The STEAM Sales and Releases Thread

[Fedora Master]

Like mediocrepoet was saying, be sure to thank all the losers complaining how deeply "unfair" it was that they couldn't be present for every sale, because remember, far better that no one gets to have nice things than some people get to have nice things.

Socialism in action.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Here's how I check to see if a Steam "event" sale is worth the hype:
https://steamdb.info/sales/?min_reviews=500&min_rating=75&min_discount=5&tagid=-4085,-3799,-4486,-5900

Blue means new low. Green means matching the all-time low. No highlight means it is more expensive than the all-time low.

My filters may exclude games you might be interested in, but I hope not.

Quite a few blue, and a lot of green, it looks like.

You guys ever think that maybe there isn't much anything worth buying on the sale anymore, because you've already bought everything worth buying for?

 

[Fedora Master]

Here's how I check to see if a Steam "event" sale is worth the hype:
https://steamdb.info/sales/?min_reviews=500&min_rating=75&min_discount=5&tagid=-4085,-3799,-4486,-5900

Blue means new low. Green means matching the all-time low. No highlight means it is more expensive than the all-time low.

My filters may exclude games you might be interested in, but I hope not.

Quite a few blue, and a lot of green, it looks like.

You guys ever think that maybe there isn't much anything worth buying on the sale anymore, because you've already bought everything worth buying for?

There's stuff I'd buy, but not when its a 10 year old game that still costs 20 bucks even with a discount.
Or when its shit that requires third party launchers.

 

[Dexter]

You can thank the retards who demanded the refund system so they could have zero consequences for their poor self-restraint at everyone else's expense. You can also thank the "I can't possibly check my phone once every four hours!" whiners.

Imagine complaining because Steam had to implement a refund feature to comply to most people's legal right to give back (possibly faulty) product. I'm not sure they're even doing enough and are in the green with the "2 hour" cut-off, guess we'll see when they end up in court. And also that they don't prey on some people's compulsions to "get a deal" anymore, even giving an example of staying up dead tired in the middle of the night to wait for "the next Flash Sales" as if that's a good thing or admirable.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

Imagine complaining because Steam had to implement a refund feature to comply to most people's legal right to give back (possibly faulty) product.

Imagine thinking the criteria for a refund should include "Idunlikdisgaem!" or "Disgaemwenonsaylel8r".

Far better we baby every customer and teach them to never look for better deals. I mean, what?

 

[Fedora Master]

You can thank the retards who demanded the refund system so they could have zero consequences for their poor self-restraint at everyone else's expense. You can also thank the "I can't possibly check my phone once every four hours!" whiners.

Imagine complaining because Steam had to implement a refund feature to comply to most people's legal right to give back (possibly faulty) product. I'm not sure they're even doing enough and are in the green with the "2 hour" cut-off, guess we'll see when they end up in court. And also that they don't prey on some people's compulsions to "get a deal" anymore, even giving an example of staying up dead tired in the middle of the night to wait for "the next Flash Sales" as if that's a good thing or admirable.

Even if you're for the refund option, they implemented it in the laziest shittiest way possible.

 

[mediocrepoet]

You can thank the retards who demanded the refund system so they could have zero consequences for their poor self-restraint at everyone else's expense. You can also thank the "I can't possibly check my phone once every four hours!" whiners.

Imagine complaining because Steam had to implement a refund feature to comply to most people's legal right to give back (possibly faulty) product. I'm not sure they're even doing enough and are in the green with the "2 hour" cut-off, guess we'll see when they end up in court. And also that they don't prey on some people's compulsions to "get a deal" anymore, even giving an example of staying up dead tired to wait for "the next Flash Sales" as if that's a good thing.

I had a bit of a different read of his point, but maybe you're right. Either way, Steam probably could have made a refund policy that would protect them from abuses re: flash sales and been able to have both, it was backlash and potential backlash that they used as cover to remove flash sales though, whether that's ultimately true or not.

As far as staying up for flash sales, that's on the person. Just because someone has an addictive personality and doesn't care if they're screwing their health or possibly losing a job in order to save a few bucks on gaming if they sleep more than 4 hours at a time, you can't blame Steam for that, it's mildly retarded. Besides, the easy work around is to keep changing sales but run them for 12-24 hours at a time instead of 4, or in some cases, 2 like I'm pretty sure I've seen on other sites in the past.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Imagine complaining because Steam had to implement a refund feature to comply to most people's legal right to give back (possibly faulty) product.

Imagine thinking the criteria for a refund should include "Idunlikdisgaem!" or "Disgaemwenonsaylel8r".

Far better we baby every customer and teach them to never look for better deals. I mean, what?

Meh. If you didn't have I don't like this game, people would just lie. As far as stuff going on sale, that happens with physical retailers too. To the extent that places like Best Buy will honour sales prices that occur within something like 30 days of a purchase if you roll in with your receipt.

 

[Dexter]

Even if you're for the refund option, they implemented it in the laziest shittiest way possible.

There's no "if you're for the refund option". This isn't a choice on their part. If they want to do business and sell products and services in most of the civilized world they are legally required to offer refunds e.g.: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/guarantees-returns/index_en.htm

Under EU rules, a trader must repair, replace, reduce the price or give you a refund if goods you bought turn out to be faulty or do not look or work as advertised.

If you bought a product or a service online or outside of a shop (by telephone, mail order, from a door-to-door salesperson), you also have the right to cancel and return your order within 14 days, for any reason and without a justification.

If you're not sure which situation applies to you, you can also try our consumer rights tool to help you understand your rights when you shop in the EU.

Again, I don't think they're even doing enough to follow the letter of the law as it stands now. They made this change in the first place not out of the goodness of their hearts, but after they lost a lawsuit in Australia after several appeals and were fined over it: https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/valve-australia-fine-1202772984/

The High Court of Australia dismissed yet another appeal from video game publisher Valve on Friday, upholding a 2016 ruling that the company must pay a $3 AUD million (or about $2.3 million USD) penalty after breaking the country’s consumer law.

The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) sued Valve in 2014 over the lack of a refund policy on its digital storefront Steam. According to the Australian Consumer Law (ACL), every business selling products in the country, physical or digital, must provide refunds to consumers. Valve only offered them on a case-by-case basis at the time.

“As with most software products, unless required by local law, we do not offer refunds or exchanges on games, DLC or in-game items purchased on our website or through the Steam Client,” its policy stated. It implemented a full refund policy in 2015.

But in 2014, refunds were required by Australian law. That led to the ACCC’s lawsuit and, two years later, a trial judge found Valve had “engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct and made false or misleading representations to Australian customers about their rights under consumer guarantees.” Valve has 2.2 million Australian Steam accounts, according to the ACCC.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

Meh. If you didn't have I don't like this game, people would just lie. As far as stuff going on sale, that happens with physical retailers too. To the extent that places like Best Buy will honour sales prices that occur within something like 30 days of a purchase if you roll in with your receipt.

Ultimately, I find the trade to not be worth it. Refunds on Steam games are an insurance policy for the imprudent. I'd rather live in a world where all sales are final (barring an obvious gamebreaking bug that's widely reported on the forums) for the duration of the sale and get better deals.

As far as the suggestion goes for making the flash sales longer lasting, I think every 6 - 8 hours would be a fair compromise. 12 hours is too long to be called a flash sale and they actually did this before officially removing the Flash Sales in 2016. I didn't mention these because they switched from 4 games on flash to 12 games on flash. If you have that many, for that long there ceases to be anything special about it.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Meh. If you didn't have I don't like this game, people would just lie. As far as stuff going on sale, that happens with physical retailers too. To the extent that places like Best Buy will honour sales prices that occur within something like 30 days of a purchase if you roll in with your receipt.

Ultimately, I find the trade to not be worth it. Refunds on Steam games are an insurance policy for the imprudent. I'd rather live in a world where all sales are final (barring an obvious gamebreaking bug that's widely reported on the forums) for the duration of the sale and get better deals.

As far as the suggestion goes for making the flash sales longer lasting, I think every 6 - 8 hours would be a fair compromise. 12 hours is too long to be called a flash sale and they actually did this before officially removing the Flash Sales in 2016. I didn't mention these because they switched from 4 games on flash to 12 games on flash. If you have that many, for that long there ceases to be anything special about it.

Sure, but ultimately this discussion is pointless because at the end of the day, Valve will be bound by the business laws and consumer protection laws of the countries they sell in. Also, neither one of us runs a digital storefront, so whether we think the sales refresh every 5 days or every 5 minutes doesn't matter much other than +1 Codex post count. Not to discount your opinion, really my only point was that there was probably a compromise position that Valve could've went into but they clearly weren't interested.

I've generally had the impression that Valve isn't interested too much in management whether in traditional customer service, or in their internal procedures. They're far more interested in taking their cut for providing a storefront, making that great, and dicking around on whatever services/products they feel like while cancelling like 90% of them and not caring because the storefront will finance them for at least the rest of gaben's natural life... and the unnatural life he has afterwards as a brain in a jar.

 

[Dexter]

Either way, Steam probably could have made a refund policy that would protect them from abuses re: flash sales and been able to have both, it was backlash and potential backlash that they used as cover to remove flash sales though, whether that's ultimately true or not.

Where was that even ever stated? As far as I remember their stated reason was that they tried "Flash Sales" and "No Flash Sales" during different Events and got the data back that they're moving more product without: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/steam-winter-sale-with-no-dailyflash-sales-was-big/1100-6433732/

With the Steam Winter Sale over and done with, Valve has now reportedly sent out a memo to developers detailing the results of the sale period. This sale broke with tradition and did not offer daily and flash deals. The memo, obtained by SteamDB, says the sale period was a huge hit.

"More customers bought more games across more of the Steam catalog," Valve said in the address.

Part of the reason for the uptick in sales came down to dropping daily and flash sales.

"Our hypothesis was that this new format would be a better way to serve customers that may only be able to visit Steam once or twice during the 13-day event," the company said. "We also saw this change as an opportunity to showcase a deeper variety of titles to customers each day, while having confidence that any game being highlighted would be at its lowest discount."

The likely and obvious reason for this would be people not waiting for the last day of the Sale in the hopes something gets another price cut and ultimately buying less volume over the period of a Sale and occasional customers being able to buy games throughout the entire Sale knowing it'll be the deepest price cut and not feeling like they've missed out on a "Special deal" that was only available for something like 2 hours and ultimately not making a purchase.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Where was that even ever stated? + <Buncha stuff.>

Who knows? Maybe it's a drunken, faulty memory ass pull from news that was current years ago. Either way, I guarantee that I was sincere when I was describing how I find this sort of speculation to be pointless and that you're certainly more invested in proving something than I am.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Just took a look at their summer sale. It's either shit I'm not interested in or the stuff I am interested in that's in their summer sale is not really on sale. Know what I'm sayin'?

 

[mediocrepoet]

Just took a look at their summer sale. It's either shit I'm not interested in or the stuff I am interested in that's in their summer sale is not really on sale. Know what I'm sayin'?

Probably will be on sale in the Fall sale or the "so close to the Fall sale it might as well be one continuous event" Winter sale. Or that "so close to the Winter sale, I'm not sure why they even take stuff off sale," Chinese New Year sale.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

I can hardly contain myself for these deep discounts.

One of the worst uses of frontpage space for a Steam sale ever too.

 

[Kev Inkline]

I can hardly contain myself for these deep discounts.

One of the worst uses of frontpage space for a Steam sale ever too.

That's customized to your playing history, I've got totally different games represented.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

That's customized to your playing history, I've got totally different games represented.

I don't think so, all I've played seriously in the last 2 weeks is 53 hours of CKII. The rest are 0.3-0.7h testing various Elder Scrolls, Infinity Engine and Star Wars games since I finally decided to uninstall the retail versions and download the Steam versions.
The only one that may be the case for it is Raft since I used to play a lot of Conan Exiles for a time, however they've all changed now anyway.

 

[Wunderbar]

That's customized to your playing history, I've got totally different games represented.

shower with your dad simulator?

 

[mediocrepoet]

That's customized to your playing history, I've got totally different games represented.

I don't think so, all I've played seriously in the last 2 weeks is 53 hours of CKII. The rest are 0.3-0.7h testing various Elder Scrolls, Infinity Engine and Star Wars games since I finally decided to uninstall the retail versions and download the Steam versions.
The only one that may be the case for it is Raft since I used to play a lot of Conan Exiles for a time, however they've all changed now anyway.

I think my favourite Steam algorithm result was showing me Borderlands 3 as a suggestion because I'd previously played Age of Decadence. It was a serious wtf moment.

 

[Spectacle]

I don't think that refunds are the reason steam ended flash sales, I suspect that they had just gotten too popular, too many gamers were sitting around waiting for flash sales instead of buying games at the regular sale price.

The point of running a sale is to entice people to spend money right away, and you don't get that if the way you run your sale encourages people to wait for an even better deal.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

I think my favourite Steam algorithm result was showing me Borderlands 3 as a suggestion because I'd previously played Age of Decadence. It was a serious wtf moment.

Steam uses a very liberal definition of RPG, I think. I've seen a lot of open-world action shit get lumped into the category too.

 

[Kev Inkline]

That's customized to your playing history, I've got totally different games represented.

shower with your dad simulator?

Well, I was merely trolling, I don't think the games shown have anything to do with previous gaming history, so if the simulator you mentionend was shown in my front page - and I am not saying it was - it is completely coincidental, I swear.

 

[Zibniyat]

Imagine thinking the criteria for a refund should include "Idunlikdisgaem!"

That is a perfectly valid reason for a refund. What needs to be modified slightly is the definition of the word "refund", since in case of digital entertainment it does not have to do much with objective qualities or faults of the product. We live in an age where most games don't have demos (or shareware versions for example), so the only way to try them and see if we would like them is by either pirating them or purchasing them (watching YouTube videos is akin to watching trailers, it just cannot replace direct involvement). So giving players the option to purchase and then refund the game under certain reasonable time-frame and playtime is absolutely justified. Digital goods, at least, won't be damaged or destroyed by purchases, unlike physical boxed versions for instance.

You may say "wait for a sale then", but why would I? If a certain game has caught my attention and I am willing to try it now, then I should have the option of refunding it in case I didn't like it. Saves me the time and memory to "check it out when on sale".

The last game I bought was Conan Exiles a few days ago. I've played it for less than 2 hours and have requested a refund today. My reason? I did not find it fun. That's subjective and that is alright, I am certainly not going to convince or dissuade anyone based on that singular statement. Recently I also decided to check out certain genres outside my preferences, like Mud Runner - a game about driving trucks in difficult terrain. I refunded it after a few hours of playtime, and the reason was "It just isn't my cup of tea". That was what I literally wrote as a reason. I make no judgement about its objective qualities or flaws, but I just didn't find it fun or entertaining or interesting.

 

[Üstad]