Valve's Steam sales have been a pillar of PC gaming since the company started the storefront in 2003. While some might say the Steam sales of years ago tower over modern iterations, it's inarguable that Steam has continued to grow partially due to these seasonal events. Steam's most recent sale, the Autumn Sale 2020, ran from November 25 through December 1, and it was Valve's "biggest-ever" sale in terms of revenue for developers and publishers.
The achievement was confirmed in a lengthy breakdown of the Autumn Sale 2020 shared on the Steam community forum. Valve started with some details regarding customer participation in Steam's sale event. According to Valve, just under a million different users bought either a full game or a microtransaction for the very first time during the Autumn Sale. That was a 33 percent increase compared to the same Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales window in 2019.
While it isn't necessarily a direct connection, Valve also shares that Steam saw 24 million people using the service concurrently during the Autumn Sale, up more than seven million users compared to 2019's Autumn Sale peak. Perhaps not coincidentally, that's close to the same ratio of increased first-time buyers year-over-year.
That's not to say that Valve hasn't gone to great effort to improve certain aspects of Steam to more efficiently lead users into making more purchases. In its post, Valve states one of its goals is to "help players find the right games." Valve doesn't provide firm details, but does say that revenue increased for games of all sizes, whether they bring in $10,000 or $1,000,000. It says this was done with the help of better personalized recommendations, as well as new genre hubs in the store.
Valve also provides some information regarding its annual Steam Awards, as well as its Autumn Sale meta-event. Over 30 million nominations were cast this year, 5.3 million more than 2019. There were also apparently 1.6 million badges earned for leaving feedback on games. For Valve, this is a great indication of engagement with the platform, and it clearly contributed to improved sales numbers.
One interesting thing to note is Valve's language when describing the increased revenue. The company says this was Valve's biggest year in revenue specifically for developers and publishers, and there's no mention of Valve's own revenue numbers. It's possible that Valve's revenue was less, perhaps due to changes in revenue sharing, or that the company simply doesn't want to share those numbers due to increased scrutiny. Regardless, developers having more success through Steam is always great to hear.
Steam's winter sale is set to begin next week.
Source: Valve