The sticker album is at least a little more than usual, but yeah, there's a big sense of community around the old-style sales that's been a bit lost.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
The sad truth about Steam Sales...
- Thread starter MRORANGE
- Start date
The sticker album is at least a little more than usual, but yeah, there's a big sense of community around the old-style sales that's been a bit lost.
I bought three games: Thimbleweed Park (20%), Stardew Valley (40%) and The Coma (50%). The price was around almost thirty bucks, but thanks to my steam wallet from cards and the discounts from Paypal, I could grab it for 18, which is a price that I can accept (before it was 10 per game). Otherwise I would not have bought anything because I am not even interested in AAA games, yet I think many games are still expensive and these sales are just a compilation of older sales, nothing else.
Serious Sam
Member
I don't see anything "sad" about current Steam sales. Maybe it's a bit more boring, but it's way more convenient. I like having nearly entire Steam library on sale. Missing some DLC or expansion pack for a game I own? It's on sale. Want to complete game series in your library and you are missing one odd title? It's on sale.
With daily deals discounts used to be better but there were way fewer deals to choose from.
With daily deals discounts used to be better but there were way fewer deals to choose from.
ElectricKaibutsu
Member
The prices just don't come down like they used to. I use isthereanydeal.com and some games I have notifications set where they'll only let me know they're on sale if the price matches the lowest it's ever been. I've had Prince of Person 2008 on there for two years and the price just does not go down. I have a huge backlog so I have no problem waiting.
depths20XX
Member
I don't get it. You used to be able to win a bunch of dog shit?
Now you're sad because you can't win dog shit by spending more money?
Yeah a few years ago I was going ham on Steam sales but since then I tend to find really good deals on random sites if I put the effort in to find them. It also doesn't help that PSN finally has some good sales and digital pricing and a lot of my PC buying was because the games were $10-20 cheaper than PS4 versions but that's evened out a good amount so there's less incentive.
I'm pretty sure there have been numerous stories of developers making significant profits when featured as a daily/flash deal in the sales.
More than just being a great deal for consumers, it put a spotlight on those games, gets people talking about those games again, and has people considering a game that they might have overlooked - or taking a risk on something they might otherwise not have considered.
There are many indie games currently sitting at a very small number of sales, that I guarantee would be making bigger profits if they actually sold their games at an appropriate price and made up for it in volume instead.
"I missed a good deal once, so no-one should be able to get good deals any more."
Steam already state that it's a valid use of refunds if you want to buy something again because it was discounted within the 14 day return window.
As I said before: if you are glad that the deals no longer exist because it was too much of an inconvenience to spend 90 seconds a day checking the mobile app, you could have just ignored them anyway and still been paying what you are now.
And there was usually a "best of" on the last day of sales, which gave you a second chance at most of them.
I don't know how anyone can say that 75~90% deals were "anti-consumer" instead of the 30~50% that we're getting now, just because it might have been a slight inconvenience.
It's not like they were selling a limited number of those games and you had to rush to grab a key within the first 60 seconds of the deal going live.
Because you actually want to play the game then?
Millions of people pre-order games or buy them day 1.
Retail arguably has that problem worse than Steam Sales, since they don't have infinite storage in their warehouses and have to clear out stock.
That's why there have been a number of deals on physical games that are far better than anything digital these days.
It's stupid and wasteful, but I've often got a better deal by having a DVD mailed to me and entering a Steam key, instead of buying it digitally.
And for what it's worth, I actually paid less for Prey at launch than its current price in the Steam Sale - which says a lot about the state of Steam Sales.
That's hardly a fault of the sales.
I've never bought games from Steam that I don't intend to play.
I have ended up with library which includes a number of games that I've never played due to buying bundles to get a specific game from them, because that was already a great deal on its own; but I don't just blindly buy games for no reason other than them being on sale, without any intention of playing them.
An example would be buying the November Humble Monthly for Stardew Valley at its (then) lowest price, and getting seven other games from it - of which I also really enjoyed playing Kathy Rain (it renewed my interest in adventure games), and haven't touched the others yet.
But that's hardly the same thing as buying games individually on Steam just because they're discounted even if I have no intention of playing them.
While not as cheap there are still some good deals. I use to buy a ton of games during Steam sales but I barely touched the majority of them, although I've gone back and completed many of them but honestly I'm happy to get a good deal instead of buying tons of games I'd probably never touch.
Games in Canada on Steam have gotten expensive so I mean if a game like Nier is $79.99 and I can get it for $30 I rather invest in that instead of 10 games I won't play.
I also think the sales are great for indie games, they still have some great deals going on for indie titles.
Games in Canada on Steam have gotten expensive so I mean if a game like Nier is $79.99 and I can get it for $30 I rather invest in that instead of 10 games I won't play.
I also think the sales are great for indie games, they still have some great deals going on for indie titles.
Well sure, comparing those US PS+ prices from this to prices in this.
2064 Read Only Memories PS+ 5.99 Steam 9.99
Amnesia Collection PS+ 8.99 Steam 5.24
Witcher 3 Goty: PS+ 24.99 Steam: 24.99
Bioshock Collection Ps+ 29.99 Steam 14.99
Bully PS+ 8.99 Steam 5.24
Crypt of the Necrodancer: PS+ 2.99 Steam 2.99
Darksiders Warmastered: PS+ 7.99 Steam 3.99
Darksiders 2 DE: PS+ 5.99 Steam 5.99
Deadlight DC: PS+ 4.49 Steam 2.39
Torment Tides of Numenera: PS+ 29.99 Steam 22.49
GTA The Trilogy: PS+ 20.99 Steam 8.99
Layers of Fear: PS+ 9.19 Steam 9.19
Soma: PS+ 8.99 Steam 8.99
Mighty No. 9 PS+ 5.99 Steam 4.99
Max Payne: PS+ 8.99 Steam 3.99
Outlast 2: PS+ 20.99 Steam 23.99
Worms WMD: 16.19 Steam 14.99
Hitman complete first season: PS+ 23.99 Steam 23.74
The Division: PS+ 35.63 Steam 19.99 though to be fair the PS+ version gives you 2400 credits to spend in additional in-game cosmetic items! Not exactly worth 15 bucks more.
Those PS+ prices also require you to pay for the discounts, those who don't play MP on their consoles get royally fucked. Pretty ridicilous imo. I didn't know they did this, Sony needs to get more flack for this.
And I have no idea if PS+ has their own special summer sale or something coming up where there would be way more discounted games at the same time. Steam has huge amount of different games discounted in these summer, autumn, winter and whatever sales. Then there's developer weekends, midweek madness, weekend sales.
Also those Steam prices are from current sales, not the lowest they have been. So some of them have been even cheaper on another sale and ofcoure still might be in the future.
Now if there are some mistakes I've made with that list please correct me. But I'd really appreciate people bringing receipts if they say that PSN has better sales than Steam. Those I picked are selected randomly from that PS blogpost that I recognized being on PC too. So no cherry picking happened.
Wolf Akela
Member
The thing I miss on Steam are the publisher pack deals. Entire publisher catalogues into one pack and heavily discounted.
I think part of the reason why I barely buy games on Steam nowadays is because they've already opened the gates. Back then, I got excited at every new game that comes to Steam. They don't come often enough, and they were great more often than not. I'm not against indies and I've enjoyed good amount of them though.
Steam sales aside, I just don't enjoy Steam as much as I used to. Support sucks. Region locks suck.
I think part of the reason why I barely buy games on Steam nowadays is because they've already opened the gates. Back then, I got excited at every new game that comes to Steam. They don't come often enough, and they were great more often than not. I'm not against indies and I've enjoyed good amount of them though.
Steam sales aside, I just don't enjoy Steam as much as I used to. Support sucks. Region locks suck.
The old system where people were manipulated into making impulse purchases under a time limit was exploitative and led to unreasonable purchasing practices. Thankfully it has some competition these days. The kinds of sales that Steam used to have devalued games to a ridiculous extent and tied a lot of people to their service.
Everyone should try to enjoy the games that they purchase instead of the act of purchasing them.
Everyone should try to enjoy the games that they purchase instead of the act of purchasing them.
D4rth Man7iz
Member
Completely agree.
Dog Problems
Banned
One man's dog shit is another man's trash.
You thought right. I have bout 900 games on steam and only played and beat i guess 30% of it. I'm a fuckin wannabe. Wannabe gamer representation!
I especially agree with the last point, since that doesn't really have a reasons for going away other than laziness.
The reason for the price increases during sales though is that more games are coming out but the same sales are being made, evidently because the active userbase is not really growing or the new players are just taking the seat of those which reduced their purchases due to the backlog (all reasoning on SteamSpy numbers). It's obvious at that point developers try to make more money with the same sales, I can't blame them, and I'd be happy if the situation was stable and improving...but actually it's not imho, since 2015 (when the sales 2.0 began) the metrics above have gone worse and I don't think Steam Direct will help in this direction.
More games, sure, but if the cake doesn't get bigger the same people will be asked more for a slice or the ingredients have to become cheaper.
That said, a first world problem for me, still bought 9 games for 38, no room to complain other than a look at the past.
The reason for the price increases during sales though is that more games are coming out but the same sales are being made, evidently because the active userbase is not really growing or the new players are just taking the seat of those which reduced their purchases due to the backlog (all reasoning on SteamSpy numbers). It's obvious at that point developers try to make more money with the same sales, I can't blame them, and I'd be happy if the situation was stable and improving...but actually it's not imho, since 2015 (when the sales 2.0 began) the metrics above have gone worse and I don't think Steam Direct will help in this direction.
More games, sure, but if the cake doesn't get bigger the same people will be asked more for a slice or the ingredients have to become cheaper.
That said, a first world problem for me, still bought 9 games for 38, no room to complain other than a look at the past.
Raptomex
Member
The OP post is pretty damn accurate. It's a shame. It seems like I do own everything making the major sales not fun anymore. Although, it was either this past Christmas or the one before, but one of those Steam sales was really disappointing. I think everything was a set deal for the entire sale, no rotation or something. I may be wrong. I don't remember the details since I pretty much owned everything anyway so it didn't matter but I do remember it not being very engaging.
I noticed some games never dipped low enough for years. I guess publishers knew what they were doing. For example, for the longest time I waited for any major CoD over the past several years to drop 50% - 90%. And it only seemed to be that series. None of the newer games would ever reach $10 or $20 or whatever I was hoping. So I only ended up owning CoD 1, UO, and 2 for the longest time. I only recently acquired the Steam version of WaW.
I noticed some games never dipped low enough for years. I guess publishers knew what they were doing. For example, for the longest time I waited for any major CoD over the past several years to drop 50% - 90%. And it only seemed to be that series. None of the newer games would ever reach $10 or $20 or whatever I was hoping. So I only ended up owning CoD 1, UO, and 2 for the longest time. I only recently acquired the Steam version of WaW.
Coming from a mostly-console player perspective, this seems like a petty complaint. I feel like I am constantly getting great indie games for a fraction of the price on Steam for the past 2-3 years. I almost feel guilty.
I got Undertale for 5, Southpark SoT for 7.50 , Torchlight 2 for $5 recently. Even if these games were on consoles, they would get discounted way later, probably be worse than their PC counterparts, and the discounts would still be more expensive than what we're getting here.
I mean, would I have liked to pay even less? Yes. I'm not going to complain that Undertale wasn't 2.50 instead of the 5 I paid for it though, that seems entitled. Great deals for indie games in my opinion.
Maybe the main beef is with AAA stuff? I don't even bother with that stuff on PC so I wouldn't know.
I got Undertale for 5, Southpark SoT for 7.50 , Torchlight 2 for $5 recently. Even if these games were on consoles, they would get discounted way later, probably be worse than their PC counterparts, and the discounts would still be more expensive than what we're getting here.
I mean, would I have liked to pay even less? Yes. I'm not going to complain that Undertale wasn't 2.50 instead of the 5 I paid for it though, that seems entitled. Great deals for indie games in my opinion.
Maybe the main beef is with AAA stuff? I don't even bother with that stuff on PC so I wouldn't know.
Raptomex
Member
It used to be like this with everything on Steam or so it seemed. My wishlist got so big. But recently I realized my Steam wishlist is always growing because I'm not purchasing as many games anymore because the discounts are either not worth it or don't happen and I just keep adding games to it thinking "yeah, the next sale".
Madrugador
Member
Sale achievements were amazing. Still remember the potato ARG and how fun it was for everyone (except for the ending).. Same with the some of the summer sales.
Miss them.
Miss them.
apieceofstrange
Member
Yea, steam sales used to feel like an event. 2 weeks of checking in daily for the new discounts was half the fun of it for me. I enjoyed the focused discussions about that day's highlighted games/flashes and it would often get me to check out a few games I would have otherwise passed on. The feeling of finally seeing the game you've been waiting for get the daily/flash discount was unmatched. Now there's nothing differentiating it from any other sale you'd see on Xbox or PSN. Quickly scan through my wishlist and buy 1 or 2 things I've been wanting if the discounts are decent. No need to bother checking in for the rest of the sale at all.
Hamster Plugin
Member
Consoles actually get better deals occasionally now. No Man's Sky was cheaper on PSN about 3 months ago than it is on Steam right now. This is also a game that is exclusive to Steam, so there is no way to get cheaper keys either.
Duke Nukem 3D Anniversary World Tour is also more expensive than it was on PSN January Sale (9.99 vs 6.95). Wolfenstein: The New Order is a lot more expensive on Steam (9.99) than it was on a PSN sale a month ago (3.95).
Games are most often price matched on Steam sales and PSN sales, and this technically makes the PS4 version a better deal because the base price of games is almost always higher on consoles than PC.
The only thing PSN does not have is a huge sale with practically everything on sale at once, although European PSN's January+February Sales go through almost all of the library so you already have one event to look forward to if you are a PS4 owner in the PAL region.
Duke Nukem 3D Anniversary World Tour is also more expensive than it was on PSN January Sale (9.99 vs 6.95). Wolfenstein: The New Order is a lot more expensive on Steam (9.99) than it was on a PSN sale a month ago (3.95).
Games are most often price matched on Steam sales and PSN sales, and this technically makes the PS4 version a better deal because the base price of games is almost always higher on consoles than PC.
The only thing PSN does not have is a huge sale with practically everything on sale at once, although European PSN's January+February Sales go through almost all of the library so you already have one event to look forward to if you are a PS4 owner in the PAL region.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
That is true. I misworded.
Black_Wolf
Neo Member
I think Steam sales were overly generous at first to get more people on board. Now that people have already attached themselves to Steam with their library, its unlikely they'll go anywhere else. Yes, there are other websites you can buy codes from to activate on Steam without actually buying directly from Steam, but not everyone knows about those.
We see the same thing happening with Amazon. Remember most pre-orders for new games gave you $20 in gift credit at Amazon? You could literally buy a brand new game for essentially $40 on launch with those deals. Those stopped happening around 2011 or 2012 (the last game I remember buying that I received $20 credit for was Killzone 3). This is not to mention other things, like raising the "Free Shipping" limit, Prime, etc. They can afford not to be as generous because they've already won you over and beat out any potential competition that'd steal your business from them.
Overall, this is typical - the larger the customer base and more reliant those clients are on a given service, the less hoops that service (in this case, Steam sales) will force themselves to jump through to keep aforementioned customers. They don't have to appeal to you anymore because you can't really "leave" at this point. You need them more than they need you. They can afford to do whatever they want without risking much.
That being said - while the deals aren't as good as they used to be, they're still pretty good. Shadow of Mordor for $4 is nice, as are a few other deals.
We see the same thing happening with Amazon. Remember most pre-orders for new games gave you $20 in gift credit at Amazon? You could literally buy a brand new game for essentially $40 on launch with those deals. Those stopped happening around 2011 or 2012 (the last game I remember buying that I received $20 credit for was Killzone 3). This is not to mention other things, like raising the "Free Shipping" limit, Prime, etc. They can afford not to be as generous because they've already won you over and beat out any potential competition that'd steal your business from them.
Overall, this is typical - the larger the customer base and more reliant those clients are on a given service, the less hoops that service (in this case, Steam sales) will force themselves to jump through to keep aforementioned customers. They don't have to appeal to you anymore because you can't really "leave" at this point. You need them more than they need you. They can afford to do whatever they want without risking much.
That being said - while the deals aren't as good as they used to be, they're still pretty good. Shadow of Mordor for $4 is nice, as are a few other deals.
Sad Affleck
Member
Good post.
breadtruck
Member
Edgy.
That was my favorite Summer Sale. I still have those sweet shades on my TF2 Scout.
grandwizard
Member
Thanks for doing this. Getting real tired of console players spreading around the 'steam sales are deaaaad!' shit just because PSN has a good flash deal occasionally.
tensuke
Member
Really? Man that's bad, it's a $30 game...
Although, in this case, man is that $20 totally worth it. If you like games like Myst, you'll love it I think. There's a lot of backtracking but otherwise, it's got the same genius behind it. Such a good game.
SporeCrawler
Member
funny thing. i think i never finished a game on steam except the first few games i bought in orange box
And games I actually WANT to play.Mmm, yeah, discovery is still an issue either way. Lack of dailies and flashes, as well as the decreasing amount of community is all on Steam. Wonder if they got too much noise from Steam Support/forums/etc on 'why my game didn't win in the voting' and/or 'missed the sale ~!#@'
That said, considering publishers set the prices and not Steam, it's not necessarily a Steam thing - since they're happy to give them a publisher or game series weekend (Playism is a good example). Probably better long term to move away from the 'wait for the Steam sale 75-90% mentality) as publishers (and others like Humble, GOG) take advantage of slow days or weekends to do PR.
Also, getting smart was probably what happens after EA, a big publisher itself, went Origin and said "Steam sales cheapen intellectual property".
I do feel a bit ashamed about the game backlog in the hundreds, so that's on me. That said, my spending patterns are moving from 'gotta get big games with big discounts' to focusing on stuff on wishlist from the hidden gems list and a tilt towards Japanese games (no better way to encourage them to put their games on Steam in the first place).
Also, those lovable 'sale mascots' are missing again from Summer Sale ;_;
That said, considering publishers set the prices and not Steam, it's not necessarily a Steam thing - since they're happy to give them a publisher or game series weekend (Playism is a good example). Probably better long term to move away from the 'wait for the Steam sale 75-90% mentality) as publishers (and others like Humble, GOG) take advantage of slow days or weekends to do PR.
Also, getting smart was probably what happens after EA, a big publisher itself, went Origin and said "Steam sales cheapen intellectual property".
I do feel a bit ashamed about the game backlog in the hundreds, so that's on me. That said, my spending patterns are moving from 'gotta get big games with big discounts' to focusing on stuff on wishlist from the hidden gems list and a tilt towards Japanese games (no better way to encourage them to put their games on Steam in the first place).
Also, those lovable 'sale mascots' are missing again from Summer Sale ;_;
I'm surprised at the number of people that miss the flash sales/dailies. I truly hated them because games I wanted to buy I would just wait until they showed up in a flash/daily, and sometimes that wouldn't be until the last days of the sale.
Now I can just look at my wishlist and buy the games I want without feeling like I should have waited to save money.
Now I can just look at my wishlist and buy the games I want without feeling like I should have waited to save money.
Similar threads
- Locked