General Video Game Deals Thread

[Ben X]

Well I'm not even talking about extreme cases, take the example of a kid who has a birthday during the sale, and says they want to buy a bunch of games. The parents think "Well no, we wont let them buy a ton, but let's give them $50 to choose games with.", and what if the kid then just buys stuff they otherwise wouldn't have been as interested in. It's not brainwashing but it's a pretty dodgy way to push people closer to clicking the purchase button, it's a less bad version of well tuned free to play games that encourage you to just drop a couple dollars for the game to make it a bit easier.

 

 

People make irrational decisions all the time, in my opinion a shop has a responsibility to not encourage irresponsible behaviour for their own benefit (this is the point of some government regulations).

 

In your example, this is still the parents' choice, and I wouldn't call it especially insidious. I wish I could have back all the money of my parents that I spent as a child on sweets and comics and toys and other bullshit that I thought I wanted but didn't, from waaaay before even the internet existed, never mind Steam.

[prettyunsmart]

Rocksmith 2014 is one of the one of the only things I care about getting in the summer sale, and it's 75% off on a flash sale right now. Conveniently, this is happening while I can't log into steam because of a server error. Blerg.

 

...And it works now. Disregard my complaining.

[JonCole]

Yeah, it's not particularly responsible for parents to do that either, though I suppose I could see the convenience of giving a kid a Steam gift card and telling them to have at it. Considering I spent my allowance in my childhood buying food and toys I didn't need, my teenage years buying drugs and alcohol that I'd later come to regret, and my college years using scholarship money to buy a ton of games I didn't play, I wish my parents had kept the purse strings pretty tight, maybe asked me why I wanted a particular thing and tried to help me reason things out now and then.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I suppose realistically, the existence of the sale itself with 75% discounts is what draws more money out of people's pockets.

It's just that the event is so much more work for Valve to put in explicitly to make people's impulse buying more frenzied. It's that fact that makes it feel more weird to me, like valve is the sleazy car salesman stereotype saying "You know, if you buy this car today, we have a raffle going and you might win that overcoat for free..."

[SilentBtAmazing]

Rocksmith 2014 is one of the one of the only things I care about getting in the summer sale, and it's 75% off on a flash sale right now.

Me too! I was very pleasantly surprised. I own the cord from the 360 version but couldn't play it bc of the latency, here's to hoping my PC is better about that.

[Twig]

And now green team's in the lead by a HUGE margin already. I have no idea how the logic works here. I haven't been team-switched yet so I don't think they're doing any random shuffling. Maybe they are and I'm just "lucky", I don't know.

[clyde]

This is a incredibly deep (and interesting) subject. This gameification of sales is widespread. I used to work at Sears as a sales-clerk and most of that job is trying to figure out how to play a game of deep discounts through the multi-tiered timed sales and supply situations. I hated it then too. What it comes down to for me is that production and consumption are only valuable if they increase living-standards. Personally, I have a problem with the manufacturing of destructive desires. Of course there is a lot of debate about what is manufactured desire and what is destructive. Let's face it, I shouldn't be buying games at all; I should be buying toilets for women in India.

If we are going to talk about gamers with disposable incomes that can't say no to titles they will never play as victims, then we should just go ahead and ask why people are buying bigger houses than they can afford or why third-world farmers grow ingredients for luxury goods rather than food. The gameification is widespread and possibly unethical.

[Justin Leego]

Say, that's an idea. We could always twin Idle Thumbs Dot Net with a clean toilet project in a poor community.

[JonCole]

I want someone to draw a beautiful digital painting of an Idle Thumbs-related meme character sitting on a toilet with the twin toilet plate painted onto it that can be hung in the Idle Thumbs office bathroom.

[clyde]

Say, that's an idea. We could always twin Idle Thumbs Dot Net with a clean toilet project in a poor community.

Why am I more interested in buying a second copy of Skyrim while it's $5 than participating in this. It makes no sense!

[quantum_leopold]

I've already picked up a handful of games from the sale (the Blackwell series pack, Banished, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon), but currently I'm debating Prison Architect and Dark Souls 2. For DS2 my main concern is whether they'll reduce it further at any point during the sale--for a fairly new game, I expect it's not likely, but then again, the current 33% off sale says it's through June 30, so I might as well wait and see what happens (especially since I still have a long way to go in DS1. I'm a bit stumped about Prison Architect though--I recall seeing some interesting coverage of it when it first came out, but also recall that it was very early in Early Access at that point. Anyone know what the state of the game is like now? Are we still in buyer beware territory or have things smoothed out?

[syntheticgerbil]

I really hate that there are three heads for Battleblock Theater introduced in the summer sale that are almost impossible to get unless I plan on spending a bunch of money and crafting badges. So obnoxious. 360 users of the game just got them for free the normal method of logging in on a certain week and playing user created levels. One of the heads goes for $20 in the marketplace, which is less than what I'd pay by wasting my money buying cards.

I don't think I've ever disliked Steam more than I do right now.

[JonCole]

I really hate that there are three heads for Battleblock Theater introduced in the summer sale that are almost impossible to get unless I plan on spending a bunch of money and crafting badges. So obnoxious. 360 users of the game just got them for free the normal method of logging in on a certain week and playing user created levels. One of the heads goes for $20 in the marketplace, which is less than what I'd pay by wasting my money buying cards.

I don't think I've ever disliked Steam more than I do right now.

 

That's super weird, I thought all the rewards were for F2P games. Having cosmetic items for F2P games be rewards in weird contests and resold for big bucks seems much more palatable than cosmetic items in games you pay for being $20 on the open market. Lame.

[BusbyBerkeley]

If anyone is interested in Pinball junk, Pinball Arcade is having a (secret?) sale where you can get three tables for one single goddamn cent. The game is free to download and then you can get the pack of Black Hole, Ripley's Believe it or Not, and Theater of Magic from inside the game in the Season One tables. It uses fund from your steam wallet too, so you don't even need to enter card info. It says it includes Tales of the Arabian Nights, but everyone gets that one for free anyway.

 

This is the one that emulates existing, real pinball machines and it's super cool. They have some prime shit in there, including the fucking TERMINATOR 2 TABLE! but those aren't really on a great sale or anything. The otherPinball game is fun with a bunch of flashy licensed tables that are of their own design. Both are pretty cool though.

 

But yeah, you can sell a card you got from some game and buy the four table pack, it's cool!

[elmuerte]

geez, that's really well hidden.

[Tanukitsune]

Jazzpunk is just 50% off, I guess I should wait till it's cheaper? 

[elmuerte]

it wouldn't get cheaper than the price it has when it's in a highlighted sale (day sale, flash sale, community sale).

[Tanukitsune]

Yeah, but what's 50% off this sale is likely to be 70-80% off in the next Steam sale... or the one after it?

[Nappi]

Well, every game will be super cheap at some point. If you want to play it within the next six months or so, you should probably buy it now. Otherwise, buy it later or not at all.

[Tanukitsune]

In the end, I did buy Jazzpunk, but I couldn't be bothered to buy Arkham Origins, the more games the franchise has, the less I'm interested in.

 

I'm kinda tempted to buy FF7 since the Steam version has cheats so I won't have to grind and Age of Mythology HD since I'm slowly getting into Age of Empires II HD (Even though it's only 40% off). 

[Justin Leego]

If anyone is interested in Pinball junk, Pinball Arcade is having a (secret?) sale where you can get three tables for one single goddamn cent.

But yeah, you can sell a card you got from some game and buy the four table pack, it's cool!

Well when you put it like that...

[SilentBtAmazing]

Me too! I was very pleasantly surprised. I own the cord from the 360 version but couldn't play it bc of the latency, here's to hoping my PC is better about that.

This was about Rocksmith just updating to say wow for me at least the latency is way better on PC and I am super happy (in case anyone else was in a similar situation)

[Bjorn]

Should I wait to buy Metro Last Light Redux when it comes out, or just grab the mundane version now for cheap?  I can't imagine the new version is going to be all that improved.

[JonCole]

Buy Metro LL right now, if you find it visually lacking or whatever you get 50% off the preorder of LL Redux which is a $12.50 discount (meaning you'd ultimately get a $6-ish discount on Redux if you decide to go that way).

[Ucantalas]

So the first Euro Truck Simulator was like $2.65 or so. I bought it with the money I made selling all my Steam trading cards.

This game... it is so much fun. It falls firmly in the category of "I cannot explain why I love this game because it sounds boring when I try", along with games like Harvest Moon and Minecraft.