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Tom’s Hardware
Tom’s Hardware
Technology
Hassam Nasir

Valve might be adding a 30-day price tracker to Steam — feature is already available in some EU countries to spoof out fake discounts

Steam cover art .

Steam is the most popular marketplace for games on PC, and Valve keeps adding new features to make it even better. One of the reasons behind Steam's prevalence is its pricing — how some games cost less in certain regions, and how often they're discounted in sales. Now, it seems like Valve is adding a 30-day price history right inside the store to let you track any recent changes and get the best deal possible.

Backend changes show multiple new strings in Steam's codebase that refer to price tracking, in particular, if a game is the cheapest it has been in the past 30 days. This data should show up in the buy box, next to the price and 'Add to Cart' options. There can be up to three different columns showing the typical price, the 30-day low, and the current price, based on which you can decide whether it's the right time to buy it.

We can infer all of this because this feature is technically not new; it's been available in the EU since 2023, but not every country in the region. By law, the EU Omnibus Directive mandates that all storefronts show the recent price of a product to safeguard consumers from fake discounts. For instance, a developer could raise the price from $20 to $60 for one day, then immediately "drop" it to $30 and claim it was 50% off.

Comment from r/Steam

Showing the price history for the previous month ensures stuff like this doesn't happen or, at least, the buyer is aware of it. That being said, even outside of the EU, Steam users have been able to track prices through third-party tools like SteamDB that offer a much more comprehensive outlook. You can check the all-time price history on SteamDB, along with regional prices (averaged against USD) for any game.

Since Valve is now considering adding support for price history in Steam natively, it will only help make more informed purchasing decisions, even if SteamDB offers better tracking otherwise. In other news, Valve is also reportedly developing "SteamGPT," its very own AI bot for customer support that might even be able to interface with CS2's anti-cheat. Clearly, it takes a lot for Steam to remain at the top, even if rival marketplaces are trying to become more competitive.

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