Zero concurrent players. One review. A 40% launch discount that nobody noticed.

That is the current state of It’s Locked, a first-person psychological horror game by Radion Studios that holds the #1 spot on Steam’s New Releases chart as of March 20. The game costs $2.99 — already slashed from $4.99 on day one — and its sole review, from a user with 1.2 hours played, rates it 9.5 out of 10. The audience for that recommendation: essentially no one.

Scroll down the chart and things get worse. At #2, Grizzly Cup Turbo Challenge ‘92, a retro top-down racer by Pixel Grizzly Games priced at $9.59 (20% off), has zero players and zero reviews. At #3, Spirit & Steel — a free-to-play elemental combat game from DigiPen students — has one concurrent player and no reviews at all.

The Sale Next Door

The timing is not a mystery. Steam’s Spring Sale launched on March 19, one day before these titles hit the store, running through March 26 with discounts on thousands of games. The Top Sellers chart is stacked with Baldur’s Gate 3, Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2077, and other proven hits marked down by double-digit percentages, according to PC Gamer’s coverage of the event. Fallout: New Vegas is going for a dollar.

When the entire storefront is engineered to funnel attention toward discounted back-catalogue titles, new releases are competing for whatever oxygen is left — and this week, there isn’t much.

A Known Hazard

This is not a new problem. Steam’s own algorithm favours games with existing momentum, and seasonal sales amplify the effect. Industry analyst site How To Market A Game has argued that the conventional wisdom — never launch during a sale — may be overstated, but the advice exists for a reason. The games sitting at the top of this week’s New Releases chart are empirical evidence of the downside.

For developers like Radion Studios, the calculus is brutal: launch during the sale and get buried, or wait and lose whatever pre-release momentum you had. Neither option is great. But one of them leaves you at #1 on a chart that nobody is looking at.

Sources