Steam Seasonal & Theme Sales
Steam hosts four major seasonal sales a year in addition to two monthly themed events. These highly-anticipated sales offer the gaming community opportunities to expand their libraries, try out new titles at a discount, and learn about new and upcoming releases.
Steam's front page showcases sales events with storewide Takeovers on desktop and mobile accompanied by native pop-up Marketing Messages.
Seasonal Sales
The main store page and content hubs are thematically customized for each sale with backgrounds and headers. I work with artists to develop key art that can be used across these various production assets.
I optimize the images provided by the artist for web use to ensure fast loading times for users while maintaining the quality. To tailor the appearance and layout of content hubs, I write custom CSS to further enhance the page’s visual elements.
*The artwork in these assets is not created by me unless otherwise stated.
During these sales, the content hubs associated with the event are specially designed to facilitate the exploration and discovery of new genres and games.
Community
During sales events, users can earn Steam Points by making purchases, which they can then redeem for various items like profile backgrounds, emoticons, animated avatars, chat stickers and more.
My team and I create these unique community items for users to collect. Much of the artwork is created in house taking inspiration from the key art to unify the items with the rest of the themed event. I illustrated the gem badges for the 2022 Steam Winter Sale.
Themed Sales
Each event is carefully crafted to offer discounts and create an experience that resonates with gamers, aligning the aesthetics and themes with the spirit of the celebration. Steam promotes these events through various channels to attract gamers and create excitement.
As with the seasonal sales, I work with artists who create static key art that can be utilized across a wide range of graphic assets. The artist will provide 6-8 concepts related to the theme. A small committee of business developers and designers, including myself, determine a direction that aligns with the artist’s vision and the theme of the sale.
Motion graphics can leave a stronger impression on viewers. To strengthen the visual appeal of the static artwork, I incorporate motion to dynamically highlight key elements.
Developer Involvement
Steam uses its social media platforms to highlight upcoming sales and featured deals. Developers and publishers also play a role in promoting these events. They often share news about their games being part of the sale on their own social media channels, websites, and newsletters.
These promotional strategies work together to create anticipation, and generate interest as well as encourage users to explore the store and take advantage of the discounts during these themed sales events.
Partners
and Press
During sales, we at Steam provide asset kits to media outlets and game developers, to ensure consistent and effective coverage of each sale. One of my responsibilities on this team is to create comprehensive and standardized templates that enable our partners to share effectively and efficiently with their audiences.