Steam is No Longer the King/Queen of Sales

[Random Gamer]

by 2014, most of the "great games" on steam have been on sale already. At 75%, sometimes more. Multiple times. Even buying only two or three at a time, it doesn't take very long to "max out" your library and collect most of what you want to play. In that regard, I don't think steam sales are any worse than they ever were; they just offer sales on games I no longer need, and tend to take a bit longer to do huge markdowns on big titles.

That's my own assessment as well: if I don't buy as many games as I did 3 years ago, it's probably because I already bought the ones I wanted in previous sales. Back when I vandalised my bank account during their first sales, there were many older games that I wanted to get, but nowadays, it's mostly a few recent games.
And considering my current backlog of "games-to-play", I won't bother before the game hit 15$, because there's no need to buy it full price or even at 30$ when I know I'm not going to play it for the next 18 months, and it'll be even cheaper by then. Means I have to force myself not to buy some games that would be "mildly interesting" but are the only things left for me to buy on sales - I rely on the fact that I wouldn't have prioritised them 3-4 years ago and it's of no use to add more games I'm not going to play before this decade ends to my long list.

GOG has insane sales, but that's mostly old games - many who aren't even on Steam, or weren't until very recently. Well, old games and CDProjekt games, including Witcher 3, since they're basically part of the same company.

I also made a point of buying Paradox stuff (and some other games as well when they had good sales) on GamersGate since they were parent companies, but that stopped a few years ago, and new Paradox games are Steam-based, alas.

 

[Doom972]

GOG seems to have better sales, but I guess that's due to the fact that it sells mostly old games so publishers are more lenient about it. Green Man Gaming has very nice sales for pre-orders and new releases. As for contemporary games that are not the most recent - Steam still seems to have better sales.

It's nice to see Steam getting some decent competition, as it gives it incentive to do even better. It's also worth mentioning that some digital stores (such as Origin) only have good sales for people in North America. In the Euro zone the base prices of some games are still ridiculously high, which make those 50% sales pointless.

 

[AnthrSolidSnake]

Steam may not always have the best sales, but they've earned my loyalty at least. Most of my games are easily downloadable on there anyway, and the only thing something like Origin has much better than Steam is Origin's phenomenal digital refund policy. (Seriously, bought The Sims 4 Limited Edition and the next day I got a refund AND a discount coupon in which I used to buy almost the entire Sims 3 library.)
GOG is only good because they still have digital games you can't really get digital anywhere else.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

kids thats what is called:

COMPETITION

isnt it nice?

 

[Zacharious-khan]

I don't really see this as a bad thing, though. Most of the big new releases I do not care about - I'm more than happy to shop from GOG, when it has what I want.

It's not a bad thing, they occupy their niche of the market but Steam still makes way more money.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Sales get less exciting as time goes on because your backlog of games grows and more and more of the heavily rebated stuff you already own.

My first Steam Sale I got like 20 games. Some of which I'd had on my "to play" list for years. Second sale I got like 8 games.

These days it's hard to find 1-2 I don't already own.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

Steam has one major advantage, the amount of games on its service. As for deals, GMG and Origin have decent sales now and then too, so it has some competitors now.