Valve Gifts Complete Collection to Portal 2 ARG Completists

[mcnally86]

If you arg you own these games! Give the TF2 solider a golden potato gun to take the place of his rocket launcher and we can call it even. Or a foil wrapped potato to replace melee weapons. Also

spoiler alert:
Glados Likes potato because she uses one to choke Yoda to death when he tries to stop her from firing the death star but you save Alderon buy putting a portal on a passing satellite and bouncing the laser back at Darth Vader. But I wont spoil what role Han Solo plays but it has to do with Dumbledore.

 

[Aeshi]

Does this mean all the godawful Portal stuff is going to be taken back out of the Potato Sack games?

 

[Micalas]

Does this mean all the godawful Portal stuff is going to be taken back out of the Potato Sack games?

The Amnesia extra was awesome. The most overt reference to Portal was at the very very end. It was like playing Saw, if Saw were good.

 

[Vault boy Eddie]

Somewhere Bobby Kotick is screaming "Stop it Valve! you're making us look like dicks! People are gonna start questioning buying mediocre maps for 15 bucks!"

 

[castlewise]

Just to put things straight; Valve made waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more money by selling the Potato Sack than they lost by giving away the Complete Pack to the few who had the nerve to get all potatoes.

Nonetheless, Valve remains pretty cool

Valve made NO money selling the Potato Sack you moron, it all goes to the indie developers whose games are in the pack. Geez, why does everyone think the Potato Sack is Valve's product, when it was only really Valve's initiative?

Not that I disagree with you but Valve do get a small cut of the profits for each sale, I think it's something like 20% which is much smaller than any other distributer asks for meaning Steam is the perfect platform for indie developers as they see most of the money made on their games returned to them.

Like I said though, I don't disagree with you.

Actually valve is pretty insidious. They give away lots of stuff for free. Using the number of people in the "golden potato" group (1800) and the price of a complete pack ($100) with portal 2 ($45 on sale) I estimate that they gave away $270,000 worth of games. (Keep in mind that you can gift them. So the 1800 copies of Portal 2 they gave away will translate into quite a few lost sales.) Why would they give away a quarter of a million dollars? Well someone else said it on the thread. They want you using steam. They want you to have your game library on steam so that thats where you buy your pc games. And it works. It totally works.

 

[TStormer]

And this is why I love valve.

Apart from the whole instavatbans for no reason, they are pretty cool guys.

 

[w1ndscar]

Too bad between my father and I we already have every single game from that bundle (with the exception of portal 2) Woulda been nice to have for someone who hasnt been playing valves game since HL came out, but still extremely awesome of Valve considering that bundle is 100 dollars

 

[Andy of Comix Inc]

Just to put things straight; Valve made waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more money by selling the Potato Sack than they lost by giving away the Complete Pack to the few who had the nerve to get all potatoes.

Nonetheless, Valve remains pretty cool

Valve made NO money selling the Potato Sack you moron, it all goes to the indie developers whose games are in the pack. Geez, why does everyone think the Potato Sack is Valve's product, when it was only really Valve's initiative?

Can't make a statement without someone calling you mentally deficient...

Of course I know Valve didn't make the games in the Potato Sack, but like Ickorus pointed out, they still get a small part of the profit.

Besides, they got a huge boost in popularity by doing this ARG stunt.

Oh um... it was a reference to Portal 2...she calls people "moron" a lot... I was just making sure that you hand't misunderstood where the pack comes from, as so many people seem to completely forget it does, in fact, have games in it.

 

[Riptide1]

hm... wouldn't the people who did everything in the Potato Sack bundle most likely own all of those games already? just saying... Not that its not an amazing deal i think its amazing that they are rewarding devoted fans like this... so um go Valve keep being awesome.

 

[gsf1200]

I can't believe the whining about receiving free stuff. People are mad because someone else gets more free stuff than they do. STFU! If you are mad at VALVE go buy your games from activision and see how much free stuff you get!

 

[Speakercone]

dang, I missed out. It would be nice to still be able to earn potatoes as achievement things. I spent so damn long on the Cogs one...

 

[Shilkanni]

I bought the Potato sack because it was a good deal and I was interested in Amnesia.
Now I've finished it, I would have paid $35 for Amnesia alone, if I enjoy any of the other games I'll consider it a good deal.

While there seems to be some people complaining and some journalists reporting on the 'how this is bad angle' I really think the vast majority of people's reaction to this is just 'oh neat' and that it brought more attention to Portal 2 and some good Indie games. I think people are working too hard to find something to complain about.

Anyone who starts seriously working on an ARG where they don't know what the prize will be knows that it could be awesome or it could be nothing. ARGs being used for promotion to launch something is not new... isn't it the norm?