Valve has, once again, decided to take the consumer-friendly route with its latest Steam store update, because you’ll now be warned if you’re spending more on the game you’re about to purchase than you should.
Most billion-dollar companies are generally all about getting you to spend as much as possible.
The intricacies and pitfalls of capitalism is a topic probably best saved for someone much smarter than me to cover, like, for instance, Drew Gooden, but my point is that a company usually won’t go out of its way to warn you if there’s a way you could get a product for cheaper before you purchase it.
Valve, on the other hand, is seemingly built different, because a new feature that’s just been added to the Steam store will outright tell you if you can purchase a game using a cheaper method.
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As spotted by one user over on the r/Steam subreddit, Steam will now warn you during checkout if one of the games in your cart can be purchased for less (provided it's part of a bundle on the Steam store).
In ShiraNamiNani’s example, they’re trying to purchase Unrailed 2: Back on Track. That game is featured in the Unrailed Collection on Steam, which contains both Unrailed! and Unrailed 2: Back on Track.
Because they already own Unrailed!, purchasing the Unrailed Collection bundle would apply a further discount than just buying Unrailed 2: Back on Track by itself (because Steam makes bundles cheaper if you already own at least one of the games contained within them).
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As you can see in the image above, I tested this out for myself.
I already own Balatro, so because I went to purchase the game Rusty's Retirement, which is contained within the Balatro + Rusty's Retirement bundle, Steam has let me know that I could have saved a whopping 60 pence by opting to buy the bundle instead.
Alright, not the most exciting example, but it’s still nice that Valve is actively trying to save its customers money here.
Of course, the truly silly thing about all this is that, from a business standpoint, this will ultimately earn Steam more money in the long run.
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Little things like this will earn Steam loyal customers, who will then continue to use the Steam storefront in the future… which will result in them spending more money down the line.
It’s almost as if other storefronts could make more money by adopting some of these practices, too. What a novel idea. Maybe someone who works at Epic Games should be writing this down?