wolfsite: Wonder how some of those programs will work with Steams 75% off sales.
ashout: i heard steam emails the company and asks them if they want to participate in the sale, and if the company wants to, they go ahead and discount their software.
Following up on this, when Orion Dino Beatdown went on sale for a daily sale coinciding with a new patch release, the developer was pretty furiously posting about it on the Steam forums while simultaneously emailing Valve about how the sale was NOT supposed to be the daily deal and how it was meant to be a smaller sale to commemorate the patch.
I know that's not the best example given the guy's reputation, but...
When it comes down to it, I think it's primarily up to the company publishing the game, be it the developer or a publishing company. I say that based on rumors that the Baseball Mogul guys didn't get paid during the time they were being published by another company on Steam.