JonCole

General Video Game Deals Thread

Recommended Posts

Has anyone done the math to figure out how much valve stands to gain by the end of this? I'm pretty sure it's in the millions.

They figured out how to make millions getting other people to clean up their gamified market of fake cards.

Fuck.

 

Like I said earlier, it's evil genius level of brilliant.  As for how much they'll make, it's super duper hard to estimate even.  For the vast majority of the emoticons and backgrounds, Valve is getting 1 cent and the dev is getting 1 cent (not counting Valve owned properties, where they get 2 cents).  There are something like 13,000 unique backgrounds and emoticons.  Some of those had stock in the thousands, others only had stock in the single digits.  Even if there were a million transactions for these items, that's still only $10,000 for Valve.  Valve gets the entire 15 percent cut of gem sales, so around 15 cents per sale at the current prices.  It says there have been 132,000 sack of gem sales in the last 24 hours.  The average Valve cut is probably 10 cents or so on those (since the prices started off much lower and have steadily climbed).  So that's $13,000 in a day for gem sales.

 

So at a guess, I'd say this whole stunt might drive a few hundred thousand dollars in payments to Valve during the event itself. 

 

But, I'd imagine that the real value to this is long term.  Assuming that gem to booster conversions are permanent, trash that never sold now has a persistent value, and the prices of many items have been seriously elevated.  If gems continue to be a thing, it is a move that's going to pay millions going forward. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I did a minor version of that Bjorn's spreadsheet and just took a screenshot from auction 3 of the games I'm interested in and then keep comparing back, the prices are dropping quite a lot. I think I can spread a few thousand gems over some obscure games and clean up some of them as long as there isn't a massive movement to hoover up low bid games. But I think that probably will happen with any of the ones that spawn cards.

 

Also speaking of cards, I have a bunch of games running just to farm them, and mostly I get one maybe two at a time. Just now I got 12 at once. I do not understand the spawning system at all.

 

EDIT: Got another 8 while I wasn't looking.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm pretty sure it depends on the game, most shorter games will drop all the cards in an hour or less, while longer ones take several hours. On very rare occasions you might beat the game and still have card drops remaining.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I've looked it up before and heard so much conflicting information I'm suspicious that explaining it might just be an exercise in confirmation bias and superstition reinforcement because of how little sense it seems to make.

 

EDIT: They also just added the ability for you to see what rank you are even if you're below the top 100 bidders. They added it literally as I was increasing some bids.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Sacks of Gems are now up to $1.10 each in the Market.  If they keep going up tonight, I may just end up selling all my gems and saving the money for the sale. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Got Nidhogg for 10,200 gems, not an amazing grab but I'm not going to complain. Plus I got a badge out of it! :D

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

You also got a badge for making gems and placing your first bid, if you hadn't noticed.  They're 3 tiers of the same badge, so each one replaces the previous one. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I feel like I walked in on all the students at Valve High School who discovered a new illicit substance and are all out back looking over their shoulders constantly making crazy deals to buy and sell it.

 

What the hell are you kids doing?! I use Steam constantly and I have like 300ish worth of gems if I turned all these stupid cards into them.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Prices of my 100 gem items are up to 14 cents now. I'll be able to make some change to actually buy something during the sale.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

At this point, prices on gems + auction rates are low enough that you actually can get some good deals if you're looking for them. A couple of games on my wishlist are ~2,000 gems, effectively $2.40, that have never gone below $5 in my recollection. I'm starting to buy gems to try at a few things, might get lucky and even do better than in regular Steam sales.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Dammit, for some bizarre reason my entire bid list reorganized itself over night, it's *mostly* alphabetical now, except about a dozen games aren't.  Fucking weird. 

 

But I won Space Ace overnight!  I'm actually pretty psyched about that.  I played the hell out of Dragon's Lair as a kid, but I only very rarely got to play Space Ace, and was never able to make it very far when I did. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Huh, if you adjust for inflation, prices haven't actually changed significantly since round 2.   The first two rounds of bidding was driven, largely, by people's "free" stockpiles and the early rush on gems that was worth 30 cents per thousand.   Gems have now risen to 4 times that early price ($1.20), and prices have mostly fallen to about one fourth of the early prices.  Except for the most popular and newest games on my list, if I look at any other game, it's price is now very, very closet to 25 percent of its round 2 price.  Perfectly matching the inflation in gem value that has occurred in the last 72 hours.

 

This is why I love these Steam experiments.  The market has behaved rationally, at least as far as we tend to understand how markets self regulate and value things. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm really amazed at the demand for the holiday profile skins. They're only good for a month and cannot be resold, but are going for hundreds of dollars worth of gems.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I feel like I walked in on all the students at Valve High School who discovered a new illicit substance and are all out back looking over their shoulders constantly making crazy deals to buy and sell it.

 

What the hell are you kids doing?! I use Steam constantly and I have like 300ish worth of gems if I turned all these stupid cards into them.

 

I love this post.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I wonder if Steam Gems will factor into the Winter Sale metagame too.

It wouldn't surprise me, but I doubt it. It's a pretty dick move to do.

Seems like prices are slightly increasing throughout the day today. The hit a low point last night. I'm hoping that tonight will be the lowest stuff goes. At least that's when I'm counting on dumping the rest of my gems.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So thus far I got -

 

Nidhogg - 10,200 gems (gems cost about $1/sack at the time)

Heavy Bullets - 5,100 gems

Hatoful Boyfriend - 5,560 gems

Towerfall Ascension - 5,430 gems

 

So, all in all I got roughly sale price or better on everything I went for. Between Nidhogg, Towerfall and the forthcoming Sportsfriends PC release, I'll have plenty of stuff to load up on the laptop for holiday family gaming.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't care enough to buy a bunch of gems, so it looks like I'll probably just be buying a booster pack with mine. Maybe Massive Chalice since I don't think those cards are actually available yet, but they were listed as a craftable item.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Is there a way to donate the gems to charity or something?

 

You could always send a message to AbleGamers or any other group that does good work and ask if they take donations of items on Steam, to either use for themselves (they deserve some perk for the good work they do) or maybe use to fund gifts for people in need. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now