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Steam Summer Sales 2012 Thread: we still like you Tony

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D

Dingotech

Member
How can people bitch that Super Meat Boy lost....

People the game has been in not 1 but TWO HUMBLE INDIE BUNDLES!!!!

If you don't own the game by now, then you deserve to cry like a bitch. :p
 
benjipwns

benjipwns

Banned
Tomodachi said:
At this point I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people simply vote for the game they know at least by name so they can try it out. Remember that people with 50+ games on Steam are the minority, while people with 200+ are the rule only considering those who post actively around here or in the steam forums, or anyway they're bound to be the minority, it's simple statistics.

And there's really nothing wrong with this I guess, it's really no use complaining because the game we wanted to buy didn't win.
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Not to pull a phony credentials card but with a masters in poli sci...

But this is basically it.
 
Q

Quikies83

Member
Never played Bioshock 2 --- is it worth playing if I really enjoyed the first one (until the ending -- and also taking out the fetch quests)?
 
S

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
Quikies83 said:
Never played Bioshock 2 --- is it worth playing if I really enjoyed the first one (until the ending -- and also taking out the fetch quests)?
Click to expand...

I think it's the weaker game of the two in a lot of respects (plot, characters, level design, pacing, setpieces) and the better game in very few (gunplay), but I do think it's worth playing. It's still quite a good game.
 
K

Kingven

Member
Kingven said:
Hey is there a GTA Pack on Sale? it isnt available on my region... :-/

Is it possible to receive it as a gift? From someone on US? or its region locked for gift too?
Click to expand...

Any help?... also interested on max payne bundle... can someone send it to me as a gift...? ill pay trough paypal..

PD: bought alan wake bundle... :-/.. 10$left... only 2 days of sale... :-I
 
L

LiK

Member
Quikies83 said:
Never played Bioshock 2 --- is it worth playing if I really enjoyed the first one (until the ending -- and also taking out the fetch quests)?
Click to expand...

not as good as Bioshock 1 in story but it was still good and had some really great moments and also had better gameplay. it's worth getting that for such a low price to play the Minerva's Den DLC.
 
1

1-D_FTW

Member
Stumpokapow said:
To add a contrasting point of view, I'd say this is pretty much the worst Steam sale I've ever been through. Not because of what's put on sale--obviously how much or how little I personally buy has nothing to do with if it's a good sale. I already have a ton of games, and so it's natural that many deals will be on stuff I already have.--but because of the characteristics of the sale. I want to say first that I love the flash and community voted deals, I have no objections to either.

- Essentially nothing has been on sale above 75%--the best Steam sales involve discounts above 75%. Sometimes that involves an indie game (PB Winterbottom for $0.50, CivCity Rome for $0.90). Sometimes it involves retail games at 80-90% off.

- Most of the discounts do not exceed what they were at Christmas. I mean, obviously 2012 stuff is new, and that's great, but for returning sales, they're comparable. And there have been, as far as I can tell, fewer MSRP drops this year than in the past, so that makes it hurt more. Some of this is because a lot of sale staples have had their MSRPs stall at $19.99, so you get the 75% off = $5 sale on everything. BioShock, Mass Effect, Portal... I'd like to see companies start lowering MSRPs for older retail games to $10 so that the corresponding discount can breach the $5 barrier.

- The Indie Packs, while still a great deal for someone starting, are much worse than any prior sale. They're certainly worse than the 5-for-$5 packs previously. But more to the point, the indie packs don't emphasize any one genre or type of game. They're just random games. Which might be good from Valve's perspective, because you're likely to buy the pack if you want 2 of the games--but from a consumer perspective, the previous packs would generally be either "I want 4-5 of these games" or "I don't want these games at all", which meant better value for purchases. That's because they used to pack them by genre.

- No comically awesome recent release ultra-bomba discounts. Here I'm thinking of stuff like Kane and Lynch 2 for $5 2 months after release. Alan Wake's: American Nightmare is probably the closest, and it's still just 75% off a $15 MSRP, not a $50 game dropping 90% in 2 months.

- The lack of a sale-related metagame discourages experimental playing and buying of games. I've really loved the treasure hunt, Christmas sale, and Summer sale that had daily achievements. It encouraged me to boot up old games (finished and unfinished) and give 'em another run. Moreover, it encouraged me to take a chance and gave an opportunity to spotlight key indie games. I played a lot of stuff that I don't think I would have otherwise played. Orcs Must Die was one of the great ones, PAM was one of the terrible ones. But I don't regret it at all. It was very fun. And it's sorely missed here.

- The de-emphasis of the "plot" of the summer sale. I love the background art every sale, but this sale it's comparatively a smaller event versus the last few where they've done daily art collages including the game's daily sales. The comical text written every day used to be on the main page, now it's relegated to the Summer Sale group. I do look forward to see how the dudes do with building their treehouse.

- Overall presentation of the main page is pretty static. I've loved the catalogue style presentations in the past. Really rich, great web applications. I assume it's partially related to Valve as a company being busy right now, and partially related to just them not wanting the servers to take quite as badly.

- To me, at least, the full-company packs represent the magnum opus of value for a new customer. But it feels like the price of them has slowly crept up a little bit, and many publishers have stopped doing complete packs, instead emphasizing selections.

- It feels like fewer non-featured games have steep sales. A lot more 33%, 40%, and 50% and a lot less 66%, 75%, 80% on random games in the catalogue that never ever had a hope of being featured. Maybe this suggests that the summer sales suck oxygen away from most games and towards those who are being featured. I had hoped that all games would have seen huge revenue+sales spikes to continue justifying deep discounts on random stuff. Many games that took part in the Christmas sale aren't even on sale now. Consider Westward IV--this is a totally random game that basically no one here would have played. It's not ever going to be featured. It's a basically non-violent RTS with persistent characters across maps and a western theme. It's family-friendly. Fun little game. But anyway, it's not on sale. And it was during the last Christmas sale. And it was during the last summer sale.

- (Not Valve's fault) Other companies like Amazon went earlier and offered mostly the same deals on Steamworks products.

I'm not saying this is not a good sale. All Steam sales are good sales. You can get tons of games and spend way less than $100. You can build a library very quickly. If this is your first sale, you'll be very very happy with it. I'm just saying that this is the weakest sale for me for all of these reasons. I feel confident posting this when we're still on day 2 because most of these problems are self-evidently going to be with the whole sale. Some of them might be fixed if the subsequent daily deals are stronger.
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Pretty much agree with everything (although I've already spent more than I thought I would), but those two are my biggest disappointments.

1.) I think the untold story is this: It had to have been a major boon to the indies who got featured as an achievehunt. Even if somehow the economics didn't make sense (to cover the wishlist give-a-ways the publishers had to fund), they could have just scaled back to trinkets and no wishlist give-aways. Everyone would have still played just as hard. I have to think this year's sale is going to tilt a lot higher towards the established brands as a result. Hopefully it's recognized as a bad thing and they go back for no reason other than this (although I'm in it for the whimsical fun it brought).

2.) The fact they've ditched the fun camp stories makes me think the writers just got bored with this concept and moved on to other projects.

I'm wondering if this isn't true of the whole thing. It seemed these sales were becoming events and probably required a ton of work. Maybe employees just got bored. Or maybe Valve was tired of all the bandwidth being sucked as people downloaded 4.5GB of Day of Defeat to get one achievehunt (and then redelete it from their hard drive). Whatever the reason, surely there could have been more creative solutions. Even limiting achievehunts strictly to low bandwidth indie games. Something:(
 
legacyzero

legacyzero

Banned
Stumpokapow said:
I think it's the weaker game of the two in a lot of respects (plot, characters, level design, pacing, setpieces) and the better game in very few (gunplay), but I do think it's worth playing. It's still quite a good game.
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This.

I think the thing that I didn't like about it the most though, was actually playing as a Big Daddy.

That might just be me though.
 
Q

Quikies83

Member
Stumpokapow said:
I think it's the weaker game of the two in a lot of respects (plot, characters, level design, pacing, setpieces) and the better game in very few (gunplay), but I do think it's worth playing. It's still quite a good game.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I suppose there is a reason I've not picked it up yet. I think I"ll skip it and leave my rapture memories with the first title.

edit: playing as a big daddy didn't really interest me much.
 
benjipwns

benjipwns

Banned
Kingven said:
Any help?... also interested on max payne bundle... can someone send it to me as a gift...? ill pay trough paypal..

PD: bought alan wake bundle... :-/.. 10$left... only 2 days of sale... :-I
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There is a GTA Complete Pack, 50% off ($24.99) but it is likely to get a daily/community/flash.

It has all the games 1-4, plus Vice City, San Andreas and Episodes from Liberty City.

There's also the PS2 era trilogy bundle and IV Complete. But these are overpriced compared to the whole series pack ($15 for either) imo.
 
L

LiK

Member
Quikies83 said:
Thanks. I suppose there is a reason I've not picked it up yet. I think I"ll skip it and leave my rapture memories with the first title.

edit: playing as a big daddy didn't really interest me much.
Click to expand...

i shall stress that you should get it just to play Minerva's Den DLC.
 
E

Empty Space

Member
Quikies83 said:
Never played Bioshock 2 --- is it worth playing if I really enjoyed the first one (until the ending -- and also taking out the fetch quests)?
Click to expand...

It is a much better game mechanically, but the story is not as good mostly because it lacks a twist. You have to protect a Little Sister a couple times that become a bit escort quest in nature, so if those type of things really bother you should probably skip it.

I personally like it better then the first, but I know I'm in the minority on that.
 
G

Guri

Member
For everyone who played the Akham City DLC: Should I wait for the GOTY version to launch on PC or grab the game when it goes to sale?
 
benjipwns

benjipwns

Banned
1-D_FTW said:
Pretty much agree with everything (although I've already spent more than I thought I would), but those two are my biggest disappointments.

1.) I think the untold story is this: It had to have been a major boon to the indies who got featured as an achievehunt. Even if somehow the economics didn't make sense (to cover the wishlist give-a-ways the publishers had to fund), they could have just scaled back to trinkets and no wishlist give-aways.
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I seem to remember a lot of those games shooting up the top sellers charts when their achievements came up.

Didn't Jolly Roger or something suddenly make gobs of money from their already existing achievement?
 
P

phantomspiker

Member
Stumpokapow said:
They do and they don't. Obviously a hostile, non-cooperative publisher is not going to discount stuff to the extreme.

But Valve works with publishers, Valve ties discounts to promotions like those achievement hunts, Valve selects the daily deals (which might be an increased emphasis to offer a higher discount on products). Valve supplies statistics and makes any business case that the sale is good or necessary. Valve decides the timings. And, although this is a weapon they've never used, Valve is able to cede their portion of the sale to incentivize publishers to give a steeper discount than they otherwise might at no cost to them.

Valve is also aware of other competing outlets, and can apply pressure to match or beat their sales. As it relates to indie bundles, I'm 100% sure that if Valve reached out to the indie community or to the runners of any recurring indie bundle to work specifically with them, they'd be overjoyed.

So, yeah, it's not all Valve's fault, but it's not like they just send out an email that says "lol sale soon set ur prices" and then sit back. They're an engaged participant in the process.
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That makes sense, I just think that it's a little unfair to claim that the sales aren't as good because Steam is the leading platform...I mean, they were the leading platform before the seasonal sales started.
 
L

Lancehead

Member
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So the flash/daily deals can come up on community choice.
 
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