General Video Game Deals Thread

[chummer]

I have no idea what is happening with this gem stuff aside from that I've sold some cards and now have $3 in my Steam wallet. Hoping someone will pick up one of my ridiculously overpriced cards.

[Bjorn]

I've got two games left that I want to win, and I keep getting barely overbid. Put in good bids overnight, and have raised them three times this morning, and still keep getting sniped.

Bids are getting denser at the upper end. Early on in the auction, there were only 3-5 bids that were legitimate, and the rest seemed to be low end or placeholders. Now there are a dozen or more legitimate bids at the high end. Prices on gems are also falling, which should translate to higher bids throughout the day.

[feelthedarkness]

we're in the back half, so i think things will start ticking back up. also, carrying over the #2 bid is genius for driving prices up.

 

i finally went for what i wanted: Shroud of the Avatar (haha), and got it on my morning commute for 21,000, which was 2,500 more than the lowest one I saw. a good price for an early access game, which i assume won't see a sale for a long time? 

[JonCole]

My strategy has been to snipe the top spot in the last 3 minutes, then put in an increased bid by about 10% of my top bid just so people will have a hard time taking it back from me in that window. So for like Heavy Bullets, I put in a top bid of 4600 at 3 minutes then shortly after put in an increased bid of 5250. They tried to snipe it back from me, but I guess they gave up at 5100.

[Bjorn]

I've won most of mine overnight, placing bids about 10 percent lower than the current price and counting on the price to drop overnight. Which worked in all but 3 cases. I'm going to do the same thing as Jon to get these last 2.

[Bjorn]

And I'm finally out of gems.  Ended up buying some gem sacks this morning to ensure that I got the last two games I really wanted, and then didn't actually need 2,000 of them.  So picked up Bleed, as it was one of the cheapest games with co-op on my list.

BlueToad Murder Files                   865
Space Ace                                      1,663
LocoCycle                                       1,006
Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime    1,326
Vertiginous Golf                              2,654
Dungeon of the Endless                 9,901
A Walk in the Dark                         1,104
Hatoful Boyfriend                            5,605
Deadnaut                                        5,300
Ghost Control                                 4,100
Masterplan                                     6,600
Bleed                                             1,800

Total gems spent: 41,924
Total money spent on gems: $24.92
Average price per 1K gems: $0.59

I'd have saved a few thousand on Ghost Control and Masterplan if I would have bid more aggressively last night, they each went up 2K+ each today.

Overall I probably burned entirely too much time paying attention to this silly thing, but it was fun and different. Seems like some people always complain about these Valve stunts, but for some of us it is actually something that's fun and engaging to mess with. The page does specifically say that devs donated their games, which continues to bug me, as there's no doubt this was a move that was financially in Valve's best interest. I did end up putting several games on my Wishlist I had either forgot about, or never heard of though, so it did provide some advertising for some of the devs who participated. I noticed that Dungeon of the Endless went on sale today, which is probably a smart move for devs who are on the auction. The sale price is currently below the going rate for gems, so they might pick up some sales from people who notice that.

[pkirkner]

I picked up 2,000 gems for about $2. Between those and the gems I created from the chaff in my Steam inventory I had enough to pick up Escape Goat 1 & 2 and Fist Puncher employing the "make sure I'm in the top 3 before going to bed" strategy.

[Tanukitsune]

The 3DS eShop has Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked is only 12€ until tomorrow, does it have any of the story depth and socializing from the Persona series? Or it just a tough dungeon crawler? I get my SMT titles a bit mixed up.

 

Anyway, this is probably the moment to get Steam auction items, they might get lower, but it's probably too risky to wait until the last bid.

[Tanukitsune]

Oh man, I feel kinda bad now, I check the auctions I was bidding on and it was almost the last minute... I felt like I sniped the auctions. 

 

I manged to get:

-Dominique Pamplemouse

-AR-K

-Cinemaware Anthology

-Lilli: Child of Geos

-Heroes Rise Trilogy

-Disney Universe

 

I might try to get a few more, some items are getting lower, others are staying pretty stable.

[Bjorn]

I just put Dominique Pamplemousse on my wishlist, had never heard of it before, but that looks fascinating.

[Tanukitsune]

I'm pretty sure there was a small thread about it, it's paper mache look is pretty interesting.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I got a few little games called pid, Angvik and 911 First Responders. (I know little about any of them but they seemed charming enough to bid nonexistent currency on)

 

The sniping bids were worse than I thought, so I had to abandon some others I was eyeing to pile on masses of gems to these. This was a pretty fun event but if it ever happens again I'm planning to just throw all my gems at one game and then ignore it, I spent way too long invested in this process.

 

EDIT: Also if anyone wants a stray 514 gems, hit me up soon!

[Tanukitsune]

I managed to get the Don Bluth games I didn't own on Steam.

 

What are we supposed to do with left over gems? You can only sell them in lots of 1000, right?

[SuperBiasedMan]

Yeah, that's what it looks like. And you can similarly only use a 1000 to make boosters, so I think Valve wants the leftovers to evaporate out of the economy (since the most any individual can lose that way is about a buck's worth).

[Tanukitsune]

It also looks like the cheapest booster pack is 400, for the more "popular" games, so you'll have enough for a booster pack, but I might have to get rid of some more stuff to get something. 

[Ben X]

EDIT: Also if anyone wants a stray 514 gems, hit me up soon!

 

PMed you!

[Bjorn]

Costs for crafting booster packs are figured by the total cards in a set. The more cards in a set, the cheaper the pack. So for a game with 5 cards, I think it's 1200, and goes down from there. I think 400 is the cheapest.

You can also determine how many gems a background or emoticon is worth if you know the value of one of the cards for a set. Backgrounds/emoticons are worth half of the gem value of a full set. So if a set has 8 cards, valued at 20 gems each, the set is worth 160. Each background/emoticon will be worth 80. It means that you don't lose any gems for crafting a set, since you always get one background and one emoticon for crafting.

I would assume that for awhile, crafting boosters will be the only purpose of gems. Once the gem prices crash though, I'm tempted to stock up on some over time. Like if they drop below 30 cents per 1000, I might buy a bunch and just see if there ends up being another event like this for the summer sale.

[Tanukitsune]

I guess if they won't disappear you could use them for booster packs, but it's still just cheap to buy the cards.

[Ben X]

PMed you!

 

In fact, if anyone wants to somehow give me some unwanted gems in the next 90 minutes so I can get one fricking game out of this thing, that'd be nice!

[Bjorn]

I would, but it has to be a thousand, and I've only got 200 left.

 

Nevermind, I was wrong!

[Ben X]

Yeah, I was wondering how SBM was planning to give his gems away...

[pkirkner]

You can gift any number of gems. You just can't put less than 1000 on the market. I had 14 leftover last night and was able to pass them along.

[Tanukitsune]

I wouldn't mind another auction, since the value of 1000 gems is 1€ I managed to get a bunch of games at least 80% of their value, but some ended up paying more than the actual of the game and I doubt they had enough cards to have 30.000 gems.

 

Which means people payed about 400€ for the Xmas profile, which is scary. 

[Ben X]

You can gift any number of gems. You just can't put less than 1000 on the market. I had 14 leftover last night and was able to pass them along.

 

You sure? So Bjorn could gift me those 200?

 

EDIT: I'm TimeGentleman on Steam btw...

[Bjorn]

Okay, I was totally wrong, you can trade/gift any amount of gems.  You just have to do it from the trade screen.  I just misread the description in my inventory.