Valve wrapped up its latest Steam sale event on Monday, and now Steam Spy creator Sergey Galyonkin reports that (based on Steam Spy data) developers actually earned more in this sale than in the same event a year prior.
That’s notable for two reasons: First, because the numbers themselves are interesting. According to Galyonkin, during the latest Steam summer sale (which ran for roughly 11 days between June 23rd and July 4th) the platform saw roughly $236 million in revenue generated from sales of roughly 37 million games.
That’s a nearly 50 percent increase from the $160 million in revenue Steam Spy reported during last year’ Steam summer sale, which also ran for roughly 11 days but wrapped up prior to July 4th, traditionally celebrated as a holiday in the United States that merits a long weekend off work.
Second, last year’s Steam summer sale featured “flash deals” in which select games went on sale for a much deeper discount than usual, for a limited time, seemingly to encourage impulse buys.
This year featured no such flash deals (after Valve did away with the concept last fall), and yet Steam Spy reports overall revenue and sales rose year-over-year. Responding to Galyonkin on Twitter, Defender’s Quest dev Lars Doucet opined this was, in part, actually because Valve removed flash deals.
As always, there are significant caveats to the data Steam Spy generates — for example, Paradox Interactive has removed its entire game catalog from the tracker — and thus clear risks in relying on it as you make decisions about how to sell your game.
Still, Gamasutra has heard from multiple developers that Steam Spy estimates match up with their own internal sales data. Galyonkin is expected to publish further findings from Steam Spy’s study of this year’s summer sale later this week.