Valve’s announced a change to the way it’s handling its annual seasonal sales. The changes go into effect at the start of calendar year 2023, but the publisher is putting this information out now so developers and publishers have enough time to prepare.
Lunar New Year sales will be replaced with a Spring sale, something Valve says has been heavily requested by devs and publishers alike for some time now. “It’ll allow us to create more space between our four major seasonal sales and provide more opportunities throughout the year for developers to expand and execute their discounting calendar,” it wrote.
This year’s autumn sale will run from November 22 to 29, and the winter sale will run December 22 to January 5, 2023. Finally, spring’s seasonal sales begin on March 16 and end on March 23.
Lunar New Year sales have gone on at Steam since 2016 in an effort to celebrate developers and players in regions such as China or South Korea. However, its proximity to Steam’s winter sales would cause a clash, and Valve admitted that the feedback caused it to rethink its seasonal strategy.
“We think many publishers will still opt to discount games around the Lunar New Year holiday, using the custom discount tools. But we suspect customers will be better served by a little bit more time between the big Steam-wide seasonal sales.”
Last week, Valve announced an overhaul to its Steam charts, which now have weekly and real-time updates. It explained that the new charts would help “provide a better overview for what is hot on Steam right now,” and one can imagine that the combined overhaul of seasonal sales and charts will help developers plan out discounts going forward.