Timing of Steam Sales: Only Holidays?

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kinein

Limp Gawd
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I've been a steam user since its birth but never bought anything til this past holiday sales bonanza! Is there like a weekly date sales are posted, or is there like a daily deal everyday?
 
They put up one game for sale on weekends and sometimes another one from tuesday to friday.
 
Yeah, weekend and mid-week sales, usually revolving around one game or publisher. Holidays is when you'll see bigger sales with a wider range.
 
kinein said:
I've been a steam user since its birth but never bought anything til this past holiday sales bonanza! Is there like a weekly date sales are posted, or is there like a daily deal everyday?
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Yes but be very careful dont buy games over $10-15 unless you're playing them right then and there. Don't build a backlog of more than fifteen games if possible. You may think $40 for dawn of whatever III is great at the time but if it gets plucked into your backlog and you dont get around to playing it until its onsale for $5 youll feel like a douche.

Be aware of fail titles. These aren't bad titles, but may be doing poorly. Mafia II is a good example. This title was $50 a couple months ago? it was 12.49 a couple weeks ago. This means in a month it'll be $9.99 in a weekend sale and soon even less. If a title sinks quickly wait it out.

Activision games rarely go onsale. If Blackcops goes onsale for $40 you might as well pick it up if youre gonna play it soon. shit doesnt go any cheaper, ever.
 
The sale, last year, was much better.

You didn't have to buy the games during the one day sale, they were on sale the entire length of the holiday sale.
 
Draax said:
The sale, last year, was much better.

You didn't have to buy the games during the one day sale, they were on sale the entire length of the holiday sale.
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It was the same. They had sale-long deals as well as daily specials that were cheaper.
 
I recall some decent sales over the summer but I don't know what specific games I picked up.
 
buy games whenever you feel comfortable buying them, there is no douchery involved.
You are helping fund future games and that can only be a good thing.
As for the steam sales, I think the main ones run summer, thanksgiving and christmas.
 
piscian18 said:
Yes but be very careful dont buy games over $10-15 unless you're playing them right then and there. Don't build a backlog of more than fifteen games if possible.
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This is good advice that is almost impossible to follow for Steam sale buyers. I usually follow your first rule, but the second one is so hard when you see games for $5 or less. Not to mention game packs that give you about 15 games for $30 or $40.
 
dont be like me and just spend 229 dollars this christmas for 42 games & already have a big backlog. Im currently at 136 games and only beat 4. I got ALOT of games to play now. I didnt go over the rule buying any game over 10 dollars either.
 
4LC4PON3 said:
dont be like me and just spend 229 dollars this christmas for 42 games & already have a big backlog. Im currently at 136 games and only beat 4. I got ALOT of games to play now. I didnt go over the rule buying any game over 10 dollars either.
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I did that in 2009 and my game list went from less then 40 games to 120+. I only have played maybe 15 of them. Most of the games where from game packs where I bought the whole pack for one game because it was cheaper but still thats alot of games in the backlog.

There was alot of games I wanted to get this last sale but I resisted and only got one game. Might pick up some of the games I missed at the next big sale which I think happens during the summer.

I almost never want to pay full retail price for a game anymore. I only bought two full priced retail games in 2010. Starcraft 2 and the WoW expansion...
 
Draax said:
The daily specials, last year, could be purchased for the daily special price, though-out the entire sale.
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Over 1000 games on sale and you're going to nitpick about the 8 or so daily deals every day?

It just gets people to visit the site every day. Not a big deal.

The only reason I didn't buy as many games this year is because I already own so many of the games. There does reach a point where there's going to be less games to buy, especially from packs. 145 games and counting...
 
Something I learned from steam sales is that if your going to buy it for multiplayer and it's less than $10, don't get it because there will be hardly anyone playing. Unless it's a valve game, then there will always be people playing.

I have a lot of games I haven't played yet from sales, my thinking is never buy a game for over $10 because I'll probably won't play it for a while.
 
I think I'm more addicted to buying games rather than playing them at the moment. Bought 3 games this past sale even though I haven't actually played any games for, like, a month.
 
Draax said:
The sale, last year, was much better.

You didn't have to buy the games during the one day sale, they were on sale the entire length of the holiday sale.
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Your memory is fooling you unfortunately. It was just the same way. There are games that are always on sale during the duration but the big deals were always daily deals one day at a time with people waiting for the next day. It's been like this for a few years.
 
Tudz said:
I think I'm more addicted to buying games rather than playing them at the moment. Bought 3 games this past sale even though I haven't actually played any games for, like, a month.
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Buying 3 games during an epic sale doesn't classify as addicted to buying games. Over 80 on the other hand...
 
Spare-Flair said:
Your memory is fooling you unfortunately. It was just the same way. There are games that are always on sale during the duration but the big deals were always daily deals one day at a time with people waiting for the next day. It's been like this for a few years.
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No it wasn't, that is why I linked the thread from last year.
 
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Directly from the thread I linked:

"They seem to be keeping the previous day's deals active for a little while even after the new ones are up."

After the daily deal timer had expired and the new deals were posted, you were still able to get the games at the daly deal price.
 
Tolyngee said:
Yes it was:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1480214

You can see the counter and everything.

And within an hour after the daily deals ended, the daily deal price was now dead:

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1035098140&postcount=410

This explains why we knew already this year how to expect the sale to go. We'd experienced it before.
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I gotta agree because I think I missed one of the daily deals last year. I recall it repeating a couple daily deals but that was definitely the point.

My complaint is the discounts seemed higher last year. I bought Cryostasis and necorvision both for under $2 last year and those didnt get discounted this time around. Also no wolfenstein/quakewars discount blah. Just not as much going on this time around.

Draax said:
Directly from the thread I linked:

"They seem to be keeping the previous day's deals active for a little while even after the new ones are up."

After the daily deal timer had expired and the new deals were posted, you were still able to get the games at the daly deal price.
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Only for maybe 10 minutes or so not the entire length of the sale.
 
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This years steam sale fucking bankrupted me, it was like crack to me, everyday at 6pm gmt I had to check out the new daily deals, in the end I spent over 120 quid on games, 27 new single titles and now that I have them, I know that with the exception of maybe 1 or 2, I wont get around to playing them all :/
 
Draax said:
Directly from the thread I linked:

"They seem to be keeping the previous day's deals active for a little while even after the new ones are up."

After the daily deal timer had expired and the new deals were posted, you were still able to get the games at the daly deal price.
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And that is incorrect:

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1035098140&postcount=410

It would last for maybe another hour, like sometimes happened this year.

Besides, you're no longer saying what you were saying earlier in this thread:

Draax said:
The daily specials, last year, could be purchased for the daily special price, though-out the entire sale.
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"A little while" (an hour or so) is not "though-out the entire sale."

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1035103462&postcount=24

That was your post.

And zero82z's reponse:

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1035103566&postcount=25

"Active for a little while" was about an hour, just like this post suggests:

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1035098140&postcount=410

So, drop it. The reason we knew what to expect this year was that it also happened last year.
 
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piscian18 said:
My complaint is the discounts seemed higher last year.
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Yup. The id pack was $35, Indigo Prophecy was $3.

Even ARMA 2 was cheaper during the Thanksgiving sale than during the Xmas sale. I gambled on buying it then and it paid off.

(Assuming you wanted it tied to Steam, since it was even cheaper still at Amazon's download service, but that didn't include some of the other DLC that I bought at Steam, so it most likely got close to equaling out when you factor that together.)

I still bought ~60 games this year, but the funny part was I was holding back compared to the last two years. Pretty much just due to prices. Only thing I didn't snag that was $5 was DMC4, but that was because it jacked up to $10 within hours. But I think Steam only pulled that stunt once this year of a daily deal not staying discounted the same amount the entire day. They pulled that quite a few times last year.
 
Steam has millions of users, right?

So the day after the sale they must have had at least some people purchasing from them, right? What's the reasoning there? "Oh look, Steam is having a sale... no, no, I'd better wait until the day after the sale to buy this title which is on sale now."

What class of logic is that?
 
WabeWalker said:
Steam has millions of users, right?

So the day after the sale they must have had at least some people purchasing from them, right? What's the reasoning there? "Oh look, Steam is having a sale... no, no, I'd better wait until the day after the sale to buy this title which is on sale now."

What class of logic is that?
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Steam has thousands of games. I'm sure some people were buying some games, but maybe not the ones that were just on sale. Actually, the opposite usually happens to me. I'll buy a game, and it will go on sale a week or two later.

This year, I bought several games, including the entire THQ pack, partly to replace some of my disc games with the Steam title. I've been gradually doing this over the last few months as games I own go on sale. The game I've been most impressed with and spending the most time with is Settlers 7.

The thing that confuses me, is that apparently the Steam sale was a huge success this year. Thousands and thousands of gamers buying and playing thousands of games. And last time I checked, Steam only offered PC (and Mac) games, not console titles. So what;s the deal with the "Sad Days for PC Gaming" thread?
 
Seems this year a lot of people were buying less not because the sales were bad but because they had already bought the games with the best discounts. I wonder if valve is worried they are going to hit an over saturation point or if they want this. If they get people hooked on steam they wont bother with other competitors. I for one stopped even looking at d2d and impulse. I just like having all my games in one place.

and LOL @ at that sad day of pc gaming thread..hope that troll went back under his bridge
 
I'm still rather frustrated that Civ5 and its associated (expensive) DLC was never properly on sale. There was one day when it was a little bit cheaper but it was the only game from that publisher's catalog not discounted. I would have purchased had they had a sale to take it down to $30 or so and make the DLC much cheaper.
 
Xaeos said:
I'm still rather frustrated that Civ5 and its associated (expensive) DLC was never properly on sale. There was one day when it was a little bit cheaper but it was the only game from that publisher's catalog not discounted. I would have purchased had they had a sale to take it down to $30 or so and make the DLC much cheaper.
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Yeah I think CIV5 went on sale pre-holiday. It and its DLC were like 30 bucks or something.
 
Xaeos said:
I'm still rather frustrated that Civ5 and its associated (expensive) DLC was never properly on sale. There was one day when it was a little bit cheaper but it was the only game from that publisher's catalog not discounted. I would have purchased had they had a sale to take it down to $30 or so and make the DLC much cheaper.
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Civ5 is still selling well at $50 though, not much reason to drop the price. I know a few people that picked it up for $37.50 when it was on sale over the holidays.
 
Tudz said:
I think I'm more addicted to buying games rather than playing them at the moment. Bought 3 games this past sale even though I haven't actually played any games for, like, a month.
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that is the truth. I have 136 games right now & ive hardly touched any of them. everytime I seen a game that I wanted click. Thanks you for your Purchase lol
 
4LC4PON3 said:
that is the truth. I have 136 games right now & ive hardly touched any of them. everytime I seen a game that I wanted click. Thanks you for your Purchase lol
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One of my really good friends is currently going through his Steam backlog in alphabetical order and playing each game for at least an hour. He has been at it for a while and it currently halfway through the alphabet :p
 
4LC4PON3 said:
that is the truth. I have 136 games right now & ive hardly touched any of them. everytime I seen a game that I wanted click. Thanks you for your Purchase lol
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They make it so easy, kind of like the "one-click" from Amaazon. I wonder why? :)
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
The only reason I didn't buy as many games this year is because I already own so many of the games. There does reach a point where there's going to be less games to buy, especially from packs. 145 games and counting...
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Exactly. This year's sale was a lot easier on my wallet; partly because I bought up much of what I wanted last year, and partly because the remaining games I did want didn't have deep discounts or because the games I did want didn't go on sale. But 2010 was fairly light on must-have titles, so I'm safe. I picked up AC2 from D2D and a couple of titles from Steam. More money in my pocket and still a huge backlog, so I'm happy...though I hope 2011 is a great year for PC gamers as I want pubs to see PC gaming is still a very viable platform.
 
ocellaris said:
One of my really good friends is currently going through his Steam backlog in alphabetical order and playing each game for at least an hour. He has been at it for a while and it currently halfway through the alphabet :p
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I can't split my time that much up though. I must have bought 50 games from steam in the last year but only really played through about 5. Still 5 games a year ain't too bad, just not nearly enough time for all my games :p.

Still I like it cause I never complain about having nothing too play, I just feel like I have to little time to play them all now.
 
I'm not even sure I have enough space left on my games HD to install them all!

ocellaris said:
One of my really good friends is currently going through his Steam backlog in alphabetical order and playing each game for at least an hour. He has been at it for a while and it currently halfway through the alphabet :p
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piscian18 said:
Activision games rarely go onsale. If Blackcops goes onsale for $40 you might as well pick it up if youre gonna play it soon. shit doesnt go any cheaper, ever.
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Too bad. I've been waiting for Singularity to go on sale. You've just told me why I haven't seen a price drop on a title that isn't even selling very well.

But why the reluctance by Activision to put games on sale? Any idea?
 
Singularity was marked down from $50 to $30 one of the last days of the holiday sale.

Dragineez said:
Too bad. I've been waiting for Singularity to go on sale. You've just told me why I haven't seen a price drop on a title that isn't even selling very well.

But why the reluctance by Activision to put games on sale? Any idea?
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