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Haven't spent much at all on games this Holiday season. I think I got Wasteland on GOG as a random gift to a random person, and got one game off of Steam.

The days of spending money on games just to own them are over for me. It's a good thing, really. It just sucks for the people who didn't get the good games a year or two ago, and now have to pay more for older games.

As far as the bundle thingie on GOG, I agree. I'm not going to buy extra games just to get a cheaper price; I'd rather not buy any of them at all. I don't fault GOG though, they've been doing this for years and imho are partially responsible for the whole bundle craze that's taken gaming sites by storm.

In the end, though, it's not Valve who decides the prices, it's the publishers (See a thread from the Thanksgiving sale regarding the email Valve sent out to the pubs) - so the cause for the higher price points is the publishers, and not Valve. I think it's important to recognize that.

Supply and Demand :)
I think the sales are great in a sense; wonderful games sold very cheap.

On the other hand, since Steam has a set of games that they basically always put on sale, each sale I buy fewer games from them; not because the games or prices are bad, but because I've bought the "sale games" that I want to buy previously. Of course, GOG does the same thing during their major sales--the D&D games, for example.
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Punished_Snake: http://www.gamecrastinate.com/gaming-news/valve-posts-steam-holiday-sale-announcements-early/

Again GTA IV, Spelunky, Alan Wake...what a waste of time.
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grviper: New Vegas went from 75% off last year to 66%?
This one is a bit disappointing. I was planning on rounding up all the DLC for New Vegas via the Ultimate Edition, but since it has been lower in the past, I think I'll wait.

I probably wasn't going to get around to playing through it anytime soon anyhow, so I suppose that's not such a bad thing, but it would be nice to finally complete the game.
Post edited December 29, 2013 by dae6
My observation over the last 12 months has been that almost anything that Steam puts on sale for a given % discount, Greenmangaming and/or Gamersgate and/or Amazon put on sale for the same or greater discount and do it more often, plus Greenmangaming has new 20% off and 25% off coupons every single week as well as 30% off coupons occasionally. The 20% coupons seem to work with almost anything on the site whether it is on sale or not, so greenmangaming ultimately ends up over time giving the biggest discounts on Steam games more often than not. Amazon occasionally has huge Steam deals that are steep discounts and bundles that are cheaper than other services but not as regular as Greenman's deals.

In any case, these resellers almost always beat both Steam's discount pricing and the frequency of discount. That doesn't even cover the multitude of Steam games that show up on Bundlestars, Humble Bundle, Indie Gala, and other sites either. I've got 170 or so games on Steam and about 80 unredeemed Steam codes as well altogether, and of the entire lot - I've only purchased 2 or 3 games individually directly from Steam, plus the L4D2 giveaway in the last 12 months. ;)

I keep an eye on the Steam sales all the time, but they just simply do not stack up overall compared to the 3rd party resellers, and it is easy to keep track of the "best prices" out there for Steam games using http://dealzon.com or http://www.epicbundle.com or one of half a dozen other deal tracking websites that are popular. Anyone who pays attention to these deal tracking websites will most likely find that these 3rd party sites have more frequent deals at better prices on Steam games than Steam does directly. I certainly would encourage people to check such sites out anyway. ;)
There have been some good sales. Some indie titles $2-3 range and like bit trip runner 99 cents. Right now Bioshock triple pack for $14.99 is a complete steal...with only about 1 hour left tho =/
I bought about 6 games during Steam sales - mostly cheap Indie games. I actually bought 30-40 games on Nuuvem and Amazon, however, where the games were way cheaper than on Steam. Steam is just too expensive even during sales - Doom BFG was €15 AFTER discounts for Europe while the US got $10 which is just ridiculous. Considering I own the original Doom 3 + expansion, it's an enormous sum for a minor update.

The whole snow globe thing is kinda funny, though. You get a snow globe for every badge you make so it's a good idea to make badges now - and since I have about 80 games with card drops that I have yet to play, I can easily sell cards from one game, create badges with the remaining AND get snow globes on top.
Yah.Sales isnt much chop
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Red_Avatar: I bought about 6 games during Steam sales - mostly cheap Indie games. I actually bought 30-40 games on Nuuvem and Amazon, however, where the games were way cheaper than on Steam. Steam is just too expensive even during sales - Doom BFG was €15 AFTER discounts for Europe while the US got $10 which is just ridiculous. Considering I own the original Doom 3 + expansion, it's an enormous sum for a minor update.

The whole snow globe thing is kinda funny, though. You get a snow globe for every badge you make so it's a good idea to make badges now - and since I have about 80 games with card drops that I have yet to play, I can easily sell cards from one game, create badges with the remaining AND get snow globes on top.
DOOM 3 BFG Edition was available on Greenmangaming for $3.99 for Steam over the last several days which includes the expansion as well as Ultimate DOOM and DOOM II. Greenman's pricing is normally the same as Steam but they always have 20/25/30% off coupons that can stack on top so you usually get a better price there. Sometimes Steam has deals that are even cheaper though but not the number you find on greenman or gamersgate.
I recently and hesitantly made an account on Steam because Terror from the Deep isn't in the GOG catalog and I was in an X-Commish mood. As it so happened, Fallout 1 & 2 plus Tactics were on sale as a bundle for I think 5 bucks so I bought it over there even though I planned to buy this from GOG. A couple days later, the exact same Fallout bundle was available on GOG for -FREE- !

True story! Lesson learned: Thou shalt not covet thy games from neighboring gaming sites.
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skeletonbow: My observation over the last 12 months has been that almost anything that Steam puts on sale for a given % discount, Greenmangaming and/or Gamersgate and/or Amazon put on sale for the same or greater discount and do it more often, plus Greenmangaming has new 20% off and 25% off coupons every single week as well as 30% off coupons occasionally. The 20% coupons seem to work with almost anything on the site whether it is on sale or not, so greenmangaming ultimately ends up over time giving the biggest discounts on Steam games more often than not. Amazon occasionally has huge Steam deals that are steep discounts and bundles that are cheaper than other services but not as regular as Greenman's deals.

In any case, these resellers almost always beat both Steam's discount pricing and the frequency of discount. That doesn't even cover the multitude of Steam games that show up on Bundlestars, Humble Bundle, Indie Gala, and other sites either. I've got 170 or so games on Steam and about 80 unredeemed Steam codes as well altogether, and of the entire lot - I've only purchased 2 or 3 games individually directly from Steam, plus the L4D2 giveaway in the last 12 months. ;)

I keep an eye on the Steam sales all the time, but they just simply do not stack up overall compared to the 3rd party resellers, and it is easy to keep track of the "best prices" out there for Steam games using http://dealzon.com or http://www.epicbundle.com or one of half a dozen other deal tracking websites that are popular. Anyone who pays attention to these deal tracking websites will most likely find that these 3rd party sites have more frequent deals at better prices on Steam games than Steam does directly. I certainly would encourage people to check such sites out anyway. ;)
Steam never has and never will match the 3rd party resellers/bundlers. No reason to. The bulk of the customers wont be aware or even look outside the Steam store by default, and with such a large customer base, can you blame Valve for not changing what's not broken?. The steam sales the last few years have been limp and your right, same games go on sale (at least 3x for many of them)(more than a few indies this year and the odd Early Access game looking for customers flushed with cash looking for a good deal). The GMG thing is odd.... all they have is pretty much 20% coupon rolled out 90% of the time plus the odd 30% off overpriced titles :P.Their Xmas sales are never that big compared to other sites.
Amazon while they *do* a lot of price matching, if you look at their last two xmas sales - especially this one, there hasnt been *that* many great deals. Gunslinger and TR 2013 for 4.99 were two good ones though. Maybe its just me looking at sales (when i have most stuff i want) i dunno anymore. Can too many sales be a good or a bad thing? :)
Yeah its been disappointing, but I thought it was because I already own way too many games there.
cs go being on every sale resulted in massive amount of cheaters... every freaking match there is at least 1 person with aimbot, speed hack or wall hack....
Got my top 2 wishlist out of this sale, Spacebase DF-9 -50% and Long Live the Queen -50%, yay!
The steam sales are Fucking SHIT! I got the REAL UNEDITED VERSION of Dark Sector! TODAY! best new years eve present I've ever had! it was going to be shipped in January but got here today! I'm happy
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Post edited December 31, 2013 by fr33kSh0w2012
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Pawun: cs go being on every sale resulted in massive amount of cheaters... every freaking match there is at least 1 person with aimbot, speed hack or wall hack....
I tend to write it off on me not playing CS for a long time since CS 1.6 and simply getting older (and reflexes getting dumber). Sure there are hackers from time to time, but not in every match. IMO.