Should ‘Flash Sales’ return to Steam?


The Steam sales are one of the year’s top events, no doubt. These allow you to purchase games at discounted prices for a 2 week period, as is the case with the summer and winter sales which are held every year.

And Steam has clearly become the place of choice for those looking to buy digital games online, while the sales themselves are big events which attract millions of users in each year.

One thing has been missing from the sales these last couple of years, though. This is because Steam’s “Flash Sales” have been nowhere to be seen since 2016, when Valve decided to axe these in favour of one permanent discount for each game during the sale.

This means that if a game got, say a 50 % discount during Steam’s summer sale, it would not get a deeper discount at any point during the sale as was the case before. Actually, with Steam’s Flash Sales some games got discounts of even 90 % for a limited period of time (typically 8 hours within the 2 weeks the main sale usually lasts for).

This was something which likely thrilled bargain hunters, who could later brag to their friends about having gotten a game even cheaper during the Flash Sale, even if it left those who made the purchase at a higher price reeling…

And those who enjoyed the bargain hunting aspect of the Flash Sales will be thrilled to find out that these could be coming back to Steam as was reported by PC Gamer. Actually, according to the video game outlet, Valve News Network has found information in the Steam Translation Server (where volunteers translate text pertaining to Steam into other languages) which suggests the Flash Sales could be coming back, with a duration specified by the game makers (which can be 6, 8, 10 or 12 hours now).

And while I personally would be delighted if that was the case, there’s a case to be made against Flash Sales coming back, and it has to do with the reason why these probably went away in the first place.

This is because gamers who take part in the sale can always resort to Steam’s refund policy in order to get their money back and buy the game again when they see it going for less during a Flash Sale, even if admittedly they would have a limited window of time to do this (at most the 12 hours during which the game would be offered with a higher discount than during the rest of the sale).

Nonetheless, given that the Flash Sales added an element of excitement to Steam’s sales (which admittedly are a bit more boring without these now) I’m rooting for Flash Sales to return at some point in the future, so hopefully Valve goes through with the idea and Steam’s next sale does bring back the good old Flash Sales back.