NBA 2K23 isn't a high point for the basketball series by many accounts—it hasn't helped its Steam user review average that we got the last-gen version—but I was still a little taken aback to see it on sale for $9.59 as part of Steam Sports Fest. That's an 84% price cut well under a year after release.
It turns out that this is normal for 2K's NBA series. Price history data from SteamDB shows that NBA 2K22 and NBA 2K21 were also discounted by 84% on Steam just eight months after they came out. The games always release in September, which puts their big discounts in May, and it doesn't take Alan Turing to crack this code: 2K cuts the price of its latest NBA game during the NBA playoffs. (It took a little longer for NBA 2K20 to get its 84% discount, which probably has something to do with the season being suspended that year.)
