The STEAM Sales and Releases Thread

[markec]

Bought the following:

 

[janior]

every winter/summer sale is nice imo, because i dont follow sales on week by week or day by day basis

 

[rusty_shackleford]

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?

What? Not liking a product is a perfectly valid reason for a refund. It's too difficult to judge what a game will actually be like without playing it.

The US FTC even gives "misrepresentation" and "something wasn't disclosed clearly" as a reason to refund a product.

https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/solving-customer-problems-returns-refunds-and-other-resolutions

• Explain the problem. For example, you might say the product doesn’t work, you were billed incorrectly, something wasn’t disclosed clearly, or a product’s features were misrepresented.

 

[Spectacle]

Bought the following:

I wish they hadn't cancelled this game after the first episode, it was a lot of fun.

It's a good thing the whole "episodic gaming" idea died off.

 

[racofer]

It's a good thing the whole "episodic gaming" idea died off.

Deprecated and replaced with the improved model of DLC hell.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

The US FTC even gives "misrepresentation" and "something wasn't disclosed clearly" as a reason to refund a product.

False advertisement =/= I don't like this game.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The US FTC even gives "misrepresentation" and "something wasn't disclosed clearly" as a reason to refund a product.

False advertisement =/= I don't like this game.

How so?
The average popular title on Steam has a trailer made by a third party studio using assets that never appear in the game rendered using software that isn't the game engine let alone showing what the game is even capable of.
If I am purchasing a book, I can pick it up and read a few pages to see if I like it. Movie trailers very rarely show content not from the movie at all and made by a separate studio.

Video games don't offer demos because the common wisdom is that it reduces sales. That is inherently anti-consumer behavior intended to misrepresent the product.

 

[mediocrepoet]

The US FTC even gives "misrepresentation" and "something wasn't disclosed clearly" as a reason to refund a product.

False advertisement =/= I don't like this game.

How so?
The average popular title on Steam has a trailer made by a third party studio using assets that never appear in the game rendered using software that isn't the game engine let alone showing what the game is even capable of.
If I am purchasing a book, I can pick it up and read a few pages to see if I like it. Movie trailers very rarely show content not from the movie at all and made by a separate studio.

Video games don't offer demos because the common wisdom is that it reduces sales. That is inherently anti-consumer behavior intended to misrepresent the product.

Are you trying to prove his point, rusty? Those are pretty blatant examples of material misrepresentation / false advertising. The fact that the end user may not like the game is extraneous to the fact that they were misled into purchasing the product in the first place.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The US FTC even gives "misrepresentation" and "something wasn't disclosed clearly" as a reason to refund a product.

False advertisement =/= I don't like this game.

How so?
The average popular title on Steam has a trailer made by a third party studio using assets that never appear in the game rendered using software that isn't the game engine let alone showing what the game is even capable of.
If I am purchasing a book, I can pick it up and read a few pages to see if I like it. Movie trailers very rarely show content not from the movie at all and made by a separate studio.

Video games don't offer demos because the common wisdom is that it reduces sales. That is inherently anti-consumer behavior intended to misrepresent the product.

Are you trying to prove his point, rusty? Those are pretty blatant examples of material misrepresentation / false advertising. The fact that the end user may not like the game is extraneous to the fact that they were misled into purchasing the product in the first place.

Not liking the game because you were misled seems entirely relevant to the issue at hand here. Video games, on average, do an absolutely horrible job at representing what you will actually get when purchasing the product.

 

[mediocrepoet]

The US FTC even gives "misrepresentation" and "something wasn't disclosed clearly" as a reason to refund a product.

False advertisement =/= I don't like this game.

How so?
The average popular title on Steam has a trailer made by a third party studio using assets that never appear in the game rendered using software that isn't the game engine let alone showing what the game is even capable of.
If I am purchasing a book, I can pick it up and read a few pages to see if I like it. Movie trailers very rarely show content not from the movie at all and made by a separate studio.

Video games don't offer demos because the common wisdom is that it reduces sales. That is inherently anti-consumer behavior intended to misrepresent the product.

Are you trying to prove his point, rusty? Those are pretty blatant examples of material misrepresentation / false advertising. The fact that the end user may not like the game is extraneous to the fact that they were misled into purchasing the product in the first place.

Not liking the game because you were misled seems entirely relevant to the issue at hand here. Video games, on average, do an absolutely horrible job at representing what you will actually get when purchasing the product.

Not liking something would never stand up if you had a legal dispute about whether or not a company was obliged to provide a refund per a country's business law. A material misrepresentation absolutely would. Whether a retailer offers refunds within a period for "not liking something" in order to avoid more major headaches and disputes is irrelevant to that core issue.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The US FTC even gives "misrepresentation" and "something wasn't disclosed clearly" as a reason to refund a product.

False advertisement =/= I don't like this game.

How so?
The average popular title on Steam has a trailer made by a third party studio using assets that never appear in the game rendered using software that isn't the game engine let alone showing what the game is even capable of.
If I am purchasing a book, I can pick it up and read a few pages to see if I like it. Movie trailers very rarely show content not from the movie at all and made by a separate studio.

Video games don't offer demos because the common wisdom is that it reduces sales. That is inherently anti-consumer behavior intended to misrepresent the product.

Are you trying to prove his point, rusty? Those are pretty blatant examples of material misrepresentation / false advertising. The fact that the end user may not like the game is extraneous to the fact that they were misled into purchasing the product in the first place.

Not liking the game because you were misled seems entirely relevant to the issue at hand here. Video games, on average, do an absolutely horrible job at representing what you will actually get when purchasing the product.

Not liking something would never stand up if you had a legal dispute about whether or not a company was obliged to provide a refund per a country's business law. A material misrepresentation absolutely would. Whether a retailer offers refunds within a period for "not liking something" in order to avoid more major headaches and disputes is irrelevant to that core issue.

It's a good thing valve's refund policy isn't a court of law but meant to be a pro-consumer tool to help against deceptive practices in the video game industry.
I'm sure corporations in the largest entertainment industry in the world enjoy you protecting them though.

 

[mediocrepoet]

It's a good thing valve's refund policy isn't a court of law but meant to be a pro-consumer tool to help against deceptive practices in the video game industry.
I'm sure corporations in the largest entertainment industry in the world enjoy you protecting them though.

I was actually thinking something similar: you may be a reasonably competent programmer of some sort, but you'd be a godawful attorney, especially if you don't see how these issues are related.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

It's a good thing valve's refund policy isn't a court of law but meant to be a pro-consumer tool to help against deceptive practices in the video game industry.
I'm sure corporations in the largest entertainment industry in the world enjoy you protecting them though.

I was actually thinking something similar: you may be a reasonably competent programmer of some sort, but you'd be a godawful attorney, especially if you don't see how these issues are related.

And yet, I can refund them.
Bless Gabe.

 

[Acrux]

It's a good thing valve's refund policy isn't a court of law but meant to be a pro-consumer tool to help against deceptive practices in the video game industry.
I'm sure corporations in the largest entertainment industry in the world enjoy you protecting them though.

I was actually thinking something similar: you may be a reasonably competent programmer of some sort, but you'd be a godawful attorney, especially if you don't see how these issues are related.

I think one of the people who controls Rusty's account is a lawyer, based on some previous comments. Another is a developer. The third is a NEET who has some reasonably good opinions on RPGs from time to time.

Spoiler

And they're all feds.

 

[mediocrepoet]

It's a good thing valve's refund policy isn't a court of law but meant to be a pro-consumer tool to help against deceptive practices in the video game industry.
I'm sure corporations in the largest entertainment industry in the world enjoy you protecting them though.

I was actually thinking something similar: you may be a reasonably competent programmer of some sort, but you'd be a godawful attorney, especially if you don't see how these issues are related.

I think one of the people who controls Rusty's account is a lawyer, based on some previous comments. Another is a developer. The third is a NEET who has some reasonably good opinions on RPGs from time to time.

Spoiler

And they're all feds.

And inhabit the same body, Sybil style.

 

[Young_Hollow]

Every studio and publisher has its own policies about pricing and discounts. Its dumb to blame Valve for publishers not being interested in putting their games on discount. A lot of it has to do with many of the big ones metastasizing and having their own distribution platforms and clients; its only natural they'd want to save the biggest discounts for ''their own'' platform. Eg Bethesda mostly gives highest discounts at QuakeCon sales rather than Summer / Winter sales. EA has a subscription service to shill and would much rather you pay monthly and own nothing instead of buying their games individually. Paradox has its own subscription service for the DLCs for its spreadsheet managers. Ubisoft also has a subscription service and a partnership with the Pooh to release new games there and only there. And generally, most larger studios and publishers have gotten much greedier over the years like CA / Total War games' prices being increased and DLCs not being included in bundles, Japanese games releasing separately from all 69 of their DLCs instead of releasing a complete edition for PC and AA and smaller games being very stingy about game and DLC pricing (eg look at Hollow Knight, Shovel Knight, Night in the Woods, Payday, Killing Floor, just to name a few).

Also, flash sales are retarded and it was right to discontinue them even not regarding refunds. Sales for the sake of sales are just consoomerism and serve no one but the twitchy no-life hyperconsoomer. Companies probably found it was less profitable to gate off their best deals because it would encourage people to hold off on buying until the next flash sale. Or they found it better to put their games on the highest discount for the whole sale rather than just a few hours of it. If people are looking for the special feeling of getting a discount no one else got instead of a good price for a game they want, then its not the publishers' or the store's fault.

GOG has brought back its flash sales, the Insomnia deals and even they're doing a 2nd round of them on the last day (ie today) to make sure people who have a life outside of watching for bargains have a chance to buy something they may want. And even though GOG is much smaller than Steam or Epic, its still telling that as big as they are, none of the bigboys wanted to participate in their flash sales.

 

[Belegarsson]

I see nothing fun about FOMO sales tbh. Waking up at 3am to save an extra $5, frankly it's not worth it.

Anyway, my haul this year. I completely passed on last year's winter sale so I don't feel bad buying a lot of stuff this event

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The real reason sales have gotten worse have nothing to do with any of these theories in my opinion.
The development rate of videogames has become insanely slow. This can't be attributed to them making more technically complex games as we're effectively past the era of regular mega-AAA blockbusters, something only a handful of studios do now. This can't be attributed to the coofdemic either, as it was something that started before that and was only exacerbated by it.

It explains why you see games released 10 years ago on sale for $30 when you used to see old games for only a couple dollars. They're no longer used to pull you into a series to get you to buy the newest titles.

To put it into perspective: Dragon Age: Dreadwolf currently has no release date. Dragon Age Inquisition is nearing a decade old, the time gap between DAO and DAI is nearly half the current timegap of DAI to ...nothing. This is the studio that was previously pumping out two major franchises simultaneously.
And it's most definitely not limited to Bioware, it's across the entire industry. It's taking developers 4-5 years to make games they used to make in 2.
Batman Arkham Asylum? 2009. Arkham City? 2011. Arkham Knight? 2015. 5 years later they announced the Suicide Squad game they're still working on with a planned release date in 2023. Rocksteady has released 0 titles since 2015 except some crappy VR shovelware game in 2016.
Firaxis: Civ 5, 2010 with a stupid amount of DLC. Nu-Xcom, 2012 with major expansion in 2013. Civ: Beyond Earth, 2014. Nu-Xcom 2 in 2016 with a major expansion in 2017. Civ 6, 2016, more stupid amounts of DLC. ... Nu-XCOM Chimera Squad, 2020. ... Marvel's Midnight Suns, later this year. delayed!
Harebrained Schemes: Shadowrun Returns, 2013. Dragonfall, 2014. Hong Kong, 2015. Battletech, 2018. Nothing since besides a recent poor console port of the Shadowrun games.
Bethesda: LOL
Techland: Call of Juarez Bound in Blood, 2009. Jaurez: The Cartel, 2011. Dead Island, 2011. Dead Island: Riptide, 2013. Juarez: Gunslinger, 2013. Dying Light, 2015 with an expansion in 2016. ....... Dying Light 2, 2022.

Are there some exceptions? Sure, but they're definitely in the minority, and I have a feeling a lot of them will end up being Japanese.

Gamedevs are relying heavily on profits from older games now, that's why you aren't getting your sales anymore. Also, remasters for everything!

 

[mediocrepoet]

The real reason sales have gotten worse have nothing to do with any of these theories in my opinion.
The development rate of videogames has become insanely slow. This can't be attributed to them making more technically complex games as we're effectively past the era of regular mega-AAA blockbusters, something only a handful of studios do now. This can't be attributed to the coofdemic either, as it was something that started before that and was only exacerbated by it.

It explains why you see games released 10 years ago on sale for $30 when you used to see old games for only a couple dollars. They're no longer used to pull you into a series to get you to buy the newest titles.
<snip>

That's a pretty compelling line of thought. Building on that, I would also suggest that the digital storefront itself is now a mature market rather than a fledgling thing that established vendors like Valve are trying to incentivize people to use. So now it's the places like EGS that are trying to get your attention in a competitive market that are offering free shit and cut rate deals (with their bribe coupons).

 

[Fedora Master]

Spoiler

 

[gerey]

The real reason sales have gotten worse have nothing to do with any of these theories in my opinion.
The development rate of videogames has become insanely slow. This can't be attributed to them making more technically complex games as we're effectively past the era of regular mega-AAA blockbusters, something only a handful of studios do now. This can't be attributed to the coofdemic either, as it was something that started before that and was only exacerbated by it.

It explains why you see games released 10 years ago on sale for $30 when you used to see old games for only a couple dollars. They're no longer used to pull you into a series to get you to buy the newest titles.

To put it into perspective: Dragon Age: Dreadwolf currently has no release date. Dragon Age Inquisition is nearing a decade old, the time gap between DAO and DAI is nearly double the current timegap of DAI to ...nothing. This is the studio that was previously pumping out two major franchises simultaneously.
And it's most definitely not limited to Bioware, it's across the entire industry. It's taking developers 4-5 years to make games they used to make in 2.
Batman Arkham Asylum? 2009. Arkham City? 2011. Arkham Knight? 2015. 5 years later they announced the Suicide Squad game they're still working on with a planned release date in 2023. Rocksteady has released 0 titles since 2015 except some crappy VR shovelware game in 2016.
Firaxis: Civ 5, 2010 with a stupid amount of DLC. Nu-Xcom, 2012 with major expansion in 2013. Civ: Beyond Earth, 2014. Nu-Xcom 2 in 2016 with a major expansion in 2017. Civ 6, 2016, more stupid amounts of DLC. ... Nu-XCOM Chimera Squad, 2020. ... Marvel's Midnight Suns, later this year.
Harebrained Schemes: Shadowrun Returns, 2013. Dragonfall, 2014. Hong Kong, 2015. Battletech, 2018. Nothing since besides a recent poor console port of the Shadowrun games.
Bethesda: LOL
Techland: Call of Juarez Bound in Blood, 2009. Jaurez: The Cartel, 2011. Dead Island, 2011. Dead Island: Riptide, 2013. Juarez: Gunslinger, 2013. Dying Light, 2015 with an expansion in 2016. ....... Dying Light 2, 2022.

Are there some exceptions? Sure, but they're definitely in the minority, and I have a feeling a lot of them will end up being Japanese.

Gamedevs are relying heavily on profits from older games now, that's why you aren't getting your sales anymore. Also, remasters for everything!

The question is why, though?

Developers in the 80s, 90s and 00s didn't have all the middleware and tech modern developers do, many of them had to write their own engines from scratch or get really creative to overcome hardware limitations to bring their vision to life, and teams rarely numbered over 100, and they were expected to release a bug-free game in less than 2 years. There was no internet, no 0-day patches, no continued bug fixing, what you shipped was the game, no second chances.

Nowadays developers have all the development tools they could wish for, make use of established, well-documented and supported engines, development teams that often number 200+ employees, with development times of 4+ years, and yet the games they release are shoddy, broken and underwhelming.

So what is the issue?

Is it the fact developers in the past consisted of highly motivated individuals that went into game development out of genuine passion for games and what they could be, and nowadays the vast majority of developers are corporate clock punchers, and oftentimes the bottom of the barrel in term of talent (since everyone competent goes for better paying jobs in other sectors)?

Is it because so many developers nowadays are women and minorities, or leftist activists?

Why cannot modern developers create games of the same quality, technical competent and ambition as games that were being made 20 years ago?

 

[jebsmoker]

i'm just gonna dump a list of certified jebspiels that are dirt cheap. the criteria they need to meet is that they all have to be under 4 USD, sales tax included

this one is a criminally underrated classic, and a fairly recent community patch that makes the game work just fine on modern operating systems has rekindled my interest in it:



if you're inclined to try it, get the patch here: https://www.moddb.com/games/soldiers-heroes-of-world-war-ii/downloads/howwii-widescreen-fix

if you're lusting for more after completing this, try this on for size:



this one is probably one of the best of the series. it makes you make due with very little against overwhelming odds, so each victory you get feels earned and you are encouraged to be very creative and precise with the limited assets you have. it also knows how to rack up or tone down the tension at key spots:



this game is probably the most underrated game in the doom franchise, and it's worth every penny:



this is the game that convinced me that games can be considered serious pieces of art that'll be remembered for years and years. homeworld 2 though..... eh, i'd get this just for the price of admission to playing homeworld 1 remastered

 

[infidel]

I think these guys are onto something:

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.

They got rid of flash sales and stuff like that (and they've said it outright) because it was deeply unfair to all the other devs who didn't win the lottery, not to gamers. Getting onto the Steam front page just for four hours when every gamer in the world knows something is up there was like winning millions in a huge national lottery for the hundred or so winners. And all the other thousands sucked dick in comparison. So, as a customer, sure, they were awesome, a selection of random shit I might've never bought otherwise and I was watching them every day. From the dev perspective though, the current system is better because lotteries create very unhealthy environments.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

I see nothing fun about FOMO sales tbh. Waking up at 3am to save an extra $5, frankly it's not worth it.

Anyway, my haul this year. I completely passed on last year's winter sale so I don't feel bad buying a lot of stuff this event

View attachment 25587
View attachment 25588

nightmare reaper is fun as fuck

 

[502]

Bought Gedonia and Shadow Man Remastered.