We expect the price of new games on Steam to drop 50 percent within a year of release, but 90 percent? That's an awfully spirited discount for a game that's under a year old, so we were surprised earlier today when we saw Shadow Warrior 2 had been discounted to just $4 on Steam.
The Midweek Madness sale pricing, as brought to our attention by Wario64 on Twitter, turned out to be an error. Publisher Devolver Digital took it in stride, though, telling everyone to "get it while it's hot." The discount was corrected quickly, going from 90% off to the expected 25% off.
@Wario64 Pricing error, get it while it’s hot though.January 31, 2017
We don't see many pricing errors on Steam, so I was curious to know how many people jumped on it. According to Devolver Digital rep Stephanie Tinsley, "around 1,000 people" took advantage of the error.
It turns out not all that many people are closely monitoring Steam prices in the middle of a Tuesday. "It wasn’t up long, so the people who did jump on it got a sweet deal," said Tinsley, who joked that there "probably" wasn't a round of firings over the minor error.
Shadow Warrior 2 is currently $30/£26.24 on Steam, the sale price it was supposed to be. The promotion is part of a crossover deal with Payday 2, and both are available as a bundle. We'll let you know if the price suddenly turns negative and Devolver starts paying us for its games.