With the recent GOG and Steam sales, I found myself exploring games that I had not heard of before, but also noticed that I definitely look at games with deeper discounts much more than those with just 30%-50% off. (Because I am cheap.)

I imagine the developers/publishers set up some sort of hard bottom line with the digital distributors on how much discount they can put on a game. As such I feel that I might be missing out quite a few good games just because they are not on sale, or are on sale but not at 60%+ off.

Are there games you would really recommend but are never (or very rarely) on sale?

Jade Empire, Arx Fatalis to name a couple.
Driftmoon, Expeditions Conquistador to name a couple more although these are rather new so can be forgiven for the time being.

Gothic 1 took an eternity to go on sale, whilst the others in the series were frequently discounted.

I'm not sure when it will go on sale next. Was it on sale during the summer sale? I didn't look into it.

lol @ your forum title

I thought the first Gothic Game is like this, except it was in a recent promo and then in the summer sale a while back.

I don't think Sanitarium was ever on sale... I'm as new a member as they get, but I've been coming here on GOG for quite a while, and I don't recall it being on sale. Maybe it was and I just missed it.

If I'm right, though, it's quite a shame, as Sanitarium is the best P&C adventure game I've ever played. Which is saying something, since I played a LOT of point-and-clicks. Who am I kidding? Sanitarium is one of the best videogames ever. Period.

Deserves a sale.

Im not super vigilant about it, so I could have just missed it, but I have been keeping my eye out for a Tomb Raider trilogy sale, and its always been absent.

As far as Steam is concerned, they contact publishers/developers before a (large) sale and ask them if they want to be included and what sort of discount they want.

Naturally, any game for which the developer/publisher is no longer around, isn't going to get a sale as there is no one left to okay it.

Quite true. Still, bearing in mind a substantial part of GOG's library of games are classic, some very really old titles, this becomes more of an issue than with Steam. But I'm guessing someone must have hold the publishing rights to the games, even if the devs/publishers aren't around anymore, otherwise GOG would have never been able to sell them in the first place... can't those guys decide whether the game enters a promotion or not, and how much of a discount are they willing to place on its price? Indeed they were. They were also on sale during the Summer Sale, again with LoK games, plus Deus Ex 1 and 2, as part of the Square Enix (i.e. "Eidos") pack. The OP did say, so the Tomb Raider trilogy still qualifies, I guess.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines never seems to get heavy sales.

I've been wanting to play it for quite a while, but I can't justify the £15 steam asks for it (or £11.24 even which it currently is) and I've never seen a deep discount on it.

I don't know about the British territories, but you could get Bloodlines for 50% off in America via Amazon awhile back. Steam still shows very old news updates from when the game was 75% off, so it does happen, it's just very rare.

Oh interesting, thanks - strange how I missed the sales though unless they were region locked for some reason, I've had it on my wishlist for ages. Would be an instabuy at 75% off.

I was going to say maybe I'll get lucky and it'll be a community choice or something but people would probably vote for Super Meat Boy again instead. >:|

Then it must not have been on sale the whole time. I missed the beginning of the summer sale, but when I did catch on that there was a sale, Tomb Raider was one of the very few games that wasn't on sale. Of all the luck...

Anything that is owned by Bethesda or Activision doesn't get deep sales. Except for Fallout franchise.

games that I'd like to buy but NEVER go on sale are AGEOD wargames. And a lot of other wargames.

It *was* in that summertime 'vote between two games for the highest discount' sale in...2011 I think it was?