General Video Game Deals Thread

[syntheticgerbil]

I can't read the comic because the Steam website is broken ass bullshit and seems to think I live in Italy. For a while it was Sweden or something. It's never the United States though, that would be insane.

 

Nevermind, works in Chrome, I usually use Firefox. So why do elves want gems? What will they do with them?

[Twig]

It says in the comic! They use gems to make more gifts!

 

Bjorn: I'm not seeing it, but I don't know what specifically you're talking about.

[Tanukitsune]

Huh, you too? I was wondering my Steam thought I was Swedish all of the sudden.

 

I don't really see why to comic is mocking GamerGate, it only mentions the year and Thanksgiving. 

 

Have people gone so gem crazy it melted Steam?

[syntheticgerbil]

How do you convert gems to gifts? If they are purchasing supplies they need cold hard cash!

 

Yeah it's weird, even when I log in to the Steam website and check my country and all, for the last year or two it's always been in another language. The client works just fine though.

[Twig]

The gems are supplies! Geez don't you believe in magic?!

 

I've had seemingly regular occurrences of the website switching languages on me over the years, usually during a busy sale or whatever. At this point I've just gotten used to it and I know where the drop-down menu is in the upper-right to change the language back to English.

[Bjorn]

The desktop site routinely sets me to insane European countries as my default language for some reason. 

 

I was thinking goobergate because the elf saying that 2014 must have been a rough year for gamers being naughty. 

[Twig]

Hmm hmmmm I could see it, but I don't know! It could just as easily be attributed to "dumb easy joke" territory.

[Bjorn]

Apparently it's down because last night people had already figured out an easy way to dupe gems. 

[BusbyBerkeley]

All the Batman Arkham games for $10 on budlestars.

http://www.bundlestars.com/all-bundles/batman-complete-bundle/

Sort about the formatting. Phone posting is a hassle.

[Dewar]

Checking that out eventually led me to the Humble Store, who are running a holiday sale right now. No quite as blow-out as Steam sales are, but still some good prices on fairly new games.

[SecretAsianMan]

Is it confirmed that this replaces the normal Steam Sale?

 

The sale is supposedly going to start on the 18th, which is when the auction thing is supposed to end.  Knowing Valve's penchant for weird metagames during sales, they're probably related.

[syntheticgerbil]

The desktop site routinely sets me to insane European countries as my default language for some reason.

I think it's definitely a Gamergate prod. I forgot to agree with you, haha.

[elmuerte]

The desktop site routinely sets me to insane European countries as my default language for some reason. 

 

You probably followed a link containing a language code. I once had that within steam and it set everything to Korean. Took me a while to find a link to put it back to English (because within steam you cannot change the language).

[Bjorn]

The auctions and gem creation stuff is live again.  This is by far the weirdest thing Valve has done.  Like the values of stuff are all over the board, seemingly at random. 

[SuperBiasedMan]

Yeah I basically skimmed through my wishlist searching things and putting 1 gem bets on anything under a thousand, cause I figure I can watch them all that way and make real bids later.

It is very bizarre, and also makes me feel a bit skeevy because somewhere it's mentioned that devs donated these games? (Even if they didn't, games being further devalued etc.)

 

EDIT: It is also exceedingly bizarre that the rounds all last 45 minutes exactly... except the first that lasts 2 1/2 more days?

[Merus]

The auctions and gem creation stuff is live again.  This is by far the weirdest thing Valve has done.  Like the values of stuff are all over the board, seemingly at random.

 

Interestingly, emoticons and wallpapers seem to start at 80 gems, and they're extremely cheap on the Market. 40c gets 800 gems, and if my understand of how this works is right, if there are fewer bids on a game than there are games available, every bid will win.

[Twig]

That's incorrect Merus. Only one game is up for auction at a time. The first auction ends Monday morning at... some time? Then each auction after that lasts 45 minutes.

[SuperBiasedMan]

One copy is up at a time, as far as I can tell the games have a hundred copies each. So if less than a hundred people bid on a game, they all win. But I don't think that would happen because I imagine that people will start hoovering up games with card potential to farm gems to pour back into other games. (or just to sell cards).

[undermind9]

what is crazy about it is the amount of gems being bid.  searching by tag for just indie and going to last page - Strike Suit Zero Artbook - 3800 gems bid

 

if you get ~10-20 gems from a card then looking at a few hundred cards - or like merus said emoticon/bkds still ~50 items dumped into the gem machine.  even if you go buy a bunch of the best yield emoticons from the market @ <$.10 still paying as much for the item...

 

either they didnt properly wipe peoples duped/gem exploit or this event is not for normal users.  and macro steam economics are bonkers

[Twig]

I'm of the opinion that this auction thing is an attempt by valve to clear out the Steam Market of a bunch of junk that's just been sitting there.

 

I dunno if it'll work, and the fact that you can also trade gems for booster packs (to get more cards!) means that there's a bit of a cycle going on, but at any rate... that's what I think this is for.

[chickenmonger]

I've been finding a lot of indie games where there's less than 100 bids right now, so even a 1 gem bid would (in theory) receive the game. Eh, worth a shot.

[feelthedarkness]

man, whoever controlled that junk bot is gonna be the scrooge mcduck of steam gems. 

[Bjorn]

I'm of the opinion that this auction thing is an attempt by valve to clear out the Steam Market of a bunch of junk that's just been sitting there.

 

I dunno if it'll work, and the fact that you can also trade gems for booster packs (to get more cards!) means that there's a bit of a cycle going on, but at any rate... that's what I think this is for.

 

Yeah, this is definitely a move to clear out thousands and thousands of junk items, plus re-invigorate the card market as well.  It varies, but it looks like crafting a booster pack can vary from 600 to 1300 gems, and you can only do it once a day.  So it's removing much more value from the system than its putting back in.   I'd expect the Booster crafting system to stay as well, to try and regulate the whole economy more going forward. 

 

The value of cards had really dropped since the last Steam sale.  Lots of cards were only selling for 3-6 cents (not counting Valve's cut).  I'd love to know what the big picture is on the Market before and after this stunt, how much the average value of an item was driven up. 

 

I did spend $3 on 100 backgrounds worth 80 gems each.  I actually find these events pretty fascinating, both from the business side of why Valve structures them the way they do, and how the community reactions.  Participating in them is fun, and comparatively low cost for my fascination with it. 

[Gormongous]

Why is there no option to filter the massive list of auctions of games by inclusion on my wishlist and DLC by inclusion of the base game in my library? These days, Steam's "events" mostly exist to remind me of how much I miss a proactively designed UI when it's not there.

[elmuerte]

man, whoever controlled that junk bot is gonna be the scrooge mcduck of steam gems. 

 

I think others have cleaned him out. The junk bot would also trade back.