Steam has introduced a change in the shop. From now on, the lowest prices of the last 30 days will be displayed. This should make shopping on Steam easier for you, without the need to use additional addons.
Who doesn’t know this: Developers put their games on sale on Steam and claim that they will raise the price significantly very soon or advertise the lowest offer of all time. Valve had already restricted this by stating that developers can no longer reduce their games inflationarily and offer fake discounts (via techspot.com).
Now there is another change that is not entirely voluntary. To comply with European law, Steam now shows you the price developments of games over the last 30 days. You can see exactly whether developers have increased prices quietly and secretly, or whether the game has been cheaper at some point before. Valve announces this on Twitter:
Retailers in Germany are already doing this by indicating “price of the last 30 days” behind offers. This is part of the so-called Omnibus Directive of the EU: In discount promotions, the lowest price that was used within the last 30 days before the offer must be indicated.
Many gamers have been using addons for price checking
What alternatives are there? Many gamers who use Steam likely also use various addons to monitor prices. The most well-known is probably SteamDB, which not only allows you to view the lowest prices, but also offers other interesting data about the games. By the way, SteamDB also uses this to take jabs at Valve: We have been able to do this for a long time and in much more detail:
This price indication is probably not entirely voluntary, as so far only customers from the European Union benefit from this representation. Whether this feature will be available to players in the USA or other parts of the world is therefore questionable.
Nevertheless, this change should be helpful for many users, as they can see the price developments directly within the Steam client and no longer need to use external programs or addons. During the next Summer Sale, which will surely come, this will save some people time.
If you want to know when the next sale on Steam starts, then check out the following article on MeinMMO. Here we present all the important times related to the sales in 2023:
Steam: Schedule of all Sales 2023 revealed – Mark these dates before you buy
