Christmas has apparently come early for a lot of us in the form of a massive Steam Sale that will be going on for the best part of a week. Notable games include Grand Theft Auto (£4.99), Stalker (£1.39), and Mirror’s Edge (£3.24), along with hundreds of others. However, it reminded me of a letter I wrote to PCGamer a while ago on how these sales could be damaging the PC gaming industry.

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Could digital downloads be a bad thing for consumers and developers? I’m starting to think so, and we’re already seeing the early stages of it.

For anybody who regularly checks out the Steam store (as I do), you’ll have noticed that The Orange Box has recently been on sale for less than £5. You may also have seen the 40% off Left 4 Dead sale shortly afterwards. I read an article in your 200th issue about how much sales increase when Steam does a sale, and it got me thinking.

Imagine if this massive influx of sales was not because of people who thought the game was too expensive beforehand, and then buying it in the sale, but because all the potential customers were waiting for the inevitable sale so they can get the game at a frankly ridiculous price. I recently purchased World Of Goo for £20, yet the following weekend it went on sale for £5. I didn’t feel ripped off because the game was worth the price I paid for it, but there was a slight feeling of regret.

I’m not suggesting gamers are going to wait half a year before purchasing the latest games, but 75% off sales are much more prevalent now than they were a year ago. If the benefits of putting games on sale are as pronounced as your article suggests, I see developers putting their games on sale closer and closer to the game’s release, while gamers are holding out longer on the purchase to try and buy the game when it’s on sale. Eventually games won’t sell at all initially and the developers will be forced to release their games at lower prices.

We’re already seeing the exact same thing with Apple’s App Store. For anyone who doesn’t know about the App Store, it’s a digital distribution service for iPhone and iPod Touch applications and games. Apple takes 30% of the revenue plus a small fee to publish a game, but in essence anybody can make and publish a game. It started last year with games selling for a maximum of £6, which seems fair for a game on an iPod. However, since then the prices have dropped dramatically with any app over £1.19 ($2) being criticized as too expensive unless it’s a console quality game. Guess what? It all started with apps having 2-3 day sales for 59p (99c). The consequences aren’t as large for iPhone developers, with games being cheaper to make. However, when you think of PC games which can cost millions to develop, the possible outcome is devastating.

The quality of games will drop and developers will start releasing games in quantity rather than quality to stay in business. Retail shops will be completely pushed out of the market.”

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Obviously I could be totally wrong, it’s just something to think about. In the meantime, we can all enjoy playing GTA4 for the price of two pints. Click here to see a fantastic spreadsheet of all the games on offer. If the spreadsheet doesn’t work for you, SavyGamer has a great list here.

Update: I’ve been getting some highly negative replies to this letter, I just wanted to say this is not something I believe will happen, just something I wrote a year ago to try and get into a magazine. By all means tell me why my theory (that’s all it is) is not correct, but please don’t hate me or say I’m an idiot for writing it.