It isn't too uncommon for products to release with a slight (usually like 10%) 'discount' to entice people to impulse buy it and contribute to release week visibility. Said discount usually expires after a few days, or maybe a couple weeks. I'm pretty sure SCS themselves have done this before, and I know I've seen several other publishers do it.Some newbie driver wrote: ↑23 May 2022 14:11 SCS could decide to sell it for 5 cents if they want to; it still wouldn't be a discount price. By pure definition, a discount is a price lower than the one set before. There could not be a discount on release because, obviously, if it's the first time it has a price tag, there has never been a previous price to compare and say there's a discount.
Of course, they could release it at a price tag of $999, say it has a wonderful-mega-hyper-combodiscount of 99% and sell it for $9.99. It would be a discount? No, it would be marketing BS. But who knows, maybe there's some people that enjoy companies throw at them marketing BS.
You can spend all day whining about semantics and throwing dictionaries at people, but this is a perfectly existent concept and clearly what's being referred to here.
Realistically, on Steam, you could argue that sale prices as a whole are the "default" price and the default price is a glorified desperation tax. This is a completely fair interpretation, and one I even agree with. But unless EVERYONE sees it that way, referring to the situation as such just creates needless confusion.