Steam Holiday Sale Begins

Because what if it didn't get cheaper, and they just missed the 33%?

Having two separate sales, the latter for more than the former, in the span of like a week is stupid indeed. Am I just supposed to not buy things on sale because "oh i'm sure it will get even cheaper!"
 
Wait, maybe I am misunderstanding, was it previously one of the "special" sales, or just part of the regular sales?
 
Vegeta897 said:
Because what if it didn't get cheaper, and they just missed the 33%?

Having two separate sales, the latter for more than the former, in the span of like a week is stupid indeed. Am I just supposed to not buy things on sale because "oh i'm sure it will get even cheaper!"
Click to expand...

Yet again like ZT said, it's the same concept every year. The 'sale long' discount of 33% spans the entire length of the sale. The featured daily sale last 24 hours. It is commonly known that if there is a game you want at 25% off on a 'sale long' discount you wait until it is under the featured special daily sale. If you game never gets a special sale which sometimes does happen, you bite the bullet and buy it on the last day.

Most of my friends do exactly that and they've only been using Steam since last Christmas.
 
Hm, maybe I shouldn't have bought Dragon Age then for -25% :/
 
I was wondering about Dragon Age too, looked like it was a 1 day sale but it's only 25% so I figured, at some point if not this sale, it will be on further discount.
 
Hectic Glenn said:
Yet again like ZT said, it's the same concept every year. The 'sale long' discount of 33% spans the entire length of the sale. The featured daily sale last 24 hours. It is commonly known that if there is a game you want at 25% off on a 'sale long' discount you wait until it is under the featured special daily sale. If you game never gets a special sale which sometimes does happen, you bite the bullet and buy it on the last day.

Most of my friends do exactly that and they've only been using Steam since last Christmas.
Click to expand...

I've never done a steam holiday sale like this before.

<sigh>


That $16 loss would have changed the world. I would probably have donated it to a research company that would have developed the cure for cancer.
 
Some really nice deals today. Do people still play Battlefield 2 here?
 
Tempted to get Borderlands GOTY, not sure if I'd ever really play it. It'll probably be my most expensive purchase of the sale if I get it.
 
Got the Ghost Recon pack, ARMA 2, and the Overlord pack. Fabutastic.
 
God ****ing damn it I'm starting to hate these deals.
 
A lot of the deals suck.

New Vegas is 40% off at £18, but I got it for £14 on Amazon.
 
Anyone interested in playing ARMA 2 with the rest of the netters should buy it now at 9.99; that way if ARMA 2: Operation Arrowhead goes on sale later, you might have a discount for owning ARMA 2.
 
I bought ARMA. When do you guys play?
 
I have a 2.8 Ghz dual core Pentium D processor and my video card is the Nvidia GTX 460 1GB Gfx card, and 4GB of Ram can i run Arma 2 ok? I'm downloading the demo now but will my PC handle it?


also i had too much to drink and i edited this like 4 times
 
No, I think you had too many onions to eat, again.
 
Vegeta897 said:
Having two separate sales, the latter for more than the former, in the span of like a week is stupid indeed. Am I just supposed to not buy things on sale because "oh i'm sure it will get even cheaper!"
Click to expand...

Agreed. It's a really deceitful way to have sales. I fell in this trap with Mass Effect 2: bought it on the first day, when it was -25%, and it was -50% three days later? WTF? I don't have a crystal ball to foresee the future, so one could call this an intentional "trick" to sell more at the higher price.
More honesty would have been appreciated. I'm disgusted and my xmas purchasings end now.
 
Paulaner said:
Agreed. It's a really deceitful way to have sales. I fell in this trap with Mass Effect 2: bought it on the first day, when it was -25%, and it was -50% three days later? WTF? I don't have a crystal ball to foresee the future, so one could call this an intentional "trick" to sell more at the higher price.
Click to expand...

What if I had 30 items on a table that were 25% off for five days, and I told you any one or more items might be 50% off in the next five days. If you bought one of those items for 25% off, (instead of waiting) and I later sold it for 50% off, that wouldn't make me deceitful, it would make you impatient and stupid.

More honesty would have been appreciated.
Click to expand...

Yeah, hey Steam, can you tell me what games are going to be on sale in the future so I don't have to pay you as much money?

How does this make any sense? You people are upset that Steam made a sale on a particular game that you bought? The Sale is 2 weeks long, with 12 special deals per day, what the hell did you expect? Steam to take a special request from you and not put Mass Effect 2 on sale?

I'm disgusted and my xmas purchasings end now.
Click to expand...

Hahaha. There are 9 more days left for this sale, you are going to buy something.
 
To be honest, I can see this sort of marketing actually hurting them in the long run. People will wait until the last minute to buy their stuff, and when they realized they missed the better deal, they'll just be "**** it then" and not get it. For example, see how everyone was waiting for a sale that wasn't even guaranteed to happen for the secret santa thing? What if, one year, Valve decides not to have a sale. Everybody will be holding off until the sale starts, and when it doesn't people wont buy much. So in addition to poor sales during the last two months of the year, they'll have poor sales the entire rest of the year because people were waiting until the holiday sale. This is one thing I think is going to end up hurting a lot of businesses, because everyones going to be expecting big holiday sales every year, and so they'll not buy anything during the entire rest of the year. That could be really bad. I think this Black Friday through Christmas shopping spree needs to stop, and that the best way for stores to do it is be honest with their customers. For instance, have a sale in like, July for a certain product, and advertise that its going to be the cheapest its ever going to be this year, so get it now. If they spread decent sales out throughout the year, it will be a more stable way of getting income, and get rid of this bullshit "make or break" situation they've gotten themselves in with the holiday season.
 
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I might have bought CoD if it were black ops. But nope. Got Red Faction in last year's sales. Conviction though.. maybe.

Merry Christmas everyone!
 
^I agree, I am actually a little concerned about this hurting Steam eventually. But I expect them to be smart enough to figure out another way in the long run.
 
It doesn't hurt them, they make more money. What happens is that you are thinking about a game you want (because they made you make a wishlist for the Steam competitions), then you see that game pop up for 25% off on day one of the sale. You think about it for a day or two, considering the purchase, you are now aware of the game being in a sale and the ballpark price. At this point, those who can't wait...buy the game, those who wait are awarded with a potential 75% discount knowing the previous price of the game having been attracted to the previous deal. At 75% off you can't afford to miss this deal!

Henceforth they make 2 grades of sales on the small and large discount to push out copies each day consistently or shift in bulk on one day. They've been doing it for 3 years now, it's extremely effective at boosting sales. Believe me they're not hurting...they're popping champagne for christmas, new year and having all yo monies!
 
I don't know what you're talking about? This sale has Valve on the brink of collapse.

Seriously though, hasn't this been their best year ever for sales? A Valve sale is always a welcome surprise for me.

I bought FO:NV, I know I could get it cheaper at Amazon, but the delivery would push it back to mid January, whereas I can download and play it tonight.

I'm considering buying super meat boy, but not sure I'll like it all that much from what I've seen. Still, enjoying seeing what's on discount every day. Also thinking about buying the THQ pack.
 
So many games I have...mmmmh (yoda voice)

I'll probably still pick up a few though cuz I'm a sucker for tons of games even though I don't play half of them
 
I realize that, but give a few more years of these sales, people will have most everything they want from Steam (aside from new titles), so I'd imagine they will lose a lot eventually.
 
ZT said:
I realize that, but give a few more years of these sales, people will have most everything they want from Steam (aside from new titles), so I'd imagine they will lose a lot eventually.
Click to expand...

This is already happening with me frankly. A lot of these deals are good, but I already have a lot of the games, and mostly from previous sales. The only way I can see them sustaining these sorts of sales is by greatly increasing the number of games available on steam, which is obviously limited by how many games are released each year. Valve made an excellent decision in supporting indie gaming so well because they'll produce the biggest number of games out of any other type of developers, but even that will only carry them so far.

What I forsee happening is much smaller sales during holidays to promote year-round buying, since they're probably getting pretty close to their goal number of users, and obviously thats the point of these huge sales that would cost other retailers money to try and compete with. I think these sales are less an attempt at making huge profits (though it seems to be a happy coincidence that they are doing just that) and more an attempt at snatching up the biggest market share before a significant competitor comes around. Once that goal is achieved, I'm sure they'll start backing off on such huge discounts.
 
What happens when everyone in the world is using steam and owns all of the games? Will they have to have regular releases to make money?

I think I'm ok with this.
 
WTF! Tropico 3 6$ and in the EU it was like 10$... Steam is still doing this bullshit conversion.
 
Bought the F.E.A.R. pack for both my friend (and his family) and I. I'm positive he'll throw at least 20 hrs into each game because all his brothers and cousins use his account too.
 
4 dollar Super Meat Boy = I bought it for a bunch of my friends.
 
Is there any modding community for Mirror's Edge?
 
The single player alone is worth full price for its replay value, it's a steal at $4.99.
 
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