Valve - if Steam promotions “cannibalized” sales, the firm "wouldn’t do it"

Valve's business development chief, Jason Holtman, has reiterated to PC Gamer that sale on Steam in no way cheapening intellectual property nor do they “cannibalize” sales.

Speaking with the site during Develop, Holtman said if Valve though such was the case, or saw it occurring, it "wouldn’t do it," once again, citing data complied by the firm.

"Actually, all the data is contrary to that. A promotion is not a policy; a promotion is just a feature to give people more value,” said Holtman.

“It’s not as if a 75% offer or a 50% off sale at some point in time cannibalises a sale that would have happened earlier, it’s just not true. We’re actually seeing both of them growing. We don’t see one cannibalising the other. If we did, we wouldn’t do it.

“We put Left 4 Dead 2 and Portal 2 on sale. If we thought that was killing our franchise, or hurting the value of games, or hurting the revenue we could generate as a company, we wouldn’t do it. We’ve even gone so far as to give away Portal for free a couple of times. Whole days where it’s not free for a day, it’s just free.

“We looked at this amazing data afterwards. The day after the sales were exactly the same, if not more."

Holtman said not everyone waits "for perfect pricing," to purchase a game, as some like paying full price on day one because they want to play it immediately or are a fan.

"We think of [sales as] customer features. They’re not policies or mandates," he said.

The Steam Summer Sale is going on as we speak.