There's no real reason why games need to get increasingly cheaper over a short period of time. The only "devaluation" in a digital product is the existence of new games becoming available for the same price and potential buyers might think "if I'm going to spend $70 on a game I'd rather get a brand new one vs a 2 years old one". If, say, Elden Ring was worth $60 when it came out there's no real reason it's no longer worth $60 right now other than the fact that you can buy newer (though not necessarily better) games for the same price.
The whole idea that a 6 month old game isn't worth $60-70 just comes from the way most games used to be sold and valued. But if you look at companies like Nintendo they have long since left the sale mentality behind and many of their games remain at full price for years, and they are still very successful and often continue to sell for many months/years after launch. Even some third party multiplatform games like Factorio have historically never gone on sale.
Not to mention if you account for inflation games are cheaper than they have ever been right now, even with the $10 increase this gen
So I don't think the full $60-70 price is a "scam" and neither are the sales.
The Steam sale isn't THAT bad: 40% off Hogwarts, 20% off Starfield and Lies of P, 40% off Jedi Survivor, 34% off RE4R, etc. It's not the half price stuff we did get some years ago but these are still real and valid discounts on some of the biggest games released in the last year. If you refuse to buy a game unless it's 85% off from an already reduced MSRP then maybe you aren't that interested in it anyway, and I can't blame companies for not focusing on customers like you very much.
That said physical media on console still offers the best deals as stuff like storage space and handling push retails towards more aggressive sales tactics, on top of there being way more vendors to choose from. Which is a big reason why I dislike the push towards digital only
Aren't those just keys from bundles and stuff like that.
I guess they still count but the selection of games being sold way is going to be VERY limited