Steam’s sales have become somewhat controversial lately, with some asserting that they devalue the games they offer too greatly. Valve’s director of business management Jason Holtman has a counterpoint to that line of thinking.

“If that’s what we thought was happening, or that’s what we saw happening, we wouldn’t do it,” said Holtman. “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. It’s not as if a 75 percent offer or a 50 percent off sale at some point in time cannibalizes 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 cannibalizing 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,” he said. “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 afterward. The day after the sales were exactly the same, if not more.”

Source: PC Gamer