• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

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

Status
Not open for further replies.

derFeef

Member
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

Disagree. UPlay is far worse. It's there when the game launches, it's in the game and I have to wait for it to connect to be able to play, and it's there when I quit the game and it tries to sync the savefiles. The servers are boned right now and I can't play HOMM6 at all.

And as far as I know, GFWL is not responsible for the savefiles. It may have different problems (one account only, you can't use two systems at once) - butat least it's really painless once it's set up.
 

Sober

Member
How did they not anticipate gift farming alt accounts?

Be careful about how much blame you spread.

As I've said before: a lot of hardcore TF2 traders already had numerous Steam accounts that were "in good standing" with Valve (meaning they had spent real money on Steam and had been active for 90 days after that purchase). These accounts have existed ever since the TF2 item drop system started. And according to the Valve terms of service, these accounts cannot be treated any differently than your main account.

What makes this so difficult for Valve to deal with is that they have allowed these alt accounts to exist for months, and in many case, for years. They have allowed players to use them to earn TF2 items for free, because in many ways these farmers actually propel an economy which urges players to buy keys and other items in the TF2 Store.

Then this contest rolls around. They can't ban these accounts all of a sudden; the backlash from their TF2 cash cow would be phenomenal. And so we now see their response: the rules for the contest only prohibit using "scripts, macros, or other automated means" to generate entries. So if someone manually logged into numerous accounts in good standing, completed objectives, and manually traded coal back to their main account, they were not in violation of any rules.

I'll agree that Valve handled this poorly. But it's not as simple as it sounds.
Valve also really doesn't give a crap from TF2 farming because it's coming out of their pocket but for third-party games, they only have whatever the publisher provides and after that it's up to valve to either provide more licenses (when keys run out due to demand they didn't see) - this is when people have already paid - or they have to continue but with only their products.

Most of the people whining in the thread are likely people who were only interested in grabbing as much free 3rd party games anyway since they probably already have the equivalent of valve complete packs on their main account. Also, most of those posts are dramatic reading worthy.
 
So here's something I just thought of. The coupons all say they're only valid starting January 2, right? But the daily deals persist for 24 hours. That means, at least for me, that 12 hours of the sale will be on January 2. So can I use my crappy 10% off a Bethesda game coupon on Skyrim at midnight?
 

Berordn

Member
So here's something I just thought of. The coupons all say they're only valid starting January 2, right? But the daily deals persist for 24 hours. That means, at least for me, that 12 hours of the sale will be on January 2. So can I use my crappy 10% off a Bethesda game coupon on Skyrim at midnight?

From the timing, it seems like the coupons will activate at the same time as the sale ends, since they update at 1. But if that is the case, I guess they're not completely worthless after all.
 

chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
If there is a 12 hour overlap on sales + coupons, I guess I'll use my 50% off Fallout Collection coupon. Can't say no to Fallout 1 + 2 (+ Tactics?) for $2.50.
 

PaulLFC

Member
Hmm, bought AC2 when it was originally on sale but haven't had chance to play it much yet. Do I or do I not buy Brotherhood?
 

MNC

Member
Not looking like it :( Still at $10 (which isn't a bad price for such an awesome game).

It's more of a budget matter. Despite me having the money for it, I want to keep myself in place and not go over budget. I have 7,33 euros to spend, which is either going to hard reset, lost planet 2 or bulletstorm
 

Erebus

Member
Keep the 10 lumps of coal I currently have or use 7 for a gift (possibly a useless coupon)... decisions, decisions.
 

PaulLFC

Member
Keep the 10 lumps of coal I currently have or use 7 for a gift (possibly a useless coupon)... decisions, decisions.
Keep it. There are only Valve coupons and Valve games left. The chances of getting a coupon are probably higher than the chances of getting a game.
 

Javaman

Member
Sure if its a golden coupon or you happen to have one prior to the holiday sale.
You're not following what he's saying.... after midnight tonight it'll be the 2nd and the coupons should work. Do they specifically say not valid with this sale? Whoever have coupons for the "best of" games will be able to use them after midnight hopefully
 
I'm looking at the first post but I'm not seeing anything about good games that weren't dailies that we might have missed. Anybody got a list?
 

MNC

Member
Crap.

Hard Reset
Bulletstorm
Lost Planet 2


ALL COME DOWN TO 7,72 through steamprices. Which one do I take!?
 

Sanic

Member
I'm sure it's been covered but i'm not sure how I feel about Valve running out of every third party item for the last day of the sale, when i'm sure plenty of people were waiting until then to decide what to do with their coal.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom