If you’ve ever bought a Steam game only to see it go on sale days later, you know the pain. Valve may finally have a fix in the works. According to NotebookCheck, data discovered in Steam’s backend code suggests that a built-in 30-day price history feature will be coming to the platform. However, there is no official word from Valve or a release schedule.
How does Steam’s price history feature work?
The price history feature shows you whether a game’s current price is the lowest in the last 30 days. It also shows when a game is on discount, shows the percentage drop compared to the launch price, and helps you decide whether to wait for a Steam sale or buy now.
There are currently third-party tools like SteamDB or IsThereAnyDeal to get this kind of data, but it would be really handy to integrate a price tracker directly into Steam. However, it may fall short of what experienced deal hunters actually need.
Third-party tools already provide up-to-date rock-bottom price data to give you a complete picture of pricing. A 30-day window alone doesn’t tell you whether a title has ever been cheaper, and that’s the question most gamers are actually asking. For the feature to truly compete with what’s already out there, Valve would have to expand its filtering options well beyond a month.
What else is Valve developing for Steam?
The price tracker isn’t the only upgrade Valve is apparently cooking up. A “Frame Estimator” tool was also discovered in the Steam code, which predicts your PC’s framerate performance on a given game before you purchase it, based on anonymized data collected from other Steam users.
Valve is also reportedly developing SteamGPT, an AI system to handle customer support requests regarding refunds, platform issues, and payment issues. None of these have been officially confirmed yet, but taken together they suggest that Valve is preparing for a significant round of upgrades, which will likely take place around the release of Steam Machine, which is currently held up by the ongoing RAM crisis.
