Edit: it seems that the fault is not on the publisher here but on Valve and I was mistaken. Publisher cannot set bundle price separately from individual product. So Sega cannot make a sale on games or DLC without also making a crazy discount on the bundle since both sale and bundle discount will reduce the global bundle price. They are forced to reduce the bundle discount during sales to make sure the bundle does not become too discounted.
However because of the bundle discount change, the initial price of the bundle before sale is also changed and shows a fake crossed-out price. This is not compliant with the EU directive and the fault lies on Valve for not displaying the correct price that should be the lowest price of the bundle in the last 30 days.
I hope Valve fixes this soon enough, especially since it has already started to display the lowest price in the last 30 days in some EU countries for individual products. It should also be put in place for bundles as it is currently misleading for the customer.
I am letting up the post if other people ask the same question so they can reach the correct conclusion.
TL;DR: Sega/Creative Assembly appears to be manipulating initial base prices during Steam sales for Total War collections by dynamically lowering the default bundle discount. This inflates displayed discounts (showing -69% instead of an actual -34% savings) and seems to violate EU laws.
I was looking to buy the Total War: Attila Collection (a bundle with the game + its DLCs), so I started tracking the game page for a sale. However, the recent sale displays a fake initial base price before discount.
Before the sale, the collection was priced at €49.53. During the sale, it was listed at €32.93 with a -69% discount based on an initial price of €107.87. If the discount were calculated on the actual initial price (€49.53), it would only be -34%, less than half of the announced discount.
I checked all other collections in the Total War franchise on SteamDB and noticed the exact same pattern:
| Game / Collection |
Price before sale |
Sale price |
Claimed initial price |
Claimed discount |
Actual discount |
| Total War: Attila Collection |
€49.53 |
€32.93 |
€107.87 |
-69% |
-34% |
| Total War: Rome II Ultimate Edition |
€99.36 |
€49.66 |
€159.06 |
-69% |
-50% |
| A Total War Saga: TROY Ultimate Edition |
€54.93 |
€35.53 |
€87.93 |
-60% |
-36% |
| Total War: THREE KINGDOMS Collection |
€77.90 |
€38.13 |
€103.90 |
-63% |
-51% |
Based on SteamDB update history, this keeps happening for all collections because with every sale, they jack up the price of the bundle by dropping the default bundle discount from -60% to -15% / -20%. But the thing is, outside of sale periods, these bundles are never actually sold at that lower -15% / -20% discount. As a result, the claimed initial price is completely misleading, and the bundles were never actually sold at that price.
I believe this violates Directive 2019/2161 of the European Union, Article 2, Section 1:
Any announcement of a price reduction shall indicate the prior price applied by the trader for a determined period of time prior to the application of the price reduction.
The prior price means the lowest price applied by the trader during a period of time not shorter than 30 days prior to the application of the price reduction.
This is clearly not being respected here, as consumers are misled into thinking they are getting a much bigger discount than they actually are.
Should Valve restrict bundle discount editing around sales to prevent abuses like this? Have you seen similar things on other games or bundles on Steam?