How long you have to wait before a Steam game goes on sale

If you’re a PC gamer on a budget, chances are you regularly take advantage of Steam discounts and flash sales.

Many gamers no longer buy games at release, waiting instead for early sales and discounts before purchasing, which leads to the increased amount of sales on Steam.

While it is difficult to measure how long it will be before your can grab your favourite game at a 50% discount, by measuring trends in Steam pricing data from the last few years, PC Gamer has constructed a reasonably accurate time scale for Steam sales after release.

Using SteamDB data from 2014, 2015, and 2016, PC Gamer has identified the following trends regarding Steam sales:

2014

2015

2016

Conclusion

According to the above data, popular triple-A games get a 50% discount after an average of 7 months. These include games such as The Witcher 3 and Dark Souls.

Popular indie games take an average of 9.2 months to hit 50% discount, slightly longer than their triple-A counterparts.

The less popular a game is, the more it will be discounted, and the quicker you will see it on sale.