones with billions of dollars and a team of people that probably understand human behaviour much better than I ever will. I just find it interesting to look at the screenshots, the numbers and know that I'm not going crazy.

Safe to say, if it isn't me that's changed, and everything else around me has. Then that's fine, I can at least point to that and go "I preferred the old way" without seeming crazy.

Conclusion

If I have a conclusion, it's really all just vibes. If you think things were better during your era, they might've been. But it's probably just whatever dynamic slice of content you got served up at the time? Seemingly, 10 people can be served entirely different storefronts or see a list of games at a different point in the scroll.

This can give the user the perception that the deals are bad, when someone else gets served something pretty cool. Despite that deal being available for both. As someone with over 700 games in their list. It's understandable it's harder to show me deals that I don't already own. Especialy when my current games list extends to world of warcraft, hearts of iron 4 and CIV 6. All of which undergo steep discounts, are constantly on sale, and I actually probably would re-buy them cause I love them so much. Showing me Halo Infinite at 30% off does absolutely nothing for me. Because it's priced at the new era of pricing, so it feels like such a scam to pay what is in my old mind full price for a game that should be about 10 bucks. If that.

Anyway, let me know what you think?