So, it occurred to me that I think Valve were told stuff by devs/pubs, and acted on it in a weird way. Or are using their own data in a stupid fashion. Bear with me.
1) Flash sales are bad. Whilst people say "Oh, Flash Sales were awesome", there was a feeling you had to pay attention to the store 24/7 on the off-chance a game you wanted went on deep-discount. But because of time-zones and people having lives, this was never possible, and there was actual data to support the fact that people just waited to the last day and then bulk-bought everything they wanted.
2) Discovery on Steam isn't good. Previous sales had cards for Discovery Queue, but I suspect there were a sizeable number of accounts that didn't care about the Queue except in the fact that it gave cards. I also suspect this was gamed quite a bit by a few people with multiple accounts.
3a ) Valve (and devs/pubs) have data that says people don't really play games during sales, they just buy stuff. Yey capitalism! Except I think this is antithetical to what Valve want.
3b) Hence the Quests and points for achievements.
4a) Sales data has swung the opposite way from the days of Flash Sales - now everyone bulk buys everything they want on the first day, and don't look at the store again.
4b) Hence the small boost capacity every day, unless you buy stuff and then buy more stuff. Every day. Yey capitalism?
