The worst Winter sale I've seen in a long time

[Kag]

Here's hoping what goes on sale changes because what a boring and not really discounted list of games

[crunchyfrog]

Postat inițial de peppermint hollows:

I feel like the people who are always saying the sales suck or the discounts aren't deep enough are usually looking at brand new triple A games and expecting them to be 90% off. I'm seeing a lot of really good looking games on sale for 70, 80, 85 or even 90% off and granted many of them are a year or two old, but that doesn't matter to me. And even a few newer games are still on relatively decent discount. RE4 Remake is 50% off which I just picked up alongside the DLC, I would have never bought it at full price (especially with the DLC), it's just too much for me.

Being patient pays off. You also avoid getting burned on new releases that way. Learned that after Cyberpunk's launch.

Ofttimes they lack evidence.

It's almost always pure hyperbole. They lack the critical thinking skills to realise what diminishing returns are, or this is the first time they've experienced it - you can understand this from especially younger people as it may be the first time they've had the expendable income to experience such a thing.

But we do have access to a lot of data as Valve is pretty up front with a lot of it, and when people have gone back and checked successive sales, there's no real evidence much in these claims. Maybe the odd outlier here and there.

[crunchyfrog]

Postat inițial de muckymucks:

At this point Valve should stop pretending these sales are events, or at best make it a weekend thing and let’s stop pretending there’s any reason for it to run for two weeks.

That's a bold assumption.

What you seem to overlook is that Steam is international., and that they have a LOT of data at their fingertips. If it weren't worthwhile then they wouldn't do it.

More than this many people across the world get paid at diffferent times, celebrate holidays at different times, have spare time at different times and so on.

So you have to factor all that in.

It makes perfect sense to run it from before Christmas when people are packing up from work in the west as well as out of school, and let it run past new year when a lot of eastern people get red letters (forgive me if I have the date wrong - it's just an example).

[Kenpoleon Bonaparte]

Postat inițial de peppermint hollows:

I feel like the people who are always saying the sales suck or the discounts aren't deep enough are usually looking at brand new triple A games and expecting them to be 90% off.

It's quite sensible that new games don't have a deep discount. They're new, and everybody wants them, thus they don't need to discount much yet. However, it's quite ludicrous when games more than 10 years old still have a sale price over $10.

[76561199540158642]

its telling you the games aren't worth buying if you don't agree its a good price. just walk away 100's of free games to play, why do you feel compelled to buy a low quality game just because it says "SALE".

RESIST play some of the games you already own.

[Tito Shivan]

Postat inițial de crunchyfrog:

Yet another case of not understanding how dimishing returns works.

When you first see a sale on steam it's keys to the candy shop - everything you want quite literally.

But as you buy more, the games you want recede.

That's just how stuff works.

I've collected games for decades. I've collected rare records for decades. I can give you long boring tales about going to track down the last few rarities for a group or label or something and how that goes.

The best Steam Sale is your first Steam sale.

Nowadays most of the cool discounts already sit on my library.
I keep posting this link every sale to help the sale hunters out:
https://steamdb.info/sales/?min_reviews=500&min_rating=60&min_discount=75
There's the games on sale at 75% discount or more, with more than 500 reviews and a rating over 60%

Postat inițial de peppermint hollows:

I feel like the people who are always saying the sales suck or the discounts aren't deep enough are usually looking at brand new triple A games and expecting them to be 90% off.

Doom Eternal is 75% off, Metro exodus is 80%, Horizon: Zero Down is also 75% off.
There's AAA titles on a deep discount. What some expect is a game that's just released, like Baldur's Gate 3 to be deeply discounted on sale. Things don't go that fast (unless the game's a flop... Wich isn't the case here)
There's bad sales (cough, cough, Activision) and there's badly managed expectations. And the two usually blend in different percentages.

Postat inițial de muckymucks:

At this point Valve should stop pretending these sales are events, or at best make it a weekend thing and let’s stop pretending there’s any reason for it to run for two weeks.

Is really Valve 'pretending' these sales are events, or are we (still) treating them as if they were?
Not even getting into the fact that a sale IS an event.

Postat inițial de Golden Unicorn:

its telling you the games aren't worth buying if you don't agree its a good price. just walk away 100's of free games to play, why do you feel compelled to buy a low quality game just because it says "SALE".

RESIST play some of the games you already own.

That's some very badly disguised Epic endorsement.
The problem of free games is beggars can't be choosers.

[Yujah]

Postat inițial de Tito Shivan:

That's some very badly disguised Epic endorsement. The problem of free games is beggars can't be choosers.

Admittedly though after some 400 of them the not chosen ones show significant overlap with ones that would have been.

[peppermint hollows]

Postat inițial de Tito Shivan:

Postat inițial de peppermint hollows:

I feel like the people who are always saying the sales suck or the discounts aren't deep enough are usually looking at brand new triple A games and expecting them to be 90% off.

Doom Eternal is 75% off, Metro exodus is 80%, Horizon: Zero Down is also 75% off.
There's AAA titles on a deep discount. What some expect is a game that's just released, like Baldur's Gate 3 to be deeply discounted on sale. Things don't go that fast (unless the game's a flop... Wich isn't the case here)
There's bad sales (cough, cough, Activision) and there's badly managed expectations. And the two usually blend in different percentages.

That's why I mentioned brand new ones, yeah. If you can wait a year or two triple A games will start to get discounts like that, most of the time. But some companies (like Activision as you mentioned) just don't put their old titles on sale (or if they do, it's 10-20% at most), but usually they've always been like that anyway.

[Lithurge]

Postat inițial de Tito Shivan:

There's AAA titles on a deep discount. What some expect is a game that's just released, like Baldur's Gate 3 to be deeply discounted on sale. Things don't go that fast (unless the game's a flop... Wich isn't the case here)
.

Larian seem pretty determined to hold the value up for BG3, they didn't even discount it for early access which as far as I'm aware is incredibly unusual.

Mind you there's an argument the constant sales we've had over the years have contributed to a general devaluing of games for a lot of people. I picked up Alan Wake 2 on EGS for just over £20 in the current sale with their discount voucher, which is ridiculous.

[Pscht]

Is it any good, though?

[𝕎𝕠𝕦𝕤𝕖𝕝𝕫]

Postat inițial de TheKagarin:

The worst Winter sale I've seen in a long time

Define: "A long time"...

[Philip Fry]

I usually spend at the least 100$ on a steam sale but the deals are not as good anymore. I am not spending a dime this year. If its on sale and it is still $40-$50. No thanks. And the older games which is anything more than 3 years they want close to full price. Steam needs to step up or someone will replace them. I would prefer that not happen because I like the steam platform. Before you bash me that there is great games on sale, that falls under personal preference.

[Pscht]

"Someone will replace Steam", you seem to really really really misjudge how important your spending (or lack thereof) is.

[Froot Loop Lux]

I miss when they used to have daily deals during the sales. When was the last time they had those?

Outside of that, I wonder if the sales are actually worse, or are the games worse because the steam store is full of shovelware and asset-flips? Or are we just blinded by nostalgia and the old Steam Sale memes from a decade ago?

[Pscht]

Postat inițial de No Gender Only Bones:

I miss when they used to have daily deals during the sales. When was the last time they had those?

Before refunds. Gee, I wonder why.

[Tito Shivan]

Postat inițial de No Gender Only Bones:

Outside of that, I wonder if the sales are actually worse, or are the games worse because the steam store is full of shovelware and asset-flips? Or are we just blinded by nostalgia and the old Steam Sale memes from a decade ago?

Steam sales have changed over the years for a multitude of reasons. The short TLDR version is: The world has changed so have the way to sell games.

"Shovelware" (as much as people love to flaunt it around) plays a very minimal role in all this change.