Left 4 Dead - Four Pack Buying Extravaganza

[castorp]

Are there any regular thumbers (you know, trustworthy folk), who are interested in a quarter of the Left for Dead Four Pack? It's 150 dollars for four copies of the game. Interested like in 'buying it together with some internet-strangers – the game gets cheaper and we all win – and that would make a win-win-situation'.

I know one other guy, so this discount-action would work with two additional thumbers.

Anyone?

[miffy495]

Damn, I'd totally be in if I hadn't already bought it. That's what I get for reading the thumb too late in the day. Gotta give credit to Valve though, that's a really cool idea and a clever way to get a group into the game.

[vimes]

I'm in.

[ThunderPeel2001]

I was thinking about this but it's still not as cheap as it could be:

$150 / 4 = $37.5. It's currently retailing on Steam for $50.

That, for me, translates to about £25GBP as opposed to about £35GBP.

That's all well and good except...!

I can buy it from Amazon.co.uk for £19.97GBP (which is about $30)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Left-4-Dead-PC-DVD/dp/B001GIOGDW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=video games&qid=1227103297&sr=8-1

Might want to double-check your area for any better deals.

[castorp]

Oh, thanks Thunderpeel.

But it seems there is no equally good offer in my area. And considering delivery rates and tax, ordering from the UK would be pretty much as expansive as ordering from steam. (My math might be broken, and I didn't consider the steam-VAT, so I take no responsibility for the involved numbers.)

[play.com offers it for a little more but with free delivery – but it says something about this being a special pre-order deal only, while apparently allowing me to still order it for the quite low price– I'm confused]

Without a forth person, it's all just speculative talk [steam] anyway.

[vimes]

We need another one.... come on.

[Ginger]

Even with a decent dollar/sterling exchange rate $50 seems a lot for a game on steam. Has there ever been any justification for why games cost so much on steam? No production, shipping, storage or shop costs ok u've got to pay for the servers but that can't can't be that expensive, can it?

[castorp]

(Yeah, the pricing is quite strange. Yesterday I bought Bioshock for 10€ at a retail store and it seems to be about this cheap everywhere. Steam on the other hand still offers it for 55$.)

British Amazon and play.com increased their prices on Left for Dead, so now the four-pack-thing appears to be the cheapest offer all around (even for British people).

[brkl]

I'd buy one if I had a puter that ran it, but I don't

[ThunderPeel2001]

British Amazon and play.com increased their prices on Left for Dead, so now the four-pack-thing appears to be the cheapest offer all around (even for British people).

Doh!

[Chris]

Even with a decent dollar/sterling exchange rate $50 seems a lot for a game on steam. Has there ever been any justification for why games cost so much on steam? No production, shipping, storage or shop costs ok u've got to pay for the servers but that can't can't be that expensive, can it?

$50 is how much they cost at retail, and Valve can't undercut their retail partners. Retail still has plenty of leverage, because with very few exceptions, pretty much all developers still do the great majority of their sales via traditional disc-based games.

[Ginger]

$50 is how much they cost at retail, and Valve can't undercut their retail partners. Retail still has plenty of leverage, because with very few exceptions, pretty much all developers still do the great majority of their sales via traditional disc-based games.

That sounds an awful lot like implicit collusive pricing and is illegal here and is most proabably illegal in the US, it probably wouldn't be that hard to show that given the elastic demand of buying games on steam that they could be better off by pricing their product more competitively and if the reason that they don't is because they don't want to damage relations with a fellow retailer then I call collusion (even if no explicit deal has been brokered)

This case could be won (but I doubt it'd be beneficial to the consumer and would probably result in the death of steam) I urge someone less apathetic than I to take up the mantle, if we shift power away from the retailers it would probably be massively beneficial for the industry (then all we'd have to do is take power from the dumb execs and we might have an ok industry)

[David]

Whoa. I don't really suspect any kind of curled-mustache robber baron industrialist tactics, although it does invoke a nice visual. Retail's important, even to Valve, and it allows them to bring a flow of new people to the Steam platform by being much more visible on shelves (and billboard ads, and the sides of buses, and so on). So yeah, they probably aren't going to try cannibalizing that potential anytime soon. No need for secret cabal meetings; it's just business.

[castorp]

Darn it! (When I was young we used to say 'fuck it')

I bought Fallout 3 instead.

(Left for Dead? Anyone? No?)