• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
  • We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.

Steam Summer Sale metagame may have caused spike in wishlist deletions of indie games

Jintor

Jintor

Saw the truth behind the copied door
Member
Oct 25, 2017
32,432
So Steam is running the usual Summer Sale and their sale metagame where you buy things and do things in selected games to get points to contribute towards a team total, and whoever gets the most points might get a wishlisted game for free.

While the game you get is the game ranked no 1 on your wishlist, that is buried in the rules of the contest - the promo text just says 'win wishlisted games'. So users are apparently deleting smaller, low-cost games off their wishlist in favour of higher-cost triple A games.

L1IICrI.png


HejYD0E.png


Check the threads below, with a number of indie devs chiming in:





Pre-release wishlists are considered extremely important for profitability measures; I don't know how it affects current-release or early-access games, but I expect they are still fairly important, though obviously not likely to be full conversions. As noted by a number of devs Sales are usually wishlist clearing houses in any event, since a lot of people look at their wishlists for the first time in ages and re-sort them during sales periods, but this seems notably higher than usual.

/edit apparently the rules clarification about the top wishlisted item wasn't on the rules yesterday, but i haven't verified that.
 
Last edited:
stumblebee

stumblebee

The Fallen
Jan 22, 2018
2,504
I never liked the little minigames associated with Steam sales. Always seem like a half baked attempt to get you to engage more with the platform.
 
Ababol

Ababol

Member
Oct 25, 2017
334
I don't know why did they bother with this half-assed event. It'd be better to have trading cards instead of this convoluted mess that's more annoying than fun.
 
brokenswiftie

brokenswiftie

Prophet of Truth
Banned
May 30, 2018
2,921
You don't have to actually delete the games from your wishlist
Just rearrange them
People are lazy or dumb, your choice
 
Danzflor

Danzflor

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,710
stumblebee said:
I never liked the little minigames associated with Steam sales. Always seem like a half baked attempt to get you to engage more with the platform.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Not to mention, people immediately found a way to exploit and trick the system, the last couple days a single team has been destroying the competition, there's no point on even participating.

Into the thread's issue, I had sincerely no idea wishlisting was THAT important for sales, especially indie games. And yeah, Valve should be a lil' more specific with his contests, you know people don't read/care a lot about the details these days.
 
Ababol

Ababol

Member
Oct 25, 2017
334
brokenswiftie said:
You don't have to actually delete the games from your wishlist
Just rearrange them
People are lazy or dump your choice
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

To be fair, the wishlist is very laggy, rearranging it is very cumbersome and browser search doesn't work on it, at least for me. To make things worse, if you use the wishlist search, it rearranges the wishlist with those search results first.
 
RecRoulette

RecRoulette

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
26,044
I remember adding a ton of expensive games to my wishlist because of something similar a few years back

I didn't realize so many indie devs tracked stuff like that.
 
OP
OP
Jintor

Jintor

Saw the truth behind the copied door
Member
Oct 25, 2017
32,432
Masterspeed said:
If someone deletes their game from their wish list, then they weren't very interested anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
RecRoulette said:
I remember adding a ton of expensive games to my wishlist because of something similar a few years back

I didn't realize so many indie devs tracked stuff like that.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I think the reason is not necessarily that those wishlists themselves will convert, but that high amounts of wishlists boosts discoverability significantly with Steam's rather opaque algorithms. I'm not 100% on that though.
 
brokenswiftie

brokenswiftie

Prophet of Truth
Banned
May 30, 2018
2,921
Danzflor said:
Not to mention, people immediately found a way to exploit and trick the system, the last couple days a single team has been destroying the competition, there's no point on even participating.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Although I wouldn't call it an exploit the options valve gave are downright stupid

When the options a bunny, tortoise, dog, bird and a pig No shit most people are choosing a dog
Like why is there no cat option for some actual competition

The odds to get a game are higher in a 2nd place since sooo many people chose team corgi
 
matrix-cat

matrix-cat

Member
Oct 27, 2017
10,284
This year's event is the most arcane, inscrutable one they've done yet. The actual mechanics of the capacity/points/tokens economy are convoluted, the FAQs and explanations provided by Valve are ambiguous and vaguely-worded, and the kicker is that it's just a really lousy deal. Most people would have been better served by the usual couple of dollars of Trading Card money.

I'm not surprised that it's having unforeseen consequences elsewhere, too. It really doesn't seem like Valve thought this through at all.
 
Daphne

Daphne

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
3,690
I'm not surprised. It's the first thing I thought of to do upon seeing the rewards but then I read the rules properly. The game also seems broken because everyone joined the leading team.
 
Bony Manifesto

Bony Manifesto

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,587
Jintor said:
I think the reason is not necessarily that those wishlists themselves will convert, but that high amounts of wishlists boosts discoverability significantly with Steam's rather opaque algorithms. I'm not 100% on that though.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I think the main benefit of being on people's wishlists is that Steam will send an email to them whenever the game goes on sale. And considering the wishlist is basically a list of 'wait for a sale' games for most people (I know it is for me), it's effective marketing.
 

Deleted member 3196

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
1,280
matrix-cat said:
This year's event is the most arcane, inscrutable one they've done yet. The actual mechanics of the capacity/points/tokens economy are convoluted, the FAQs and explanations provided by Valve are ambiguous and vaguely-worded, and the kicker is that it's just a really lousy deal. Most people would have been better served by the usual couple of dollars of Trading Card money.

I'm not surprised that it's having unforeseen consequences elsewhere, too. It really doesn't seem like Valve thought this through at all.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This. I'm not a fan of this one, and this wishlist removal is a really unfortunate side effect too. I think this Grand Prix idea is really fun, but the different points and subsystems are just too labyrinthine for what is in essence a two week sales event. They should've simplified it.
 
werezompire

werezompire

Zeboyd Games
Verified
Oct 26, 2017
11,378
I would imagine sales in general would lead to a boost in wishlist deletion, regardless of any contests. A sale starts, you go to your wishlist to see what games you want are on sale, and then prune the list as you realize you're never actually going to buy Game A even now when it's heavily discounted. Or you realize that you still have Game B on your wishlist even though you already bought it on a different platform.

Looking at the wishlist stats for our own games, I noticed an increase in wishlist activity in general with the sale - wishlist deletion, addition, and wishlist converted to purchasing. Not saying that other developers aren't getting hit differently, but at least for us, I'm not seeing anything particularly unusual.
 
Fanta

Fanta

Member
May 27, 2018
508
I've used this event to finally clean up my wishlist and cut it down to half the amount it used to be.
 
Dyle

Dyle

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
29,944
This sale's metagame is a mess. I joined a team and once I figured out what you were supposed to do it was clear that it was way too cumbersome to actually focus on.
 
Weebos

Weebos

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,060
This thread reminded me to clean up my own wishlist.

I don't buy anything on steam, I just use it as a nice way to watch for console ports lol.
 

devSin

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,196
I cleaned up my wishlist. The sale was just an excuse to clear out stuff I know I'll never buy.

Then again, I use the wishlist exclusively for games I will purchase at some point, so it was already small (I've never had more than 10 games on it).
 
.exe

.exe

Member
Oct 25, 2017
22,240
What's (also) odd is that on that graph the spike looks like it's happening before the sale. But the final interval (June 23-26) is also longer than the others for some reason. Previously it's a two day interval but the last one is three.
 
ZKenir

ZKenir

Member
Mar 31, 2018
4,438
werezompire said:
A sale starts, you go to your wishlist to see what games you want are on sale, and then prune the list as you realize you're never actually going to buy Game A even now when it's heavily discounted.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This is me every sale, I removed about 50 games from my wishlist and also removed everything else that's on gamepass while I was at it (besides anything Halo and Gears 5)
 
.exe

.exe

Member
Oct 25, 2017
22,240
PaulLFC said:
You don't have to be dumb to find the convoluted mess of an event Valve created difficult to understand. It's just terribly designed.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I don't see what's at all ambiguous about "random members of the top first, second and third place teams will receive the top item from their Steam Wishlist". The rest of the event, sure. It's buggy, convoluted, etc.

Another explanation in the thread that seems just as likely:



So like other people, including myself, did. Decided to clean up my huge wishlists upon being incentivized to rank a top game.

Edit: so supposedly part of the phrasing about wishlists was more ambiguous at the start of the event? That might've done it.


Edit 2: So it's multiple effects probably overlapping. First day, there's some ambiguous text, but also very importantly there's no incentive this time around to go through your queue like in previous events, where you were awarded Steam cards for doing so + people going over their wishlists when asked to rank.
 
Last edited:
matrix-cat

matrix-cat

Member
Oct 27, 2017
10,284
Skyebaron said:
I would love some decent sale discounts in place of some stupid minigame.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

What if you could spend $150 to get a $5 discount* on your next purchase?

* Provided you've unlocked enough Steam Achievements in games so you can idle in them to fill your point capacity and then pick a team and spend those points on boosting the team so you can convert the points into tokens and then buy the discount with your tokens
 
Kyougar

Kyougar

Cute Animal Whisperer
Member
Nov 3, 2017
9,359
werezompire said:
I would imagine sales in general would lead to a boost in wishlist deletion, regardless of any contests. A sale starts, you go to your wishlist to see what games you want are on sale, and then prune the list as you realize you're never actually going to buy Game A even now when it's heavily discounted. Or you realize that you still have Game B on your wishlist even though you already bought it on a different platform.

Looking at the wishlist stats for our own games, I noticed an increase in wishlist activity in general with the sale - wishlist deletion, addition, and wishlist converted to purchasing. Not saying that other developers aren't getting hit differently, but at least for us, I'm not seeing anything particularly unusual.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I do this.
I have a dozen games on my wishlist which are there only to buy them if there are really good sales for them. But when I see 25% to 50% max for 4 straight years, I will just delete them from the Wishlist.
 
neoak

neoak

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,264
What happens if the top game on my wish list does not exist on Steam anymore

It's Universe at War, and it shows as "Uninitialized"
 
Rickenslacker

Rickenslacker

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,415
You would think with all the years of store running and their exploitation of player psychology they'd have seen that coming.
 
Doomguy Fieri

Doomguy Fieri

Member
Nov 3, 2017
5,268
When you let the algorithm design your sale mini-game. I had to re-read the game systems a couple times, and still don't fully understand what's going on.
 
elyetis

elyetis

Member
Oct 26, 2017
4,556
PaulLFC said:
You don't have to be dumb to find the convoluted mess of an event Valve created difficult to understand. It's just terribly designed.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The event might be convoluted, but the reward part isn't at all.

As soon as they tell you about the reward it is immediatly told that it's not a random game from the wishlist but top games from the wishlist.

People are dumb and Valve was dumb to underestimate how dumb they can be.
werezompire said:
I would imagine sales in general would lead to a boost in wishlist deletion, regardless of any contests. A sale starts, you go to your wishlist to see what games you want are on sale, and then prune the list as you realize you're never actually going to buy Game A even now when it's heavily discounted. Or you realize that you still have Game B on your wishlist even though you already bought it on a different platform.

Looking at the wishlist stats for our own games, I noticed an increase in wishlist activity in general with the sale - wishlist deletion, addition, and wishlist converted to purchasing. Not saying that other developers aren't getting hit differently, but at least for us, I'm not seeing anything particularly unusual.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That's how I have been doing things in the past ~2-3 years I think. Sales are the time where I decide to remove games from my wishlist so that it doesn't go above 200 games ( I might even try to get it down to 150 this time ). It's the time of the year where you realize that even at -x% you still don't actually want to buy the game, so you might as well remove it.
 
I KILL PXLS

I KILL PXLS

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,542
daxy said:
I don't see what's at all ambiguous about "random members of the top first, second and third place teams will receive the top item from their Steam Wishlist". The rest of the event, sure. It's buggy, convoluted, etc.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I didn't even know you could rank your wishlist and I've messed with it a decent amount so I'm sure that has something to do with it. I had no clue what they meant by "top item". Steam in general has some UX problems.
 
Dusk Golem

Dusk Golem

Local Horror Enthusiast
Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,804
I have small cheap little games on Steam.

So breaking down my own personal data, this is happening but it's not that big of a deal.

So first, my unreleased games have not been affected by this, let this be said first.

Here's one of my games, Red Haze:

dd87cda845efa091902fab9920d0b231.png


So as you can see, it indeed has happened to Red Haze, but the data looks scarier than it actually is. The game is normally $2.99 USD, and has something like 18,000 people who still currently have it wishlisted.

Here's a game of mine named Found Horror Game 11.exe:

6fe467fa7dfc4c937dff44ea50f59580.png


This one is actually kinda' weird in the results. The game is $3.99 USD usually, and the newest day is not incomplete data from today but yesterday. The first day it saw a spike, but the second day it went way down in that area. The actual numbers are not very high at all though.

The other games are similar to this, so while this is true across the board, it also isn't that bad. Some people are being stupid misunderstand yes, but I would bet the people who deleted these weren't that interested in the first place either. I also recall this is kinda' normal for Steam sales, like here's the data of the same two games from the last Winter Sale:

Red Haze last Winter Sale:

bfda2481ac12a8989349818f57a70768.png


Found Horror Game 11.exe last Winter Sale:

91618d006a30c7aa8b2d4d97c57a1f64.png


There is an increase this sale, but it's not that bad I think.
 
.exe

.exe

Member
Oct 25, 2017
22,240
I KILL PXLS said:
I didn't even know you could rank your wishlist and I've messed with it a decent amount so I'm sure that has something to do with it. I had no clue what they meant by "top item". Steam in general has some UX problems.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Ranking has been around for the better part of a decade fwiw :p
 
exodus

exodus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,951
I deleted a bunch of games as a result of the sale. It wasn't because I thought it was random though. I just ended up prioritizing my wishlist properly and removed the games I was no longer interested in.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.