Buying 4 packs and already owning the game.

[Weber The Trickster]

Don't know if most of you know this, but apparently when you own a game and said game offers a 4 pack discount, steam will not let you buy the 4 pack. I had planned on gifting lots of people Chivalry since the 4 pack is under 20 bucks, but im not going to buy the game 8 times at the discounted single price since it would add up to more then I would want to pay. Kinda upsetting since I was looking forward to playing with more people. I'm sure a reason for this exists, but I don't see it.

Prices
$18.74. 4-pack. 8 games = $36.48
$6.24. Single game. 8 games = $49.92.
And as they say, A penny saved...

[ KARR™]

One copy gets tied to YOUR account, if you already own it, as you know you can't get another 4-pack.

It's to stop people from bulk buying loads of copies and keeping them in 'stock' for a while and selling them off cheaply and making profits from it.

[Weber The Trickster]

Originally posted by KARR:

One copy gets tied to YOUR account, if you already own it, as you know you can't get another 4-pack.

It's to stop people from bulk buying loads of copies and keeping them in 'stock' for a while and selling them off cheaply and making profits from it.

You can't sell steam games. Also as a rule most things on steam get cheaper.

[FFL2and3rocks]

You can, but it's against Steam's rules and it's very easy to get scammed if you try.

[Jade]

Well that was a late response.

Anyway. No, you can't sell games on Steam, but you CAN trade them for other games. If you were able to buy 4-packs even when you own the game, you could trade the four copies for four other games.

When you buy a 4-pack you get 4 games for the price of 3. If you trade them for 4 other games you could make a profit. Obviously Valve and most other devs don't want that.

[ KARR™]

Originally posted by Weber The Trickster:

You can't sell steam games. Also as a rule most things on steam get cheaper.

People DO sell Steam games, they trade them for Paypal funds and trade them up for other items. - It's the reason why every other day there's a dozen posts from people saying "i was scammed!".

If i buy a £40 game when it's on sale at £10, 2 months later when the sales are over and people are looking at it, i can trade it for a £30 game and effectively save myself money on the game i REALLY wanted.

[Weber The Trickster]

I don't see any big issues with it honestly. If anything I think it would get people to spend more. I had a bunch of gifts sitting in my inventory because of buying 4 pack deals and waiting for friends to get into the game(s). Sure someone might buy a 4 pack of games and trade them for other games, but that still means games are getting paid for. Sides most 4 pack games seem to be on a cheaper bulk friendly side anyways, so I don't know what kind of person would trade a non 4 pack game for a 4 pack game, but to each his own lol. Just saying. In any case i'm not as adamant about this as I was, see I don't really play with friends all that much anymore anyways. Married life. lol

[TangoVulture]

If Steam won't sell them as a 4 pack to current customers who already have 1 copy installed I guess I won't spend the money to buy more copies from Steam.

Steam loses the sale, the Developer loses the sale and everyone loses out because now people who aren't ever going to set up their credit card with Steam won't play the game because people that recommend the games can't gift them when the price drops.

If Steam is so worried about the few dollars it would lose, why does Steam even offer the 4 pack? Does Steam think that someone who doesn't even own 1 copy already wouldn't sell the entire 4 pack for a profit anyways if that's what their plan was?

Personaly I don't plan on gifting or selling the 4 pack if I could get it. I just want to set up a 4 person server some place there's no internet and play 4 person LAN games.

I already bought 2 seperate games in the past, installed one and gifted the other. With this Steam policy in place I'd have to have people I know that don't want the game anyways buy the 4 pack and gift it to me.Now that's the kind of shady practice Steam will force people to play to save money and support the developers at the same time.

[Ŧђɇ ƼϮϞ §μȑ√iⱴ۞ѓ]

Originally posted by TangoVulture:

If Steam is so worried about the few dollars it would lose, why does Steam even offer the 4 pack? Does Steam think that someone who doesn't even own 1 copy already wouldn't sell the entire 4 pack for a profit anyways if that's what their plan was?

I was going to say it's to prevent people from reselling and profitting, but you bring up a very valid point.

[HLCinSC]

Steam probably thinks they are losing out on revenue. You buy a 4 pack of x on sale plus multi purch discount= a lot less profit than someone who can't get the game from you buying x at single rate sale price or not sale price. since you can now trade stuff like that Valve worries people will be looking for cheaper or similary priced games and instead of paying through valve and getting there cut you trade some kind of "free" yet rare in game item from someone else. that way Valve only gets a dip of your original multipack sale proce purchase and nothing from your trade and possibly looses out again by the purchaser trading his item rather than putting it on the market for sale where valve would of gotten a cut of that as well. I'm not saying its right or wrong but I'm sure they followed the numbers and more people are buying multi packs of games to horde and resell/trade than to gift them to friends as was the intention when they started allowing multipacks. I guess insuring that you don't already have the game forces one of those copies to your profile and only three are giftable is the only way they can think of to help limit the abuse of the system, though personally I am more likely to gift a game I have tried and enjoyed rather than take the plunge and buy all 4 copies before I know if I would reccomend the game let alone be pumped up about it enough to gift it.

[caesar_ensalada]

Sorry to go and necro this, but this is aggravating, as my friends were asking steam support about this and they completely ignored us! I had to scour old discussions to figure out why this was happening! XD
I didn't even buy the original copy for myself, a friend gave me a copy of a game, and I loved it so much I wanted to buy a multi-pack for some friends of mine so we could all play, but NOPE! ...dumb ole rackinfrackin steam.... Now I don't even want to buy most games, let alone multipacks, for fear that I will just be shooting myself in the foot down the road when my friends and I realize we want to buy more for more friends...

[Carand]

Originally posted by caesar_ensalada:

I didn't even buy the original copy for myself, a friend gave me a copy of a game, and I loved it so much I wanted to buy a multi-pack for some friends of mine so we could all play, but NOPE!

Same here. This is very frustrating.

[StellarJade]

You could try buying the multi pack through their account.

[A l e k i t o s]

.

[Siessen]

make a 2nd acc, befriend both accounts, buy 4 pack with your main acc as gift for your 2nd acc, put it in inventory and send them to your friends from that acc. rince and repeat. (haven't tried it so not totally sure if tat 2nd acc automatically gets a copy locked to the acc) [ps very long night so soz for bad spelling]

[FFL2and3rocks]

Originally posted by Siessen.Be:

make a 2nd acc, befriend both accounts, buy 4 pack with your main acc as gift for your 2nd acc, put it in inventory and send them to your friends from that acc. rince and repeat. (haven't tried it so not totally sure if tat 2nd acc automatically gets a copy locked to the acc) [ps very long night so soz for bad spelling]

That won't work because the "2nd account" will end up redeeming one of the four copies.