Historical low info from the extension becomes less relevant after a price raise

[enchained]

Steam updated their recommended regional prices at the end of October, and some publishers already raised their prices. In some regions, like Turkey and Argentina, new price is up to x5 higher than it was. This also means, that while "SteamDB lowest recorded price is" is still correct from the historical point of view, it is not practical anymore in such cases, since you can't rely on it when making purchase decisions, cause you probably won't see it being that low ever again.

Maybe, when the lowest price date is earlier than the last price raise, a red asterisk can be shown after the "lowest recorded price" with "price was raised to N at date" tooltip at hover? Or, you could even move the old lowest data to that tooltip, and display "lowest recorded price after base price raise is" instead by default.

This can be useful not only for the extension, but for SteamDB /sales page too. Right now most discounts from affected games fall into the plain "not green or blue" category, and will be filtered out, which means any discount progression may be missed in the future, unless you follow specific games closely and read their graph on sales.

Proposed changes will also be useful for Early Access games, since they tend to raise prices incrementally before the release, and relying on the extension historical price data on the store page means that you may miss a good discount thinking to wait for that historical low again.

Some game examples: https://steamdb.info/app/877810/ https://steamdb.info/app/977880/ https://steamdb.info/app/894020/ https://steamdb.info/app/370020/ EA: https://steamdb.info/app/1217060/ https://steamdb.info/app/1160490/ https://steamdb.info/app/758870/ https://steamdb.info/app/1794680/ https://steamdb.info/app/1227650/

[xPaw]

I am aware of this, related: https://twitter.com/thexpaw/status/1596434325758959616

[enchained]

Thanks, I noticed the new indicator on the sales page today, and I think it could potentially solve a lot of issues with the older lows, and gain those discounts a better visibility. Are there any plans to also affect the extension by those changes?

I thought about time limiting the lows for a while. Back then the price raises were a rare occurrence and two years would be good enough for most cases. But sadly it means that in the more recent cases the new indication will become effective only after 2 years pass since the raise.

I suppose that more complex solutions will be much harder to implement, but hope that some of my ideas can be useful.

Also, regarding the price raises. Is it possible to somehow filter https://steamdb.info/pricechanges/ for when the price becomes equal to the new suggested price for subs? Maybe also some filters to hide when there was no old price, show only + or only -, up to N%, only popular titles, etc. It would help discovering recent raises.

[xPaw]

The sales pages indicator is me experimenting with this idea, if I flesh it out, I will likely add similar info to the extension.

While 2 years might be long for particular cases, I think it neatly solves all the different cases. Relying on "since price increase" is not something I can or want to do.

Even this feature isn't as simple as it may sound, there's quite a few things to think about (which I have not yet).

Maybe also some filters to hide when there was no old price, show only + or only -, up to N%

Sounds like an okay idea to hide new subs, make a new issue.

[enchained]

While 2 years might be long for particular cases, I think it neatly solves all the different cases.

Yes, it seems that 2 years mark can cover a lot of ground already, so I'm looking forward to seeing its results during the upcoming sale.

Relying on "since price increase" is not something I can or want to do.

What about just adding an asterisk warning indicating that base price increased since that low was last recorded? Just for the data displayed by the extension, without calculating the new low and all that. I think it's not even necessary to read the price history for that, a comparison of current base price with base price of historical low can also work.

Sounds like an okay idea to hide new subs, make a new issue.

Created it here: https://github.com/SteamDatabase/steamdb.info-issues/issues/767

[xPaw]

I don't store base price of apps because it changes depending on which package was selected as the lowest price. (e.g. a bundle is cheaper than the base game alone).

[Squaredude]

Yeah, this is becoming a problem here in Argentina.

We've had several increases in the past 6-12 months. The historical low information provided by the extension on a game's Store Page is basically wrong 9 times out of 10 because it's using lows from 1-2 years ago.

I don't even look at the information from the extension anymore, I just click to go to the SteamDB page and check out the graphic myself. The situation is that bad.

I'm not sure what the best solution would be, though.