Come Steam sale time, all logic goes out the window. You’ll buy games even though you already have droves of unplayed games.
And, you’ll look at games on sale way differently than when they’re priced normally — Dorkly illustrates how that is perfectly in this comic:
Normal Reactions vs. Reactions During the Steam Sale [Dorkly]
Comments
33 responses to “The Screwed-Up Logic Of Participating In A Steam Sale”
The problem with bad or average games isn’t that they aren’t worth buying, it’s that they aren’t worth buying for the same price as an excellent game. Remember Me would be considered an “Average” game, I paid $37 for it (Gamefly pre-order sale w/coupon) and I loved my time with it. I thought it was well worth the money, if I paid full price for it, that opinion would change.
Steam sales give a home to average games in today’s market.
Exactly my point too, like you said, it makes game sales for games that are less than stellar competitive. It also gives games in their alpha stages a chance to be competitive as well. Greenlight has given many developers a running start. We’ve purchased a dozen, if not more, games from the Greenlight indie category so far, happily and we’re along for the ride, happily knowing the games are broken at the moment and that’s fine, we’re seeing them updated and fixed as time goes by. Sure there’s the occasional one that fails and doesn’t see an update but for the most part, and the vast most part, we’re getting great games from creative developers that wouldn’t have the chance for a lookin normally and would usually at best, be put in the bargain bin at EB.
That’s true. My only problem is that Tomb Raider is $17 – it’s worth well more than that.
22.50 for the whole Tomb Raider collection, get that instead!
I was about to buy Tomb Raider, but as I do before nearly all purchases I checked the us store price. Tomb Raider has an Aus Tax, even tho it’s only a few bucks I refuse to buy it on principal.
I’m playing it at the moment. Paid $26 for it and it’s damn awesome. I think I’d have enjoyed it even at ‘full’ price (meaning $60, not the Australian RRP).
Sometimes I buy games on Steam just to play for a few minutes and support the developer to keep the indie industry going.
100% agree with that. I also got Remember Me for $37 off GMG and for that price I really really liked it; but then someone asked me if they should get it on Xbox 360 and I couldn’t honestly recommend it because of the $88 price being too high for what you got.
So yeah, I also don’t really agree with this article; I think any game – even something like Aliens CM – is worth it at the right asking price, and Steam sales often give us that price.
Yep completely agree.
The cherry on the cake is getting awesome games for cheap… eg Borderlands, Hitman, Tombraider etc.
But overall yes, it give the crappy games a chance by pricing them accordingly.
Same goes for indie titles too I guess. Some Indie games I might not bother with at $10 but at $4 they are worth a shot…
I WOULD pay 5 dollars for Colonial marines, that’s about all its worth. Would I pay 90? Not a chance in hell. I don’t agree with this article. I see a game, I see a valid pricing for it in my mind, is it worth *anything*? Sure.
The only screwed up thing here, is the condescending, put down nature of this article.
Even if I couldn’t stand playing it any more after maybe half an hour… at $5? I’ve tossed out half-finished cold take-away coffee which cost me more than that.
time for surgeon simulator.
Hmm, with games you’re not sure you’ll like the risk that you’ll waste too much cash is much lower. Most of us will decide whether its worth risking that 5 bucks to gift or buy a game that you and a friend can dick around in for a bit, or something you might not ever really get around to playing. And sometimes if you’re lucky, it turns out you would have paid twice as much.
Probably OT but whatever, I’m not buying anything regardless of price or how very badly I want it *cough* skyrim dlc *cough*, stupid steam sale right before PAX 🙁
Yeah, I ended up sucking it up and dumped a chunk of change in my steam wallet. Figured I’ll just eat less extravagantly at PAX. It’s not exactly like the restaurants in Melbourne will be any better than the restaurants in Brisbane.
Im having a great time with surgeon simulator for my $3 that I paid for it. If I paid $5 for it I would be asking for my money back.
extortion
For many years now, the effects of Steam sales have been well documented:
http://www.shacknews.com/article/57308/valve-left-4-dead-half
Massive increases in sales of games. Which is think is a great thing – especially for indie developers.
That’s a very interesting read…
It claims (or rather Gabe claims) that
10% sale = 35% increase in sales (real dollars, not units shipped)
25% sale = 245% increase in sales
50% sale = 320% increase in sales
75% sale = 1470% increase in sales
Now that makes you wonder if game prices are completely broken, or if the increases in sales are purely due to the high RRP??
Could the market look completely different if new releases were $30 instead of $60+ ??
I haven’t made a purchase yet. Just not feeling it. There’s so much gameplay in my collection already, I’m going to keep going back to the classics, replaying good-but-not-classics (dishonored) and try to keep the pile down for a while. i’ll keep picking up the titles that I have to get, like TLOU but my days of accumulating games seem to be over. I just don’t have time to play them and get my money’s worth anymore.
I’m desperately trying to resist buying more games.
There’s been very little I’m interested in so far, good thing too since gtx780s don’t save up for themselves
While that is one way to look at it, I prefer to think of it like this:
At full retail, I can’t justify buying a whole load of games on a whim just to see if I like them. I still have a pile of PS3 and Xbox360 games I paid top dollar for in the days before steam sales, but got bored of after an hour or so. Now I look at them and think about how much of a waste of money that was.
It’s not that many of these were bad games per se, in most cases they simply turned out to not be my cup of tea. While a lot of the big AAA titles I’ve been excited for have been just as good as I expected, there have been equally as many that just did nothing for me, despite the rave reviews. There’s nothing worse than buying a game at full retail because of hype, positive review scores, or a recommendation from a friend, only to find out that you simply don’t like it.
Steam sales allow me to pick up all those games I was on the fence about for a fraction of the price, so I don’t have to feel guilty if I never end up finishing them all. Even if I only play them for an hour or so, in many cases it’s still cheaper then a trip to the movies, even more so if you find a great indie title.
The best part however, is that many of my favourite games, games that I’ve happily sunk many, many hours into, are ones I picked up on a whim because they were cheap and looked interesting. They may have been games that I missed out on at release because I was busy, or others that I looked over due to sub-par reviews, but for some reason when I sat down and gave them a go, they just resonated with me. It’s amazing how many of the games you never thought you’d be interested in turn out to be something you fall in love with.
So in the end, when it comes to steam sales, I choose not to look at the piles of games in my list that I paid for and have yet to finish. Or rather when I do look at them, I don’t see them as a lost investment.
I choose instead to look at all the GREAT games on my list that I found and absolutely loved, in some cases for tens or even hundreds of hours (Civ 5, I’m looking at you). For each of those games I would happily have paid full retail and then some.
It’s gotta be little PATRICIA HERNANDEZ: Kotaku’s answer to a question no one asked!
The only thing I’ve got so far is Heroes of Might and Magic VI. I’m hoping Dust, Metro Last Light, The Swapper, Skulls of the Shogun and Future Solider with go on “proper” sale.
EDIT: Oh shit forgot Heroes 6 is a Ubisoft game, bloody Uplay
What this sale has done is to get me playing games I haven’t played in a while, like Miami Hotline and Chivalry.
I bought cnc4 on sale for $4, I still got jibbed, can’t even complete the tutorial mission cause of a bug.
Having played that game not being able to get further should be considered a feature.
you got ripped of man cnc4 not worth 4c let alone $4
I waited until I could get Duke Nukem Forever for $5.
Even though it was terrible, the development saga meant that I was compelled to try it (and I feel that I paid $4 too much now)
I got Counter Strike: Global Offensive for $5, I think its at $10 now but I’ve already played for about 9 hours so I think I got my money’s worth
steam sales are insanely good. devs get sales, valve gets commissions, we get games, what’s not to love? you’d have to be some kind of seriously bored contrarian internet hero who expresses themselves in other people’s comic strips to whine about steam sales.
The prices aren’t that great to be honest. What i see is they are just taking the “australia tax” off it. So these prices are quite similar to the green man gaming and other international sites have all year round!
Its just nice to buy it through the actually steam portal.
I already went all out during the last Xmas sale, so I have all the games I wanted to try… *moment of realisation*
I prefer to look at steam sale as the opportunity to try games you were hesitant about because of the price and didn’t feel it was worth full RRP. $4 Indie games ftw 🙂
This is the first steam sale I’ve paid proper attention too, and it’s been totally worth it. Picked up Sleeping dogs, walking dead and Alan Wake bundle for a steal. Started Alan Wake on the weekend and it’s awesome! Scariest game I’ve played since System Shock 2.
I like the comic. I lol’d.
It’s true that there are games I wouldn’t have bought had they not been on sale.. but I am still checking Metacritic reviews and all sorts of research before I even pay $1 on a title. There were a few times over the weekend when I liked the “look” of a game, only to see sub-50 Metacritic scores..
So far I have picked up around 4 or 5 titles, including Tropica 4 (actually got the collector’s edition that includes all the DLC as it was the same low $7.99 price when it went on the community voted sale price), System Shock 2 ($2.49), Chivalry: Medieval Combat ($6.79.. this is probably the only game that falls into the category of a game I wouldn’t have gotten if the price wasn’t this low.. I was on the fence about it even at this low price..), Track Mania Stadium ($11.99.. this was actually not discounted but because I was on there looking around, it caught my eye..).. something else too.. can’t think what it was now..
I am keeping my eye (wishlist) on a couple of titles as well in the hopes they will get a bigger discount, such as Prison Architect… though it is an in-development game and likely won’t go lower than 10% off since they need all the money they can get to continue developing it I guess..
Further to the above… I’ve been a little disappointed with the sale so far.. sure, I’ve picked up a few titles.. but the majority of what I saw on sale over the weekend simply was of no interest to me… I was so disheartened by it all that I went and downloaded LoL to fiddle around with for the first time ever..
Man, reading these comments makes me really hate this community.