Holiday Sale - Coal System?

[Grumpytron]

Last year if I recall correctly there were challenges and rewards to recieve random games and if you got coal you could combine like 13 to get something or something.... is that going to happen again this year?

[Kenny32673]

Nope not this year. Valve seem to have stopped doing that kind of thing since then.

[Grumpytron]

Aww :\ Alright thank you :]

[Lostedge]

Nope. This is it.

[SimplyMonkey]

It sucks, although you can see why they wouldn't want to give out free games again, not when they can get the odd $2 for them. Just the way companies are I suppose.

That said, Steam sales are the best around :)

[Papel]

That was fun... I bought at least 20 games because of that. I doubt I will this year cause I didnt play most of them... :(

[FlashKiev]

...

[SigmaX]

Originally posted by Pablo Gomes Kiipper:

That was fun... I bought at least 20 games because of that. I doubt I will this year cause I didnt play most of them... :(

I agree here. I had fun getting the achievements, so it's not like I felt it was a waste of money. But with no goal this year I won't be making as many purchases.

[Tito Shivan]

Originally posted by SigmaX:

I agree here. I had fun getting the achievements, so it's not like I felt it was a waste of money. But with no goal this year I won't be making as many purchases.

Achievements take time to implement, test and patch into their respective games. That means coordinating a lot of people in advance of the Sale. Probably many publishers feel it's just not worth the work.
There are some games that still keep releasing 'Christmas achievements' for their games (Killing Floor)

[Alex Chambers]

I think the main issue was people were literally making hundreds of accounts to boost coal and it just turned into a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ so they decided not to do it again.

[Insanity Claus]

Originally posted by RandonPeerson:

I think the main issue was people were literally making hundreds of accounts to boost coal and it just turned into a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ so they decided not to do it again.

More than that. People were screwing over the Humble Bundle by only paying $0.01 and then activating the HB games onto, literally, hundreds of dummy accounts. Humble Bundle changed it a few days later so that you had to pay at least $1 to get Steam keys. The damage was already done, though. Valve ran out of third-party games during the last 4 or so days, so the only free gift games people could get were Valve titles.

The 2011 Holiday sale is a very good example of how despicable people can be. Abusing a charity drive so that they could exploit a generous giveaway. Asides from gaming the system for both Valve and the HB, it also cost both of them in increased bandwidth, inconvenienced normal customers by clogging up the services, wound up costing the Humble Bundle in transaction fees, and wound up costing Valve tons of their own titles as well as potential sales as people just traded the Valve games that they already had for other games.

I enjoyed the achievements and everything, too. But, if I was Valve, I wouldn't be looking back on the 2011 Holiday Sale very fondly.

[アシュトン]

Still the prices aren't all that impressive, amazon has way better deals, unfortunately it's us only. I've been waiting for holiday sale this year but now i'm disappointed.

[Mardak]

Yes, I feel the same as Ahston. This sale is very disappointing.