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Steam Holiday Sale 2011 | Valve Has Run Out Of 3rd Party Coupons/Games (Dec 19-Jan 2)

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D

divisionbyzorro

Member
Turfster said:
You really thought they had unlimited gifts? Really?
Click to expand...

Let me rephrase. They had to have known that they wouldn't have enough gifts to go around by the end of the promotional period. Being a bit more up front about how the system worked would have been more fair to everyone involved. I'll concede that even I didn't think there were unlimited games, but I kinda thought they'd still be giving some cheaper/indie games away on the last day.

Of course, they probably wanted to keep the charade going for as long as possible. The longer people think there are games on the pile, the more likely people are to buy the sale games to get more entries in the contest. So from a business perspective, sure, I guess they did the right thing for themselves.

Tursfter said:
Blame all the people that raped the system with alts.
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No. Blame Valve for not seeing that coming.

The Team Fortress 2 economy has allowed; nay, encouraged collecting alternate accounts for years. Valve has allowed this to continue unabated. There are people out there who have dozens to hundreds of Steam accounts in good standing with Valve specifically to pump out TF2 items every week. Valve had to know that these accounts would be used to farm games and coal, and could have had a detection system in place to figure out what those alt accounts are, but chose not to do anything about it.
 
V

VGChampion

Member
That sucks. I was going to go through my games today and try to finish them off. Oh well. I was hoping for a Saints Row type coupon or something. Ended up with 4 coal, 2 Valve coupons, and a Dino D-Day coupon. :(
 
M

mattiewheels

And then the LORD David Bowie saith to his Son, Jonny Depp: 'Go, and spread my image amongst the cosmos. For every living thing is in anguish and only the LIGHT shall give them reprieve.'
I was reading through the valve thread...there's some real special cases on that forum, huh.
 
E

epmode

Member
GuiltybyAssociation said:
Serious Sam 3 is seriously (hurr) making me rethink my top games of the year, and just about everyone is sleeping on it. Naturally.
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I can't understand why that game didn't get more traction on GAF. I figured we still had an Old Man Murray contingent here.

Whatever, it's a legitimately great pure action FPS and we get so few of them these days.
 
masterkajo

masterkajo

Member
kennah said:
They do have to produce something. The activation keys. Which are provided from the publishers. There's no way that the publishers would allow them to give away unlimited copies of their games. Just because it's digital doesn't mean it's a limitless resource.

It's the same way that games ran out of copies available during previous sales. Not enough keys were generated/allocated for the sale.
Click to expand...

Turfster said:
Because all game publishers love giving away games for free. Yeah. Uh-huh. Makes sense.
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Apparently they were only allowed to give away X copies of e.g.: Skyrim. They never said that though. I just assumed (and so did many others who waiting to craft at the end) that with a very very tiny chance E you could win Skyrim. I know that giving away stuff free is not what the publishers want but it gets people to participate in the sale (so at least it is in Steams interest).

What if the gifts were depeleted half way through?
 
A

Aaron

Member
epmode said:
I can't understand why that game didn't get more traction on GAF. I figured we still had an Old Man Murray contingent here.

Whatever, it's a legitimately great pure action FPS and we get so few of them these days.
Click to expand...
It has a worse start than Duke Nukem Forever, and people don't have patience. It doesn't help that some people were getting mico stuttering, like me. Messing with the custom settings got rid of it, but some people won't make that effort.
 
Yaska

Yaska

Member
Well, finally won a game from winter achievements. Got Portal 2. ^_^

Also my hit from this sale:

AC: Revelations
Heroes VI
L.A.Noire

Got off cheap.
 
S

schwall20

Banned
SO what's the general opinion then, new sales today or not, been holding out for bejeweled 3 and RE5, I'll grab'em now if there wont be any more sales today
 
D

Divius

Member
Just crafted 7 coal and got -50% OFF Valve coupon, which I already had and gave away before.

Oh well. Gonna try to get the CS:S objective/achievement real quick.
 
T

Thomper

Member
Labombadog said:
Anybody making a thread on the hidden/cheap fun games in Steam? Or should we start posting them here?
Click to expand...

If someone could do that, please. Looking for some great last-minute stuff to pick up on Steam. Any deals to add to my collection would be more than welcome.
 
D

divisionbyzorro

Member
masterkajo said:
What if the gifts were depleted half way through?
Click to expand...

I think this is fairly accurate. I never saw a game drop after about halfway through the sale; just coupons and coal. It just simply never occurred to me that they "ran out;" I just thought my luck had run out. :)

I don't mean to sound whiny though. In previous years, we'd be excited just to get so many good sales. And on top of that, I did manage to set up some good trades and end up with some fun games that I didn't own yet (Serious Sam HD, Psychonauts, Rock of Ages, The Ship, Left 4 Dead 2, Stalker: Call of Pripyat, Devil May Cry 3). So it was a win overall.
 
L

Labombadog

Member
* Time Gentlemen, Please! and Ben There, Dan That! Special Edition - $1.24
* Cthulhu Saves the World & Breath of Death VII Double Pack - $1.02
* Samorost 2 - $2.49
* Zeno Clash - $3.75


Just a few I checked out to contribute.
 
M

mclem

Member
masterkajo said:
Yeah, I mean its not like they have to produce anything. All they give you is the game to download and that apparently can be done an infinite number of times. But apparently they only had a specific number of 3rd party games that they were allowed to give away.
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Well, yes. There's a reason they have an infinite supply of Valve-related gifts - they *can*.
 
iNvid02

iNvid02

Member
so the giveaway was like the uncharted treasure hunt thing subway did, early on i won a copy of uncharted 3 and when i went back to it later on i just kept getting nothing, seems like once the prizes were gone thats it.

kinda lame, they should have stated this somewhere
 
A

Askani

Member
Uhm...what?

Buy The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind® Game of the Year Edition
HOLIDAY SALE! Offer ends January 20th

Buy Hunted: The Demon's Forge
HOLIDAY SALE! Offer ends January 20th

Buy Fable The Lost Chapters
HOLIDAY SALE! Offer ends January 19th

Buy The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion® Game of the Year Edition
HOLIDAY SALE! Offer ends January 20th

Am I completely oblivious and games have had these dates for awhile now?
 
C

CecilRousso

Member
Stupacabra said:
Dark Void Zero is 59p, and well worth a crack.
Click to expand...

No, no one should buy that game, since it has had Securom since it´s release and still has. That Capcom choosed to implement DRM with activation limits in a budget game is just plain arrogance. I wouldn´t accept it if they gave it away for free.
 
S

Semblance

shhh Graham I'm still compiling this Radiant map
Okay, seriously, this Dark Messiah game is gold. Best $2.50 I've spent in who knows how long. I kicked a guy right into a bonfire and he instantly lit up. Kicked another guy's face into some spikes too, Bulletstorm would be proud. Everything has these wacky physics applied, which just makes it all so hilarious, and there's so much you can pick up and throw about (or kick). Why, yes, I do believe I'd like to chuck a bottle at some guard's head and then watch him fumble around in agony. This is just great. Comedy!

epmode said:
I can't understand why that game didn't get more traction on GAF. I figured we still had an Old Man Murray contingent here.

Whatever, it's a legitimately great pure action FPS and we get so few of them these days.
Click to expand...

My dude.
 
L

Lord British

Member
CecilRousso said:
No, no one should buy that game, since it has had Securom since it´s release and still has. That Capcom choosed to implement DRM with activation limits in a budget game is just plain arrogance. I wouldn´t accept it if they gave it away for free.
Click to expand...

Uh, OK.

So, for anyone whose principles don't prevent them from enjoying a solid action shooter with elements of Metroidvania, Dark Void Zero is 59p and well worth it.
 
iNvid02

iNvid02

Member
derFeef said:
UPlay is the worst thing. GFWL is the messiah compared to that.
Click to expand...

hell no.

uplay pops up once before you start and auto-updates, then just shows you a splash screen with twitter bs, but the achievements/rewards and save game synching are tied into it, and once you click play your done.

with gwfl you actually need to open the gwfl marketplace program which is useless now, then start your game, the options ui is stupid, and you need to start the game to find out if it needs updating, it then downloads it and makes you quit, installs it in windows and then you need to restart the game.
also it randomly corrupts your savegame files, it deleted all my dirt 3 saves.

gwfl is a piece of garbage, uplay is infinitley better. its just recently that their servers went down over christmas so it took a while to get them back up
 
M

MesserWolf

Member
GuiltybyAssociation said:
Okay, seriously, this Dark Messiah game is gold. Best $2.50 I've spent in who knows how long. I kicked a guy right into a bonfire and he instantly lit up. Kicked another guy's face into some spikes too, Bulletstorm would be proud. Everything has these wacky physics applied, which just makes it all so hilarious, and there's so much you can pick up and throw about (or kick). Why, yes, I do believe I'd like to chuck a bottle at some guard's head and then watch him fumble around in agony. This is just great. Comedy!



My dude.
Click to expand...

Dark Messiah is a great game, I've always said that much. Unfortunately
it has a disappointing (that feels rushed) ending :/

Anyhow it definitely deserved more love!
 
M

Mr. Luchador

Member
Vyer said:
Gift farming? People were doing this? How would that even work, with trading?
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Buying the Humble Bundle at 1p/1c a load of times and applying it to new accounts to get the '2 free gifts' achievement. Humble Bundle even had to set a minimum amount of $1 to try and sway people using them to do this. I'm not sure it worked.

You see people's inventory and they have 100+ coals and a whole load of coupons and a whole load of games. Very unlikely they've achieved this any other way.
 
E

epmode

Member
iNvidious01 said:
gwfl is a piece of garbage, uplay is infinitley better. its just recently that their servers went down over christmas so it took a while to get them back up
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GFWL games still work when Live is offline so that right there is a win. The GFWL save corruption thing is miserable though but at least I can manually back them up.

Really, both options are trash but the online requirement of some Uplay games means they're extra trashy!
 
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