Steam deals don't "cannibalise" sales, says Valve's director of business management

You love Steam sales.

You love Steam sales. I love Steam sales. EA, however, don't love Steam sales. Just a few weeks ago their senior vice president made his opinion clear, claiming that they "cheapen" intellectual property. A few days ago the Origin Summer Salekicked off anyway.

We asked Valve's director of business management, Jason Holtman, whether Steam sales have any affect on day-one purchases during last week's Develop conference. He doesn't agree with EA. Not even a little bit.

"If that's what we thought was happening, or that's what we saw happening, we wouldn't do it. Actually, all the data is contrary to that. A promotion is not a policy; a promotion is just a feature to give people more value," said Jason, speaking to PC Gamer.

"It's not as if a 75% offer or a 50% off sale at some point in time cannibalises a sale that would have happened earlier, it's just not true. We're actually seeing both of them growing. We don't see one cannibalising the other. If we did, we wouldn't do it." he continued.

Steam sales go from the sublime to the ridiculous-ly cheap. There's even one going on right now. Check out this real time evidence of a Steam summer salein progress. It's a wonderful time for bargains.

"We put Left 4 Dead 2 and Portal 2 on sale. If we thought that was killing our franchise, or hurting the value of games, or hurting the revenue we could generate as a company, we wouldn't do it," continues Jason. "We've even gone so far as to give away Portal for free a couple of times. Whole days where it's not free for a day, it's just free."

Valve's sales still weren't dented: "We looked at this amazing data afterwards. The day after the sales were exactly the same, if not more," he says.

"People aren't making a decision thinking 'I'm always going to wait for perfect pricing.' There are time elements to it, there are fan elements to it, there are value elements to it. People sometimes like paying the full amount on the first day because they want to play it now and they want to be a fan.

"Those features you're talking about - like the sales - we just think of them as customer features. They're not policies or mandates. Things like this are super smart: this would be fun; people would play this game; they'd pick it up if they didn't have it; they'd tell their friends about it."

For more from Jason, check our story on how TF2 inspired Greenlight. We've also posted his views on Greenlight's rating system.

Thanks to Dan Griliopoulosfor the image.