
A new Steam Store feature gives you a price reduction of a game bundle if you already own other games from the series. Apparently, this comes as a sort of solution to the issue of Steam bundles you will often find during Steam sales. Say you already own the first two games of a series and you find the third one at a heavily discounted price with the only catch that it’s part of an ‘entire series’ bundle and you’d end up with duplicates of the previous titles.
That is great news for gamers awaiting the upcoming Steam sales and dire news for those who relied on and their friends getting duplicates and hoping they could squeeze off some free games from them.
This dynamic pricing mentality is a feature that makes a lot of sense for both the user and Valve. The former group will finally be able to not miss any more games simply because they find it redundant to pay $20 for a 4-game bundle when you already own 3 of them. The latter should find that they are able to increase sales that way as people feel less reluctant at purchasing bundles if they don’t have to deal with the idea of duplicates and wasted money.
The exact way this works is that if the Steam service detects that you own some of the titles in the Bundle you are viewing and considering buying, you will get a price reduction directly proportional to the titles you already own. That way, next sale you find should allow you to finish your series collection of whatever title you wish without having to spend extra resources.
Whether this means that during events such as Steam Summer Sale, we will be getting bundles and the individual games in it also at reduced price or not, is not yet known.
This piece of news itself has not yet been disclosed officially, at least not by Valve through a public announcement. However, various third party entities have retrieved official documentation from secure sources suggesting that this is a change planned by the company for the near future.
However, this change will only apply to games being purchased directly through Steam. Any kind of third party service that offers Steam keys for bundles and the like are not eligible for the feature. To list a few examples, G2A.com or HumbleBundle will not be made part of the upcoming change.
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