Two in three older indie games joined Steam's Autumn Sale

Eighty minutes after Steam’s 2026 Autumn Sale opened, 67% of 5,860 paid indie games launched from 2020 to 2022 were on discount, at a median 60% off. Four hours earlier, 2.7% were.

If your game is out and you’re deciding whether to join a sale, how deep to go and how often, here are Valve’s rules in plain terms, then what games like yours actually did today.

The rules: 10 to 95%, 14 days, and three 30-day cooldowns

Everything in this section comes from Valve’s Discounting documentation, read October 1, 2026.

Rule	What Valve says
Depth	No less than 10%, no more than 95%
Length	1 to 14 days
Launch discount	10 to 40%, 7 to 14 days, set up before release only
Discount cooldown	30 days from the end of one discount to the start of the next
Release cooldown	No discount for 30 days after release, Early Access or 1.0, except a launch discount
Price increase cooldown	No discount for 30 days after raising the base price in any currency
Wishlist notification	Sent at 20% or more, if the discount runs over 8 hours and covers your cheapest package

Three details trip people up.

Seasonal sales skip one cooldown, not all three. The Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter sales don’t create a discount cooldown and aren’t blocked by one. You can run your own discount a week before the Summer Sale and still join it. But a game inside its release cooldown or its price increase cooldown can’t join, seasonal sale or not.

The exemption belongs to the sale’s own slot. It covers the discount you enter for the seasonal sale in the Discount Management dashboard. A custom discount you schedule over the same dates gets no exemption.

Curated deals count. Daily Deals, Midweek and Weekend Deals, Weeklong Deals, themed fests and publisher sales all sit under the same 30-day cooldown. One discount can span several events if they fall within 14 days, and it creates one cooldown.

Lowering your base price triggers nothing. Raising it locks you out of every discount for 30 days, and you can’t change the price at all while a discount is live or scheduled.

Run the arithmetic and the rules leave room for about eight custom discounts a year, 14 days on and 30 off, plus four seasonal sales.

Two thirds of older indie games were in the sale

We read the US price of 5,860 paid indie games at 18:21 UTC on October 1, 2026, eighty-one minutes after the Autumn Sale opened. They all launched on Steam from 2020 to 2022 and drew at least 10 reviews in their first year, so they are four to six years into their tails.

3,947 of them (67%) were discounted. Four hours before, 161 were. Ten days before, on an ordinary Monday, 754 were (13%).

Who joined tracks how alive the game still is. Of the games that drew 12 or more reviews in the last year, 88% were in the sale. Of those that drew none, 42%.

1. All 5,860 games67.4%
2. 12+ reviews in the last year (1,815)87.8%
3. 1 to 11 reviews in the last year (2,721)66.1%
4. No reviews in the last year (1,324)42.0%
5. With a publisher (1,726)81.3%
6. Self-published (4,134)61.5%

Paid indie games launched on Steam 2020 to 2022 with 10+ Steam-purchase reviews in year one. US prices read October 1, 2026, 18:21 UTC. The last year is September 2025 through August 2026.

Source: Strike Two analysis of Steam store data

Size matters too. 61% of games with 10 to 99 first-year reviews joined, 80% at 100 to 999, and 91% at 1,000 or more.

That leaves 1,913 games at full price. Most are quiet. But 222 of them drew at least 12 reviews in the last year, so people are still finding and buying them. If that’s your game, joining costs one field in a dashboard.

The median discount was 60%, and almost nobody goes under 20%

Among the 3,947 discounted games, half were at 60% off or more. A quarter were at 80% or more. The single most common discount was 50%, on 19% of them.

1. 10 to 19% off1.1%
2. 20 to 39% off13.1%
3. 40 to 59% off32.0%
4. 60 to 79% off27.9%
5. 80% off or more25.9%

Share of the 3,947 discounted games, out of 5,860 paid indie games launched on Steam 2020 to 2022 with 10+ reviews in year one. US prices read October 1, 2026, 18:21 UTC.

Source: Strike Two analysis of Steam store data

Only 42 games, about 1%, were discounted by less than 20%. The wishlist email line does its work: nearly everyone who discounts clears it.

Valve’s own advice is to “ease into discounting”, moving from 33% to 50% to 66% to 75% “over the course of a year or more”. Four to six years in, these games are where that staircase leads.

The median base price here is $6.99, and the median sale price was $2.49. Before you copy the median depth, look at what it does to your price in dollars.

Publishers discount more often, and deeper

Games credited to a publisher of other developers’ games joined at 81%, against 61% for self-published games. Their median discount was 70%, against 51%.

Size doesn’t explain the gap. Among games with 100 to 999 first-year reviews, publisher games were at a median 70% off and self-published games at 50%. At 1,000 or more it was the same 70 against 50, and 42% of publisher games were at 75% or deeper against 16%.

This fits what we found when we measured what a publisher visibly does on Steam: after year one, the clearest difference in their posts was sale announcements. Running the discount calendar is part of a publisher’s job. You can also do it yourself.

Developers still shipping held their price better. Games with an update post in the last twelve months joined at 85%, at a median 50% off. Games with no update since year one sat at a median 60%.

Seasonal sales show up in the long tail

We can’t see sales, so we can’t tell you what a discount earns. Reviews are the nearest public trace, and they follow the sale calendar.

For games past their first year, an even month would hold 8.3% of a year’s reviews. In 2023, 2024 and 2025, January held a median 10 to 11% and July 9 to 10%. The Winter Sale runs into January and the Summer Sale into July.

Valve gave us a cleaner test in 2025, when it moved the Autumn Sale from late November to September 29. October held a median 5.9% of the year’s reviews in 2023 and again in 2024. In 2025 it held 7.4%. Of 1,305 games with enough reviews in both years, 62% had a bigger October share in 2025 than in 2024.

It fits our earlier finding that nearly half of a successful indie game’s reviews come after its first year. A good part of that tail arrives in four windows.

When a deep discount is the wrong move

• Soon after launch. Valve’s guidance is blunt: a 50% or 75% discount weeks after release “sends a bad message to customers who bought at full price”. The games in this study are years old. Don’t borrow their depth for a game that’s months old.
• If you plan to raise the price. A price increase locks you out of all discounts for 30 days, seasonal sales included. Check the next sale date first. The Winter Sale starts December 17, 2026.
• Under 20%. It runs, but it sends no wishlist email. If you want a small discount, 20% is the one that tells anybody.
• At a low base price. A discount can’t take any currency below Steam’s minimum price. And 80% off $4.99 is $0.99 before Steam’s share.
• When you have something to announce. A discount alone is the weakest version. Valve advises timing discounts to content updates, and update months draw more reviews.

What to do next

1. Join every seasonal sale your cooldowns allow. It creates no cooldown and costs you no other slot. Most games like yours are in.
2. Clear 20%. That’s the line for the wishlist email, and your wishlist is the audience you already earned.
3. Pick a depth from your own history. Compare your last two sales in Steamworks. Go deeper only if the step before stopped working.
4. Use the gaps. Between seasonal sales you can run a custom discount of up to 14 days, then wait 30. Only 13% of these games were on any discount on an ordinary Monday.
5. Keep price increases 30 days clear of anything. That means clear of launches, fests and seasonal sales.
6. Know the seasonal clock. Seasonal sales don’t show update visibility rounds, but the days still count against the round.

If your game sat out today, the Winter Sale is eleven weeks away, and a custom discount can start as soon as tomorrow, with the usual 30-day cooldown after it. Strike Two partners on games that are already built, so read this knowing where it comes from.

How we measured it

The games are the 5,860 paid titles under Steam’s Indie tag that launched from January 2020 to December 2022 and drew 10 or more Steam-purchase reviews in their first year, the same population as our review score study. A game that sold in Early Access first is dated from its first review.

Prices are US prices for each game’s default purchase option, from the store’s own item service. We read them on September 21, 2026 (15:16 UTC), and on October 1 at 14:20, 17:21 and 18:21 UTC. The sale opened at 17:00.

The figures use the last read; the one an hour earlier had 3,939 games discounted. Of the 3,947 discounts, 3,931 end when the sale closes on October 8. We checked 12 random games against a second Steam endpoint and all 12 matched.

Publisher credits come from store records read September 22, 2026. Review histories were read September 16 and 21, 2026, and run through August 2026. Update posts come from each game’s events feed, read September 21 and 22.

The limits. This is one sale, one region and one population: older, paid, indie. A game that joins later in the week isn’t counted. Discount depth says nothing about revenue, and we can’t see units sold.

Reviews trail purchases and are counted by month, so the calendar pattern is a trace of sales, not a measure of them. Publisher games differ from self-published ones in many ways beyond who sets the discount.