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Comment by mghackerlady

2 hours ago

They still have absolutely massive sales, they just aren't random anymore.

At least personally, I'd prefer having to wait a few months and having a good refund policy over more sales

50-75% off of AAA games from that year were not uncommon. I don't think the sales have ever really been comparable ever since. There are people who have put together Wayback machine compilations to compare - I just took a look at the 2014 and 2015 deals (refunds were ~ 2015) and there was a remarkable drop-off in the sales and variety of games at deep discount.

I think more importantly for Valve though - the daily flash sales were incredibly important to drive engagement and grow their presence.

I think the "why didn't Valve offer refunds before" is kind of revisionist. It wasn't clear that refunds were even a necessary component of cheaper digital games at the time.