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72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study
(www.gamesindustry.biz)
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this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2025
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Even that isn't true which a quick search on isthereanydeals before buying games will show a lot of times when it comes to steam key prices.
Recent example is ARC Raiders. https://isthereanydeal.com/game/arc-raiders/info/
Current best price is 15% off for $34.17 versus $39.99 on Steam. And all time low was $31.92.
People are missing out on deals if they assume Steam store price is the lowest price for Steam games.
But the key price is the same, they giving you a discount. They can't change the price of 100$ to 80$ without giving a 20% discount.
They can set retail price to $1000 for all I care. As long as the actual sale price is $10 for instance is all that matters. And putting off permanent price for as long as possible to not devalue products and get more customers during sales due to thinking it is a deal is common strategy.
Its actually why when epic did coupons and covering the discount some publishers opted out because they didn't want their games to sell that low yet even if the profit taken is the same. Because they were aware price tracking sites would lead people like me to pass on future sales seeing that the price had been lower, so deciding to wait instead of "overpaying" compared to the all time low.
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/teething-pains-for-epic-games-store-as-publishers-opt-out-of-debut-mega-sale-
It does matters because is how price parity works, promotions has a beginning and end date, it's not based on the lowest price at a time but in the consistency of the price.
What business would want to sell a product at the same low price all the time. They want to sell it at the highest price possible, but will have sales to also reach more price sensitive consumers over time as those willing to pay more decreases. But, not keep it permanently low to sell games to consumers who would pay more between sales.
Anyways when it comes to this comment I had responded to.
Point of my comment to them in providing data of ARC Raiders being cheaper outside of Steam is that in actual real world cases Steam copies have and are being sold cheaper than on Steam. And its not the exception as data from isthereanydeals shows.
I linked their own guidelines regarding steam key prices. They do require price parity with steam for steam keys. (with some exceptions)
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
Key word being comparable as opposed to same. And its not even theoretical. Just looking at games from isthereanydeals which provides historical lows over the years from numerous storefronts shows that many games have had sales cheaper than Steam.
And personal experience too buying many steam keys over buying from Steam because the prices were lower.
You could try to argue how comparable means same, but I'd say how real world sales has steam keys lower than the steam store is what matters more, since its actually what we pay.