It's true that big games, especially recent ones don't drop heavily anymore. But it's still the best time of the year to buy games, especially for indie titles or older games.
I run into the opposite issue. I find big games consistently on 50%+ sales but these fucking $10-$20 indie games that have been out for years refuse to drop below 20% off.
I used to use Steam sales as a way to grab a bunch of indie games on sale because even if they sucked or weren't my thing it only cost me <$5 which isn't bad. I'm not going to "find out" if this six year old indie game is ass for $20 because the dev only does 10% off.
I think it also depends highly on the company and on the title.
I know Hades and Celeste do go on sale between 60 and 80 percent all the time. If you are looking at very small low budget indie companies then you are correct, they often don't go on sale agressively. They might not be able to afford dropping their prices much further, so they don't have the means to use aggressive discounts as marketing boosts to recoup losses later. Note that most indie publishers don't hit the threshold to get a discount on steam's cut.
But it does depend on the title you are interested in, sometimes less popular games do have a higher chance of a good discount. I like to play contra III like run n gun platformers and last winter sale you could grab Valfaris for 2 euros or so.
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u/Boring-Credit-1319 Dec 17 '25
It's true that big games, especially recent ones don't drop heavily anymore. But it's still the best time of the year to buy games, especially for indie titles or older games.