Steam Wintersale

[Cyborg]

The sales are awful this year. You'll notice that there are no daily deals. The deals don't rise to that level. I think it used to be, with less games, you could really make a lot of money by discounting your product. Now, even with discounting, you are still competing against so many other products. I think that the days of everything being steeply discounted may be over. Summer will shed a little more light on the direction it's going.

[eRe4s3r]

Surely the direction where it's going is less sales made during sales and more sales made on keysites where there are now daily sales... ;p Mind you I bought 3 things this sale, but the sale wasn't on Steam... and I saved 10€ compared to Steam "sales" and still got legit steam keys..

I find it extremely hard to weed out the junk in this sale as well. I found NOTHING I wanted (recommendation system especially is wonky, as the tags it uses are wrongly applied to games). It makes me wonder how many indy titles I might want to play I never even see because the recommendations are all popular stuff I already know about (but steam doesn't know I know about).

Also as example, tons of stuff just flat out isn't on sale (we are talking indie titles)

[Misery]

I find it extremely hard to weed out the junk in this sale as well. I found NOTHING I wanted (recommendation system especially is wonky, as the tags it uses are wrongly applied to games). It makes me wonder how many indy titles I might want to play I never even see because the recommendations are all popular stuff I already know about (but steam doesn't know I know about).

Been a problem for a long time, that.  I cant count the number of great games I've almost missed out on because they never even once showed up on the damn front page, or in the worthless recommendations list.   Which is a damn stupid list, really.   The listed reason for each one is always "because it's popular".  Ugh.   

But hey, those ones I'm missing, they're not AAA graphical powerhouse masterpieces so who cares, right?  That seems to be the general viewpoint going on there all the time.


As it is I haven't really bought anything else myself either this time after those initial couple of things.  The whole thing honestly seems outright lazy this time. The front page even LOOKS the same except that it now takes extra effort to check new releases.   ....yay?

[Draco18s]

The sales are awful this year. You'll notice that there are no daily deals. The deals don't rise to that level. I think it used to be, with less games, you could really make a lot of money by discounting your product. Now, even with discounting, you are still competing against so many other products. I think that the days of everything being steeply discounted may be over. Summer will shed a little more light on the direction it's going.

The daily and flash sales are over because people realized that they could wait until the last day to see if something would go on flash sale and get it super cheap.  The regular sale titles basically may as well have not gone on sale at all.

[Cyborg]

The sales are awful this year. You'll notice that there are no daily deals. The deals don't rise to that level. I think it used to be, with less games, you could really make a lot of money by discounting your product. Now, even with discounting, you are still competing against so many other products. I think that the days of everything being steeply discounted may be over. Summer will shed a little more light on the direction it's going.

The daily and flash sales are over because people realized that they could wait until the last day to see if something would go on flash sale and get it super cheap.  The regular sale titles basically may as well have not gone on sale at all.

I disagree, as it doesn't attempt to explain why the deep discounts were avoided entirely.

[TheVampire100]

The sales are awful this year. You'll notice that there are no daily deals. The deals don't rise to that level. I think it used to be, with less games, you could really make a lot of money by discounting your product. Now, even with discounting, you are still competing against so many other products. I think that the days of everything being steeply discounted may be over. Summer will shed a little more light on the direction it's going.

The daily and flash sales are over because people realized that they could wait until the last day to see if something would go on flash sale and get it super cheap.  The regular sale titles basically may as well have not gone on sale at all.

I disagree, as it doesn't attempt to explain why the deep discounts were avoided entirely.

They haven't been avoided entirely, they are simply not shown on the front page anymore. And, of course, most of the games that have that discounts are either really old or not that popular to begin with.

Welcome to the new Steam.

[Toranth]

The sales are awful this year. You'll notice that there are no daily deals. The deals don't rise to that level. I think it used to be, with less games, you could really make a lot of money by discounting your product. Now, even with discounting, you are still competing against so many other products. I think that the days of everything being steeply discounted may be over. Summer will shed a little more light on the direction it's going.

The daily and flash sales are over because people realized that they could wait until the last day to see if something would go on flash sale and get it super cheap.  The regular sale titles basically may as well have not gone on sale at all.

I disagree, as it doesn't attempt to explain why the deep discounts were avoided entirely.

They haven't been avoided entirely, they are simply not shown on the front page anymore. And, of course, most of the games that have that discounts are either really old or not that popular to begin with.
Welcome to the new Steam.

I think I agree with Cyborg - it can't be that simple.  We still see good deals, on other sites.  Just, not on Steam.
For example, as I mentioned elsewhere, Dominions 4.  It was on sale for 75% off starting two years ago, but only as a Daily Deal or a Flash Sale.  However, since those stopped, it hasn't been on sale on Steam for less than 60% off.  But recently it was on a flash sale on GamersGate for 85% off!  (And I missed it, of course)
There are a number of games I've been wanting that follow that pattern.  It's kind of annoying, because it's becoming that I have to follow five or six web stores, some of which aren't always US region, some of which aren't always selling the Steam version of a game.
Combined with the flood of garbage coming out of the Greenlight dump, Steam is getting to be a hard place to find new things or make impulse buys.

[Draco18s]

Steam stopped doing them because people were expecting it and taking advantage. No point in buying at 40% off if there's a chance it'll go to 60% on a daily or 80% on a flash sale.

Those high discounts on other sites still exist, but they're much harder to predict.  This is why I use Is There Any Deal?  Although I will note that I don't see many things for better than 40% off most of the time and rarely anything better than 60%.  I remember seeing something go on sale not to long ago where I went "ooh 60%.  Wait, it's still $30?"

Combined with the flood of garbage coming out of the Greenlight dump, Steam is getting to be a hard place to find new things or make impulse buys.

That I can definitely agree with.

[Cyborg]

In regards to dominions 4, it is a great game. Extremely unbalanced and best played if you configure it to your challenge level.

[Misery]

Combined with the flood of garbage coming out of the Greenlight dump, Steam is getting to be a hard place to find new things or make impulse buys.

Yeah, pretty much.   Freaking tired of it.  And it's no wonder that a lot of small developers are having trouble getting their games noticed lately.  How are they supposed to get anything shown anywhere when Steam drops a freaking landfill on them if they try?  It's bloody frustrating watching devs that I know struggle so much just to even get noticed whatsoever even when the game itself is fantastic.


And you know, this brings up an interesting question:  Wasn't Greenlight put in place specifically to stop this flood of stupid? 

[Draco18s]

And you know, this brings up an interesting question:  Wasn't Greenlight put in place specifically to stop this flood of stupid?

The problem is that people go "oh shiny! want!" and up-vote the garbage because the developer promises a lot and never delivers.

[TheVampire100]

And you know, this brings up an interesting question:  Wasn't Greenlight put in place specifically to stop this flood of stupid?

The problem is that people go "oh shiny! want!" and up-vote the garbage because the developer promises a lot and never delivers.

This. And because people find a stupid joke funny enough to say "Okay, let's put this junk on Steam". There are a lot of, and I mean a LOT of stupid "joke" games that serve no other purpose but to mock a current situation (Trump getting president for example), are simply a meme collection or just consists of stupid jokes about stupid stuff.
The internet, actually the world is filled with stupid people. And stupid people vote for stupid stuff (again, Trump). Because of this we get this junk. Because stupid people are the majority. Or maybe because they are more vocal than smart people. smart people like to stand silent in the backgroudn because... they are smart and know it's better not to reason with idiots who would talk all the time until they win an argument.

Anyway: people are dumb and vote for dumb stuff, so we get dumb stuff. These people are the same that give bad games positive reviews and write stupid one liner jokes in the review.

[Toranth]

And you know, this brings up an interesting question:  Wasn't Greenlight put in place specifically to stop this flood of stupid?

The problem is that people go "oh shiny! want!" and up-vote the garbage because the developer promises a lot and never delivers.

(snip)
Anyway: people are dumb and vote for dumb stuff, so we get dumb stuff. These people are the same that give bad games positive reviews and write stupid one liner jokes in the review.

Yup; The reddit and 4chan trolls, the Twitter "vote for everything!" crowd, the ones that accept the promise of a free key for a vote (Steam +1!), and don't forget the fake accounts created by developers to Greenlight their own games!  Are there actually games that don't get Greenlit these days?

Seriously, I cannot imagine anyone that ever spent time on the internet thinking that getting anonymous people involved would somehow produce a measure of quality.

[Draco18s]

Also remember that it doesn't take that many people voting to get it greenlit. It's like 300 or 3000 up-votes.

[eRe4s3r]

Speaking of random games, i have a steam key for Pixel Piracy and a steam key for Kingdom Rush anyone wants that? I want nothing in return, but as I have the keys from bundle stars, they are afaik not bound to anything and should work easily enough but it's been a while I dunno if it still works like that. (pm me if you want one of these, or both) first one gets it though, put in pm which game you want if you only want 1 ;p

Anyway as second part of my pots I wish there'd be some kind of site where indy games get weeded out from the greenlight system when they are *out* (and not in EA) and show-cased, sorted per genre so that one can actually find gems again. In my bulk purchase of 3 bundles, I found maybe 4 games (of 22) that I cared about, was still cheaper to buy them this way than single...  but the amount of mediocrity vs interesting in these bundles makes me sad.

The only good part about steam is that I can categorize stuff per bundle easily enough, saves me the problem of a cluttered LIBRARY on top of a cluttered store ;P