No uplay, and no purchases on release date. Well, they're more like guidelines except for the former, after my experiene with anno2070.

Wouldn't that imply buying only one game per sale? I mean, you can't play multiple games immediately. And buying only one game per sale would probably mean having nothing to play most of the time, unless you have a huge backlog.

I don't really have rany rules set in stone (other than the obvious no DRM, no early access or pre-orders), I just try take stock of my savings, my backlog and apply common sense. But yes, that does pretty much point to only buying games on sales.

1. No longer buy games just for the sake of buying games, no matter how cheap it may promote at times
2. Buy games that are non-linear
3. No adventure/pointnclick... probably synonymous with 2.
4. Only buy games bursting with replay value and/or no 'end game'
5. Only buy at GOG, as it limits the number of available games and saves cash. Works well with 1.
6. Avoid titles from renowned non-steam platform abusing developers indefinitely
7. Research, research, research.

I'm not sure when I developed these rules (besides 7.). This thread just made me think about it, is all.

My rules:

1. mainly buy games from genres that have high replay-value for me, judging from experience
2. only buy from Steam if it's a sim racing game...since these will never appear on GOG
3. if it's not a racing game it must work on my laptop as well as on my desktop, since I use them interchangeably

1. Never preorder (got a hard lesson from Stronghold 3 fraud)
2. Pay full price off up to 20€ only for studios that have a proven track record (Arcen games, Blind Mind Studios, Petroglyph, Funatics ...)
3. Buy in sales otherwise
4. No drm
5. If Linux version exists but its not on gog then I will pass that game
6. For retro, classic games never pay more then 2.5€.
7. No bundle buys (mostly I'm just interested in one game)

Lately:

1. Only buy games if I absolutely want them to play right now and if nothing in my backlog can satisfy my urgent thirst.
2. It better be RPG related.
3. Only buy the game elsewhere if GOG does not sell it.
4. Before buying a game, think this through: better to spend money now and play some game (given limited specifications of my laptop), or better to save those ...€, play something from backlog, buy a new laptop and finally play The Witcher 3?

Following these rules, I bought myself Kingdoms of Amalur a few months back on Steam with DLCs. I played it for 154 hours, finished it, I still have some parts of the world to explore and I want to play the game again.

And I am happy.

1. Buy every game on sale
- 1.1. Preferably on 75% off or deeper, but 33-50% works too if the price is under €10
- 1.2. Preferably not if the game is still over €15-20 on discount

2. Only buy games from my wishlist
- 2.1. I've tried to limit the amount of games on my wishlist as well but yeah...

3. Only buy bundles if there's 3+ games in there that I want

Buy them when they settle down in price and updates,lessened.

Me, too, but at this point I'll need to live another 148 years.

The golden rules (if its single player):

1. Will I like playing it?
2. Is the DRM offline and not Starforce or non-existant?

Evey other rule is soft and/or with exceptions.

Well, I'm going to play every game that I intentionally bought. There is a difference- I own plenty of games from bundles that I bought for only some of the titles, and never had any interest in the rest, and games that came with various gaming magazines through the years, and I never had any interest in most of those, I only wanted to read the magazine.

Yep. Same here. Will take a while, but I'm making progress :D

1. "I refuse to be a Beta tester".

2. DRM? No, I don't want to rent your game.

3. Anime style? No thanks.

4. 3rd person view when 1st person would be more natural? Needs to be pretty spectular indeed.

1. Only buy games if they are uncut
2. Only buy day 1 releases if you really excited about the game and you are sure that it`s one of the best fucking games ever (new rule, since I was disappointed by some day one releases)
3. Best buy is on an insomnia sale, then buying is much more fun
4. Fuck the rules above, I wanna have this game!!! :-D