Assessing the value of a bundle of games offered on Steam has always been a difficult task for PC gamers, especially if they already own at least one of the games offered in the pack. Either you bite the bullet and repurchase a game you already own to get your hands on new games at a discounted price, or you ignore the bundle entirely and wait for Valve to re-release them later.
Valve is aware of this dilemma and is addressing the problem by redesigning how the pricing for its bundles work, and through it, users purchasing any bundle can be certain that they are purchasing new games not yet part of their library, rather than re-purchasing old ones.
Though Valve has yet to make a formal announcement, the flexible pricing plan was revealed in a report from PCGamesN, which detailed documents that Valve sent out to developers explaining that prices customers must pay will change based on how many of the pack's included games they already own.
"With Steam Bundles, if a customer already [owns] some items in the Bundle, they will pay for and receive only the items not already in their account," Valve wrote to developers. "This allows the best fans of your series or franchise to 'complete the set' and get a deal on the remaining items in the Bundle."
The change can already be seen in action with sets like the Valve Complete Pack. Instead of paying the flat $92.70 a buyer would need to pay to obtain all the games in the bundle - regardless of how many of the games she or he already owned, the buyer can now recieve a discount based on how many of titles are already in his or her library. It should be noted that the 55 percent discount off the total amount remains fixed however, what changes is price that gets discounted based on how many off the offered games are already in your library.
This means that someone who was fortunate enough to have enough games in the bundle only pays $49.50, when, for example, they would have actually payed about $119.50 before the discount was applied. In short, the progression would be: Bundle Price → Bundle Price with Library Deductions → New Bundle Price with 55 percent discount.
Though certainly good news for gamers, especially for those with extensive libraries, there is one caveat: developers and publishers need to opt-in, meaning that even when Valve rolls out the change for all its bundles, it doesn't have a final say on if the library-based discounts will even apply. The intended change, in all fairness, does cut into revenue, but hopefully Valve is able to recognize that and offset losses by perhaps offering bundles more often and with greater variety.
