Discount by default: Steam allows up to 40%, for 7 to 14 days
A launch discount is the right starting assumption for most paid games, and Steam's own rules explain why.
A launch discount is an introductory price cut applied on release day. It is the only discount Steam permits in a game's first 30 days: Valve's discounting documentation states that a product cannot be discounted for 30 days after its release, and names the launch discount as the exception to that rule.
Valve sets three hard limits on it:
- The discount cannot exceed 40%.
- It cannot run shorter than 7 days or longer than 14 days.
- You cannot change the game's base price while a discount is active or already scheduled.
Depth above 20% buys no extra reach at launch. Wishlisters receive a release notification from Steam whether or not the game is discounted. The separate discount notification requires a cut of 20% or more, and Valve documents a 1 to 2 week cooldown between wishlist emails for the same game, so a discounted launch does not send wishlisters a second message during launch week. Anything past 20% is a margin decision, not a visibility one.
Launch discount vs full price, compared on six criteria
| Criterion | Launch with a discount | Launch at full price |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue per unit | Lower for 7 to 14 days | Full for the whole first month |
| Units needed for the same week-one gross | More (a 15% cut needs about 18% more units) | Baseline |
| Wishlist notification at launch | Release notification, same as full price | Release notification |
| Earliest next discount | Roughly 30 days after the launch discount ends | 30 days after release |
| Base price changes | Locked while the discount is active or scheduled | Free to change until you schedule a discount |
| Signal to buyers | Rewards early adopters, sets a first reference price | Holds the full price as the reference point |
Seasonal Steam sales are exempt from the cooldown rules in row four, so a Summer or Autumn sale inside your first weeks can override that row entirely.
The discount cooldown is Steam's rule that a game cannot go on discount within 30 days of another discount. It is the row studios most often miss: taking a 14-day launch discount pushes your next non-seasonal discount to roughly day 44, while launching at full price makes day 31 available.
Four cases where launching at full price wins
Price the game under about $10. A 15% cut on a $7.99 game saves the buyer $1.20. That is rarely the difference between buying and not buying, and it costs you 15% of every unit sold in your best week.
Plan a price increase. Valve's rules prevent a discount for 30 days following a price increase in any currency, and block base price changes while a discount is live or scheduled. If a game leaves Early Access at a higher price, or moves up a price band after launch, the launch discount ties your hands for the surrounding month.
Launch inside a seasonal sale window. Seasonal sales are exempt from the cooldowns above, so a game releasing days before one can hold full price at launch and take the discount when the sale traffic arrives instead.
Sit at the bottom of your genre's price band already. If comparable games sell for $24.99 and yours is $14.99, the price is doing the work a discount would otherwise do, and cutting further mostly moves revenue rather than units.
Set the depth by the units you need to break even
Work back from the extra sales the discount has to produce.
A studio with 20,000 wishlists at launch, using the roughly 10 to 11 week-one sales per 100 wishlists in our steam wishlist conversion rate benchmark, should expect about 2,000 to 2,200 week-one units. Week-one conversion here means week-one sales divided by the wishlist count on launch day. At $19.99, 2,100 units is about $42,000 gross before Steam's cut. Drop to 15% off ($16.99) and you need about 2,470 units, roughly 18% more, to reach the same gross.
That is the number the discount has to earn. Published Steam benchmark data puts first-year revenue at roughly 3.5 to 4.5 times week-one revenue, which is directional rather than precise, so a decision that lifts week one usually lifts the year with it.
Price is only one of the two launch levers, and it is the smaller one. Reach is the other, and Steam gives every game exactly one wishlist notification at release. Engage sends AI-personalized emails to wishlisted players across the pre-launch and launch window, which is more contact than that one notification allows: in Ubisoft's Might & Magic: Fates campaign it produced 2.8x higher Day 1 purchase conversion, 6.64% versus 2.37%.
Sources: Valve documentation on discounts and wishlists. Immutable's own Steam wishlist conversion benchmark. Published Steam benchmark data for the first-year revenue multiple, which is a directional industry-wide range, not a precise prediction for any single game. Immutable customer data (Ubisoft, Might & Magic: Fates).
