Steam Sales Double [Again] in 2011

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Spoiler: This was me this Christmas (thanks to a very generous gran)

I hope pc gaming isn't dead because otherwise I am a like a necrophiliac or something :<

 

[Kopikatsu]

Steam needs competition. This sort of monopoly can't be good for the industry.

Maybe if the Steam storefront were separate from Steamworks? At any rate, this is simultaneously amazing and disturbing news, though hardly surprising.

Origin sent me a 25% off coupon for my birthday.

If I didn't already have 170 games on Steam, I might consider Origin. Steam didn't give me anything for my birthday.

(If anyone is going to quote this message to go 'BUT ORIGIN EATS CHILDREN AND WILL STEAL YOUR LIFE', don't bother. Pleaaaaaase don't bother.)

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Steam didn't give me anything for my birthday.

And how many pieces of coal and 33% off tokens did you get around that time?

 

[Kopikatsu]

Steam didn't give me anything for my birthday.

And how many pieces of coal and 33% off tokens did you get around that time?

Zero. My birthday was on the 4th, not during the winter event.

Also, the event coupons were for specific things. Origin's coupon is for anything.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

My birthday was on the 4th, not during the winter event.

So you got an unbirthday present then. How many unbirthday presents did Origin get you?

Also, the event coupons were for specific things. Origin's coupon is for anything.

Anything EA...which you used to be able to get on Steam for cheaper...

I've still got some tokens if you want a late birthday present from Steam...I'm sure I've got a Huntsman I never use...(Apart from to wind @Caliostro: up with )

 

[Kopikatsu]

Steam needs competition. This sort of monopoly can't be good for the industry.

Maybe if the Steam storefront were separate from Steamworks? At any rate, this is simultaneously amazing and disturbing news, though hardly surprising.

Origin sent me a 25% off coupon for my birthday.

If I didn't already have 170 games on Steam, I might consider Origin. Steam didn't give me anything for my birthday.

(If anyone is going to quote this message to go 'BUT ORIGIN EATS CHILDREN AND WILL STEAL YOUR LIFE', don't bother. Pleaaaaaase don't bother.)

B.. bu.. BUT ORIGIN EATS CHILDREN AND WILL STEAL YOUR LIFE!

True story.

Why don't you e-mail gabe with the idea of Birthday discounts, I'm sure he'd jump on it. Anything to get a sale ay Gaben?

I'd rather not have Steam get anything like that.

There are people with hundreds of alt accounts. (One guy, Nooch, has over 12,000 of them.) With Steam Trading...it couldn't turn out well.

If anyone is wondering how they get so many accounts, they pay $0.01 on Humble Bumbles and use the activate code on Steam. Voila, premium account.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Why would you want more than one account, let alone 12,000 of the buggers?

I'd rather have all my games on one account.

One piece of coal x 12,000 accounts...

Equally, Vac ban this account? Oh dear, here's one I prepared earlier.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Angry wall of text

Angry wall of text

Guys, if you want people to listen to what you say; can I offer three suggestions:

1) Stop insinuating everyone is a moron except you.
2) Run a damn spell-checker, put some punctuation in and make it easy to read.
3) Cut down the walls to some relevant points.

You both have 40 word sentences with no pauses. Any good points you make will be lost.

Valve have created a depository where you can loan games through their servers. They have promised that if the servers go down, they will remove the DRM. That's the best they can do. In the mean time, they have invigorated a failing marked, protected some of our software and brought a number of indie developers into the world of the big hitters. It's probably fair to say that without the work of Valve, GoG and others that Minecraft wouldn't have become so loved - not because it was downloaded from them, but they legitimized the idea of internet buying.

The retail of games has changed - it's not going back to cassettes on shelves, because the bricks/mortar stores will no longer allow that. They can make far better profits pushing midnight releases on the consoles than deal with the PC.

There is a problem with media ownership these days, but it's far more widespread than Gabe's platform. He's just pushing into a new paradigm that's emerging. What needs to happen is restriction on how much middle men are taking between the consumer-creator transaction. Steam is only gaining so much ground because it treats both a lot fairer than all of the other competitors.

Any of the arguments on copyright, DRM or piracy all boil down to money/rights/resources being lost between creator and consumer. That's action that needs to be taken by those willing to police it fairly. Valve seem to be the only ones willing to do that at the moment.

Steam doesn't have a spell checker so I can't help that when I am in a game. I never Steam as a platform or as DRM was bad the thing I am pointing out that is bad is the EULA and what they actually have written in them which is that basically every game you have probably bought as only ever been a licence whether it be from Steam or Retail. If that holds up in court is a different matter but that is what the EULA entitles people to.

 

[Zing]

Valve: No draconian DRM, doesn't treat it's customers like everyone of them is trying to steal from them, makes shit tons of money.

Other publishers/developers: doing it wrong.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Steam needs competition. This sort of monopoly can't be good for the industry.

Maybe if the Steam storefront were separate from Steamworks? At any rate, this is simultaneously amazing and disturbing news, though hardly surprising.

Origin sent me a 25% off coupon for my birthday.

If I didn't already have 170 games on Steam, I might consider Origin. Steam didn't give me anything for my birthday.

(If anyone is going to quote this message to go 'BUT ORIGIN EATS CHILDREN AND WILL STEAL YOUR LIFE', don't bother. Pleaaaaaase don't bother.)

B.. bu.. BUT ORIGIN EATS CHILDREN AND WILL STEAL YOUR LIFE!

True story.

Why don't you e-mail gabe with the idea of Birthday discounts, I'm sure he'd jump on it. Anything to get a sale ay Gaben?

I'd rather not have Steam get anything like that.

There are people with hundreds of alt accounts. (One guy, Nooch, has over 12,000 of them.) With Steam Trading...it couldn't turn out well.

If anyone is wondering how they get so many accounts, they pay $0.01 on Humble Bumbles and use the activate code on Steam. Voila, premium account.

Why would you want more than one account, let alone 12,000 of the buggers?

I'd rather have all my games on one account.

Most of them do it for TF2. Big money there.

Nooch (The guy with 12,000 accounts) specifically did his for TF2. Someone did the math, and he rakes in a few hundred dollars a day in items. (As in, he can smelt them into metal and sell them for about $0.70 a refined over Paypal)

 

[joe-h2o]

Spoiler: This was me this Christmas (thanks to a very generous gran)

I hope pc gaming isn't dead because otherwise I am a like a necrophiliac or something :<

That's almost the plot of Twilight. One girl's choice between bestiality and necrophilia.

On topic, I like Steam - especially being able to flip between Mac and PC on the same account. Only one bug with that so far - don't launch Plants vs Zombies on both "sides" - choose one or the other, or it prevents the game from loading at all.

Haven't had any problems with other games though.

I bought New Vegas for a friend of mine in the Christmas sale (she started playing FPS games about a month ago and has already stepped up to Legendary in Halo - she didn't even own a mouse before she started!) so she'll be getting to that after HL2, and I she picked up Max Payne 1 and 2 in exchange for me since they "seemed interesting".

 

[Delicious Anathema]

I wish Microsoft and Nintendo would adopt Steam, and that Valve actually released some freaking games. Team Fortress 2 with updates on Xbox 360 would be so awesome, as well as cross platform play.

It's a shame it's practically restricted to PC gaming, which I still find much more expensive than console gaming, though mostly a superior experience overall.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

So he literally made 12,000 accounts for one sale?

And probably had a few running from the last sale. Idlers...the lot.

Because as far as I know, this was the first time they did that. Also, trading all of them onto one account must'v been a *****.

Why trade? Log in, drop a one cent indie bundle, log out. All your games are stored on your original.

And if Vac banned one account, his other account wouldn't have all the games his banned account would... Or am I missing something here. Do these accounts duplicate games too?

They're downloaded. He could keep the pirated ones offline, use the legit ones for online - no problem. Especially as he could download the free games (like TF2) once - and then link the accounts up by altering the folder name.

Like Kopikatsu said, build a good business model and there will always be a parasite or two making money off it. Why do you think Gold Farmers in WoW are such a bane?

 

[Silas13013]

See, look how profitable it is when you legitimize piracy. Now before you go breaking your mouse to hit the quote button to write an aneurysm inducing Wall of text post to "prove me wrong" understand that I already know those points. I accept those points, I look past them in order to see a bigger picture and make an assessment not based in seeing and supporting a more narrow view. Feel free to save yourself the energy because steam is actually worse than piracy as it is infinitely closer to theft than what we consider to be piracy ever will be. Only difference is that Steams form of legitimized piracy places the bulk of the "theft" more on the shoulders of the consumer than the developer. (though the consumers have a choice to buy the same thing cheaper elsewhere in many cases, but for developers especially indie developers they are essentially strong armed into accepting steams virtually monopolistic program as a delivery system or accepting that they will sell a microscopic fraction of what they would otherwise.

Spoiler: Other thought: Irrationality of people and steam sales.

Why do people revere steam for "steam sales"? It is an astounding case example of mass ignorance. Heres the proof. Even during the summer and winter steam sales events, their prices invariably are only equivalent to market averages. Let us look at a random title, though you can do the same thing with the bulk of steams catalog. Well choose LA noire.

Now we will ignore the argument that anti used advocates use that claims from the used games suffer no deterioration like anything else that is sold used, which typically justifies the reduction in price for buying something used. Though it is equally as valid to compare a used copy of a piece of software to a new one because as they say, essentially there is no difference, but I digress, were going to ignore that point in this because were not going to compare the differences between steam versions of a title vs console versions, even though it is valid, its not the point to be made here.

Now Steam sales will typically reduce the cost of a title by 33, 50, 66, 75 or in some extremely rare cases 80% off of the base price for a title. These sales can either come in the form of daily deal, mid week madness, Weekend deal, but the larger of those reductions typically are reserved for the summer and winter sales events. So using our case example of LA noire, and the recent winter sale price, the cost of LA noire was 12.50 USD or 75% off. However, if you look at the comparable game from Amazon.com you can find the digital download version of LA noire the complete edition for the every day low price of 12.49 USD. Any day of the week right now you can get the same game, in essentially the same format on amazon for what you would have had to have wait for the "sale" on steam, and even then, that price was only available for a total of 48 hours (once during the sale, and again on recap day) for 1 cent more, and otherwise the price is 50$

Also remember, you own NOTHING in steam. That totally awesome price you see during the inconv. sales window is not for a product. You dropping your money for a title you see on sale in steam grants you a license, not a product, and with such no rights of ownership are transferred. So, in their discretion for any reason they so chose, steam can block and ban your account, thereby nullifying ever cent you ever paid them on that account leaving you with absolutely nothing, no right to recompense because you agreed in accepting the TOS that you were not getting a product, you were exchanging money for a license of usage that confers absolutely nothing to you as the consumer. So, because you decide to be an ass, stir up trouble on the valve forums and claim that Gabe Newell looks like the fat illegitimate love child of Ellen Degeneres, Joe Walsh and a chicken and provide his personal email address for public view, they can should they so desire ban your account and nullify everything you spent all because you did something they did not like.

This is one reason why physical media is so important in this day and age, and people are ignorantly allowing companies like this to erode ownership rights and the alarming thing is that people are willingly allowing those rights to be eroded because they have been tricked into thinking steams prices are good, and accepting a reduced value for the same product. Thats why comparing a steam version of a game to a console version is insanely relevant because invariably the steam version will have less intrinsic value as it cannot be sold, and is not something you own, and can be taken from you with or without reason or recompense, whereas a used copy of a console title HAS ownership, CAN be resold, and as the anti used people will tell you there is essentially no difference between a new and used copy. Thus it has more intrinsic value than a digital download of the same thing, but typically ends up selling for even less "because it is used"

This is why the whole occupy movement is pointless, the same people protesting that corporations are wrongly using their power to influence government are the ones who are supporting these same sort of corporations by willing conceding their rights to them, or else we would not see valve having a 7 year streak of 100%sales figures. What point is there to protest corporate corruption when you willingly fund that corporation and give them the excess spending clout to manipulate the governmental controls designed to protect the people?

In short, this is really a very saddening news article.

You can be wrong, thats fine. I my self will keep enjoying my steam games.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Steam needs competition. This sort of monopoly can't be good for the industry.

Maybe if the Steam storefront were separate from Steamworks? At any rate, this is simultaneously amazing and disturbing news, though hardly surprising.

Origin sent me a 25% off coupon for my birthday.

If I didn't already have 170 games on Steam, I might consider Origin. Steam didn't give me anything for my birthday.

(If anyone is going to quote this message to go 'BUT ORIGIN EATS CHILDREN AND WILL STEAL YOUR LIFE', don't bother. Pleaaaaaase don't bother.)

B.. bu.. BUT ORIGIN EATS CHILDREN AND WILL STEAL YOUR LIFE!

True story.

Why don't you e-mail gabe with the idea of Birthday discounts, I'm sure he'd jump on it. Anything to get a sale ay Gaben?

I'd rather not have Steam get anything like that.

There are people with hundreds of alt accounts. (One guy, Nooch, has over 12,000 of them.) With Steam Trading...it couldn't turn out well.

If anyone is wondering how they get so many accounts, they pay $0.01 on Humble Bumbles and use the activate code on Steam. Voila, premium account.

Why would you want more than one account, let alone 12,000 of the buggers?

I'd rather have all my games on one account.

Most of them do it for TF2. Big money there.

Nooch (The guy with 12,000 accounts) specifically did his for TF2. Someone did the math, and he rakes in a few hundred dollars a day in items. (As in, he can smelt them into metal and sell them for about $0.70 a refined over Paypal)

Surely it's impossible to manage 12,000 accounts like that.

He can't possibly log in to each account every day to check his item drops.

There are outside programs that can be used to run all 12,000 at once.

Way back in the day, VALVe gave out a Halo hat to everyone who didn't use one of those programs to game the system instead of just VAC banning everyone who did. The people who used the programs complained SO loudly that VALVe ended up giving them all the hats too, and from then on gave up trying to do anything about it.

Basically, the 'Reward customers for doing the right thing and punish people who do the wrong thing' method that everyone keeps championing doesn't work if you want to make money. It also ends up screwing the honest customers again.

During the Steam winter sale, there were extremely rare hats awarded through the achievements. People with a fuckton of accounts got a bunch while people with only 1 account basically got nothing. Then the people with multiple hats sell them for exorbitant amounts of money/items. (They were literally going for hundreds of dollars over paypal and such). Also, people with only one account will never be able to afford high-end items in TF2 (To say nothing of Unusual hats) whereas people with tons of alternate accounts have fucktons of them.

 

[Beryl77]

Even the usual prices are lower on Steam than retail for me but they make them even cheaper. I bought Skyrim and Saints Row the third for about half the price I would have paid retail and I didn't have to wait a year for the price to drop that much.
I would have bought these games anyway but this way I save much money and time.

Sure Steam could use some competition but only if I can play games I buy on one digital distribution platform and play them on another one, for example buy Mass Effect 3 on Origin but play it on Steam. I really don't want to have to use 10 different programs and my games scattered all over them. Also, at the moment Steam just offers the better service.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

I don't get how that works at all. How are the games on all his accounts just because he bought an indie bundle?

To legitimise the account, you get a 1 cent code. This gets you access to all the free games, like TF2.

You download it once for one account; and for every separate account, you simply change the folder name as you're logging in, and that account has it already downloaded.

Simples. Steam Cloud stores the relevant info for each account separately. A simple program such as those used to DDOS could do it automatically.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Why would you want more than one account, let alone 12,000 of the buggers?

I'd rather have all my games on one account.

One piece of coal x 12,000 accounts...

Equally, Vac ban this account? Oh dear, here's one I prepared earlier.

I'd say his accounts are probably already gone as Valve did already go around banning people with alts their main one included.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Why would you want more than one account, let alone 12,000 of the buggers?

I'd rather have all my games on one account.

One piece of coal x 12,000 accounts...

Equally, Vac ban this account? Oh dear, here's one I prepared earlier.

I'd say his accounts are probably already gone as Valve did already go around banning people with alts their main one included.

VALVe only banned people during the winter event for using the Steam achievement manager. (External program that let you unlock achievements without playing or even having the games)

Nobody got banned just for having alt accounts.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Why would you want more than one account, let alone 12,000 of the buggers?

I'd rather have all my games on one account.

One piece of coal x 12,000 accounts...

Equally, Vac ban this account? Oh dear, here's one I prepared earlier.

I'd say his accounts are probably already gone as Valve did already go around banning people with alts their main one included.

VALVe only banned people during the winter event for using the Steam achievement manager. (External program that let you unlock achievements without playing or even having the games)

Nobody got banned just for having alt accounts.

Ok well I might be wrong but I do remember someone saying on the Steam forums that they did get banned(might have been suspended) for having several alt counts(in the 100s) and didn't use achievement manager. It was at least a suspension for whatever reason related to this.