A release date chosen without the sale calendar is the wrong date

Release dates usually get picked against the competition, but checking Steam’s sale and fest calendar gets skipped. That calendar draws the game’s first six months

The discount percentage you set for the launch discount also signals to the player how development is going to continue. For indies the sweet spot is usually between 15% and 30%, below that conversion is low, above it they lose confidence in the product and expect deeper discounts next time. I would say always run the launch discount for 14 days, so conversion stays open as long as possible. The more conversion in the first month, the better the signal for Steam

You need to release at least the length of your launch discount plus 30 days before any big sale. The 30 day rule that stops you discounting again does not normally apply to seasonal sales, but it does apply to a launch. For 30 days from the moment the launch discount ends you cannot enter any big Steam featured sale

There are only four seasonal featured sales a year, and the Winter and Autumn sales in particular sit very close together. A lot of games usually pile up there

Launching inside a featured sale is a bad call too. Overlapping does not save you, because it eats into your launch discount, you neither keep a discount that belongs to the release nor enter the sale on your own

Your first discount after launch has a band as well. The floor is 20%, because Steam only sends wishlist emails on discounts of 20% and above. Give 19% and that email never goes out, and the person on your list does not even hear about it. The ceiling is the rate you gave at launch, go above it and you break the price perception in the very first month

Wishlists not converting at launch is not a reason to panic either. In GameDiscoverCo’s scan, a median 22% of release wishlists convert in the first week and 27% in the first month. Three quarters of your list does not buy in the first month anyway, that is how the system works

Breaking that band has one more cost of its own. In the EU, Steam shows the lowest price of the last 30 days on the page, because of the Omnibus directive. So if you panicked and went deep early, your next discount looks bad on paper, you are the one giving the discount but the player sees that nothing got cheaper

Once the launch window is over the rule flips. The game barely sells at full price any more, so every day you are not on discount is a wasted day. From there on your goal is to stay on discount for as long as possible. You work out when it ended from your own graph, not from the calendar, it ended on the day full price sales flattened

A discount runs 14 days at most, and you have to wait 30 days between two discounts. So in a 44 day cycle you are on discount for 14 days at most. On top of that there are four seasonal sales a year and they are exempt from that wait. On paper the ceiling is roughly 40% of the year, and most developers do not use even half of it

You also cannot discount for 30 days after a price increase. The discount floor is 10%, the ceiling is 95%, the length is 1 to 14 days. While a discount is live or scheduled you cannot touch the price at all, and you cannot sell the game below 1 dollar

Price thresholds matter too. On Steam’s store page and in the search filter the lists run in 5 dollar bands, under 5 dollars, under 10 dollars, under 20 dollars. Another rule that matters when you discount is which threshold you cross. A 5% discount from 21 dollars gains you nothing, but dropping to 19.99 puts you in a completely different list, and so does going from 11 dollars to 9.99

Before you pick the date, open the seasonal sale calendar and draw the 30 day cooldown on top of it. Which sale you make, which one you miss, which week your first real discount falls in. All of this is knowable while you are still choosing the date

A discount is not a tool for rescuing sales, it is a tool for reaching a new audience. Every time you drop the price you are not selling to your existing audience, you are selling to the audience you are visible to at that price for the first time, and aggressive early price drops affect your wishlist conversions