Valve Introduces Improved Revenue Reporting for Steam Discounts

Steam Sales

Valve has rolled out a new update to Steam’s revenue reporting system, designed to give developers clearer insights into how their discounts are performing.

The new feature doesn’t reinvent the wheel; it’s essentially the same data that developers could already access through Steamworks’ sales and activations reports. However, Valve has now reorganized the numbers to specifically highlight the financial impact of each discount run since November 2021.

This means if you’ve been experimenting with different sale percentages or lengths, you can now see which strategies worked best, neatly broken down by timeframe.

Valve explained the reasoning behind the change, stating that because developers and publishers have full control over pricing and discounting, it makes sense to present this information in a way that’s more practical when planning future sales..

When checking your discount history page, you’ll now see a new table split into four main columns:

• # - The number of times you’ve used a discount at the same percentage and base USD price.

• Revenue - The gross worldwide revenue during the discount period, shown in USD.

• $ per day - An average revenue-per-day metric, which helps compare shorter and longer promotions more fairly.

• Units - The total number of copies sold during the discount.

Beyond the table, developers can also view traffic and revenue details for the exact time each discount was active. Valve even added markers showing when price adjustments happened, which makes it easier to connect the dots between changes and sales spikes.

One thing worth noting is that Valve has warned that numbers in this report may not perfectly line up with the usual sales and activations page. That’s because the latter shows total revenue from all purchases on a given day, whether discounted or full price, while the new table focuses only on discount-specific sales.

As long as you have permission to "Manage Pricing and Discounts" and "View Financial Info" for a game, you’ll be able to access these details directly in Steamworks.

For developers who rely heavily on discounts to move units, this new reporting system could be a game-changer when it comes to planning future sales.