Steam is No Longer the King/Queen of Sales

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Now of course this is just my opinion, but does anyone else feel like Steam sales are no longer the best seasonal sales around? I can remember several years ago, Steam Winter and Summer sales we the best things in the world, when it came to buying games. I'd be buying two or three games a day for absurdly low prices. The past couple years, however, I've found myself buying maybe two or three games over the course of the entire sale. Instead, I've been finding that the best games and deals have been on Green Man Gaming and GOG (such as the flash sales currently taking place on GOG, until December 15), but neither site gets anywhere near as much attention as Steam.

Granted, this is all opinion and maybe you still think Steam is still the supreme champion of seasonal sales, but these other sites have sales that, at the very least, are enough to give Steam a run for their money, and yet are rarely mentioned. Certainly not to the extent Steam is. Why do you think Steam sales are still pretty much the only ones people constantly make a big deal of, when so many other good alternatives are available now?

 

[Maximum Bert]

Steam has some good deals but it does not always have the best deals. Their games very rarely go down in price except in sales so in some cases a 90% discount is not actually that good of a deal.

Then as you say GOG have good deals as well as others. Its always been the same you need to shop around to get the best deals if you just buy all your games from Steam (sales) odds are you will not be getting the best deals. As for myself I did not buy anything from the steam sales this time, there was just nothing I wanted at a price I was willing to pay.

 

[Silvanus]

It was cheaper for me to get Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins through Origin than through Steam (they came to about £7.50 together).

Altogether, though, Steam has the sheer volume of sales. There were a lot of tempting ones on there. It'll still be my first port of call.

 

[Windcaler]

Last year GOG had better sales across the board then steam. For every game that GoG and steam had GOG was always the cheaper one (plus you got their garantee that the game would work). I always get everything I can from gog because they dont have DRM that gets in the way but last year they really pulled ahead of steam IMO. Its sad that most people will only buy from steam though

In the last year or so steam has been relying on their bulk of games more and more which I have mixed feelings about. As sales go though...honestly I feel like GOG is pulling ahead this year too. Many games I wanted that were on both sites didnt go on sale with the last steam sale but they are on sale with GoG or theyre cheaper. To be fair steam still has to do its real winter sale though

I can not comment on Greenmangaming because Ive never bought anything from them. All they offer is steam keys and generally if I have to have steam to run it Ill just buy it on steam

 

[shintakie10]

I can not comment on Greenmangaming because Ive never bought anything from them. All they offer is steam keys and generally if I have to have steam to run it Ill just buy it on steam

GMG is ridiculously cheap pretty much all the time. They almost always have some form of 20-30% off coupon you can use on any game, includin brand spankin new games. Its how I picked up Civilization Beyond Earth, as a preorder, for 25 bucks.

I've made a point to always check GMG before I check Steam because I've rarely, if ever, had a sale on Steam that wasn't beaten by a sale on GMG.

Now, its annoyin they only sell Steam keys, sure. However when I can pick up a brand new game for only 30 dollars or get older games that don't show up in Steam sales for 30-50% off I consider that a win.

 

[LadyMint]

Truthfully, I was very disappointed by the autumn sale that recently ended. I'm used to seeing the eight hour flash sales that happen during the main sale, which keeps me frequently checking throughout the day for good deals. This time, all they had was a different sail every 24 hours, so at the most I was only compelled to check once a day before moving on to something else.

 

[SycoMantis91]

I feel like when GOG has sales, they're more consistently massive in terms of discounts, but when Steam does it, they go all out, everything you can think of is for sale. Some epic deals, some ok deals, but everything is a deal. Plus, they have a much more expansive library, especially with newer games. So that is a big factor in my opinion.

 

[AuronFtw]

Yes, steam finally has competition in terms of sales. It's been that way for a few years, actually. gog, GMG and even humble bundle (yes, them) have had competing deals that were occasionally superior during specific steam sales. It's kinda common knowledge.

It's not a bad thing, though. Steam was the pioneer, paving the way for cheaper gaming at a time when it looked like PC gaming was in a bad way. After they revived it, basically singlehandedly, more sites launched offering cheap games and DRM-free games. And, as we all know, when offered an alternative to piracy to easily acquire games, we tend to opt for that. Steam still exists, and has deals that are "good enough" (typically 75% off a big title is enough to get me to buy it), but for the serious penny-pinchers, there are always better places to look. r/gamedeals on reddit is a great one, for example - a congregated list of deals from any site offering a sale, including some regional ones.

The one big caveat I have to mention, though; 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. In that regard, gog/GMG pull ahead, but not "massively" - only for a few specific titles. There are even websites to track how cheaply a game has been sold for, and how many times it's been that price - and perusing those, it's fairly easy to see Steam is still holding its own as far as great sales go.

It has competition, and competition can only be a good thing. I still enjoy steam and maintain an active wishlist, but when money is tight, r/gamedeals will do you more good than looking at any one site and hoping for sales.

 

[Mocmocman]

Haven't looked at the competing sites, but I've noticed this as well.
I think that some of it has to do with trading cards built into the sales now. With the extra incentives of badges and competitions and what have you, Steam can get people to buy just as many games during a sale as they usually do, without having to make the prices too low.
It could also be that I bought everything that I already want, and so sales have less great deals for me and so forth.

 

[SilverUchiha]

Only sale I took up on Greenman gaming was Shadows of Mordor for about $30 like a week after launch.
And I bought a handful of small titles on GOG a couple years ago but that's it. there's nothing else on there that I've seen sales wise since then that has caught my attention.

Granted, past year or so of Steam sales haven't gotten much from me either. But whoever puts Dark Souls II on a discount first gets my next handful of cash. Sames goes to PC-GTAV.

 

[babinro]

I've largely moved away from steam to the bundle sites.

humblebundle.com being the main one. Better prices in the bundles and I can choose who gets my money. indiegala.com and bundlestars.com are other site I frequent as well though I've never bought anything from bundlestars yet.

In fact...I don't remember buying anything directly from steam since last year. Steam is still a great gaming hub and store but I've grown increasingly tired of it's practices thanks to Jim Sterling's education and constant reminders through squirty plays. As such, it's become a service I try to avoid supporting financially when able.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Honestly Steam has got me so damn scared of buying a game while its on sale during their big sales in case said game I want is sold later during a flash sale for less, I haven't bought anything for about a year. Of course I've already got over 300 games sitting in my library as it is thanks to those damn things, and I haven't yet completed half of them... might be time to decimate the backlog before I buy anything else.
And I'm not including the PS3/PS4/360/XBone games I have yet to play, which at last count was somewhere between 60-100 over all those systems. And Christmas is coming which means I'll most likely end up with more to add to both console and platform backlogs.

 

[Neverhoodian]

I completely agree. This year alone I obtained a whopping EIGHT free games legally thanks to special promotions from different online distributors. The most surprising part for me is that no less than four of them were from Origin (The Sims 2, Wing Commander III, Peggle and Dragon Age: Origins). I never expected EA of all companies to just give away games for free. Perhaps they're trying to garner some goodwill from players, in which case I have this to say; it's going to take far more than that to get me to trust you guys, but thanks for the games anyway. The other four titles were the first Torchlight from Arc (I already bought the game on Steam years ago, but it doesn't hurt to have two copies) along with Mount & Blade, The Witcher 2 and (just now) Age of Wonders on GOG.

 

[Artaneius]

The problem with Steam is that in general it's only worth buying games on Steam when the major sales are happening IE, Summer or Winter. GoG has sales practically all the time and thus has seen much more business from me personally than Steam this past year. Steam still has a lot going for it though especially with the new broadcast option. My fiancee is really enjoying that feature with her friends. They love watching me play games for some reason. And I'm surprised how well it actually works still in beta.

 

[Zacharious-khan]

But Gog doesn't have any big new releases. They do well on indy and old stuff i would imagine. I guess you could say since PC gaming kinda sucked this year gog would have better new stuff just due to the fact that an expanded selection beats ass-creed unity or the sludge that green-light has recently spewed. But i would imagine this is going to go nowhere without sales data. I will say though the title of this thread is a bit misleading. it sounds like a news, when it's really just inane posturing.

 

[KungFuJazzHands]

Steam is still good for the rare deep discount, but the amount of trash that has flooded the storefront over the last couple years has almost driven me completely over to Amazon, GameFly, GMG, and Gamers Gate. I've been drifting that direction for years anyway given Valve's increasingly anti-consumer behavior, but now prices and content saturation are becoming the deciding factor for me. That's pretty ironic, considering the fact that just several years ago both Green Man and Gamers Gate were in the business of selling primarily trash indie titles like Rockin' Dead and Chester -- now they offer an abundance of AAA games along with heavy pre-release discounts, promos and weekly sales. The competition has grown by leaps and bounds while Steam has become completely regressive and scatterbrained in so many ways.

Steam is great for Workshop content and keeping an updated wishlist, but to go there for the majority of my purchases? Why bother anymore, when near-instantaneous price matching is becoming more of a thing nowadays and Humble Bundle can net me a handful of quality games (with Steam keys and standalone copies) for $1.00? Fuck that, you'd have to be insane to dedicate all of your gaming money to one company these days, especially if that company happens to be frustratingly ambivalent about skeezy indie devs and AAA pubs openly ripping its customers off.

 

[DoPo]

The problem with Steam is that in general it's only worth buying games on Steam when the major sales are happening IE, Summer or Winter. GoG has sales practically all the time

Umm, the same is true for Steam. There is literally have stuff on sale there every day. There is the Today's Deal - new one every day (each lasts for 48 hours); then there are the "less frequent" things - Midweek Madness and Weekend Deals which last for, like, half a week each; then you have the Weeklong Deals [http://store.steampowered.com/search/?filter=weeklongdeals] which are...for a week, and you have a new one each week.

That's just the regular stuff, you also have various other stuff that's on offer at various non-regular times. If you look at the specials [http://store.steampowered.com/search/?specials=1#sort_by=_ASC&specials=1&page=1] you would likely see 100+ things on offer. Most of the time even if you only filter for games [http://store.steampowered.com/search/?specials=1#sort_by=_ASC&category1=998&specials=1&page=1]. That's the case every single day. I am not sure how you can say Steam does not have sales all the time.

But Gog doesn't have any big new releases.

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.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Yes, steam finally has competition in terms of sales. It's been that way for a few years, actually. gog, GMG and even humble bundle (yes, them) have had competing deals that were occasionally superior during specific steam sales. It's kinda common knowledge.

It's not a bad thing, though. Steam was the pioneer, paving the way for cheaper gaming at a time when it looked like PC gaming was in a bad way. After they revived it, basically singlehandedly, more sites launched offering cheap games and DRM-free games. And, as we all know, when offered an alternative to piracy to easily acquire games, we tend to opt for that. Steam still exists, and has deals that are "good enough" (typically 75% off a big title is enough to get me to buy it), but for the serious penny-pinchers, there are always better places to look. r/gamedeals on reddit is a great one, for example - a congregated list of deals from any site offering a sale, including some regional ones.

The one big caveat I have to mention, though; 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. In that regard, gog/GMG pull ahead, but not "massively" - only for a few specific titles. There are even websites to track how cheaply a game has been sold for, and how many times it's been that price - and perusing those, it's fairly easy to see Steam is still holding its own as far as great sales go.

It has competition, and competition can only be a good thing. I still enjoy steam and maintain an active wishlist, but when money is tight, r/gamedeals will do you more good than looking at any one site and hoping for sales.

entirely this. without steam, I find it hard to say we would be seeing these same types of sales, ESPECIALLY at the discounts they offer them at. (anyone notice how xbox and psn took cues on this a few years back? took them long enough.) Hell, most sales are based around when steam will be doing their sales, because distributors KNOW they have to compete with steam, so it's keeping things competitively financially which is great for consumers.

 

[fenrizz]

Eh, I was pretty happy with the Steam sale just now.

Piocked up Wolfenstein The New Order, Bioshock and Democracy 3.
Not to shabby.

My biggest problem is that I often have already picked up the games I want in a previous sale.

 

[Avaholic03]

I don't know about anyone else, but for me the problem is that past Steam sales have been so good, I got pretty much every game I wanted. I've still got such a backlog, I'm not even tempted to buy new games no matter how cheap they are because I don't think I'll ever get around to playing them.

There's nothing wrong with other services offering competition for Steam. GMG, GOG and even Origin are bound to have better deals on some things. That's how a free market is supposed to work.