The STEAM Sales and Releases Thread

[Multi-headed Cow]

Yeah, they're allowing gem selling on the market now. 1000 gems for 70 cents. This War of Mine, a game I'm really interested in, is currently bidding at 60k. No thanks Gaben, I'm... uh... Not really feeling the deals for a $20 non-sale price videogame.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I'm converting some emoticons and backgrounds into gems so I can make a booster pack and say I took part in this.

- edit:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/317040/discussions/0/626329186825225307/

autism is bad

 

[LESS T_T]

Wait, I understand that a free game (not free-to-play scheme) can't have Trading Cards. But Booster Pack Creator allows me to make a Heroine's Quest pack, and it does have the badge and emoticon things. Is this accidental? Or is this one of the ways (though there's a more direct way) to support the awesome devs? Fizzii?

 

[Phage]

Alright bros I went balls deep in manipulating the gem/emoticon market and now i have a huge gem profit. What games that have auctions should I be trying to pick up? Alternatively, I'll just cash out on the 16th when the gems are at their peak price.

Yeah, they're allowing gem selling on the market now. 1000 gems for 70 cents. This War of Mine, a game I'm really interested in, is currently bidding at 60k. No thanks Gaben, I'm... uh... Not really feeling the deals for a $20 non-sale price videogame.

You just need to be in the top 100 to win the item. Getting first place gives you a badge or some shit - also some people are intentionally sitting at first place to advertise their profiles/steam trading businesses.

There are some fucking insane deals if things don't drastically change, I've thrown down as little as 100 gems on some titles and I'm in the top 40 bidders.

 

[Phage]

Wait, I understand that a free game (not free-to-play scheme) can't have Trading Cards. But Booster Pack Creator allows me to make a Heroine's Quest pack, and it does have the badge and emoticon things. Is this accidental? Or is this one of the ways (though there's a more direct way) to support the awesome devs? Fizzii?

This probably means that the dev has trading cards setup for the game, but steam won't enable them since the game is F2P with no transactions, so this is probably the only way to obtain those emoticons and wallpapers (hence the > $1 prices) http://www.steamcardexchange.net/index.php?gamepage-appid-283880

The only way this will support the dev is if the cards/items are sold through the marketplace and the dev gets a cut (don't know the specifics)

 

[Telengard]

Alright bros I went balls deep in manipulating the gem/emoticon market and now i have a huge gem profit. What games that have auctions should I be trying to pick up? Alternatively, I'll just cash out on the 16th when the gems are at their peak price.

You just need to be in the top 100 to win the item. Getting first place gives you a badge or some shit - also some people are intentionally sitting at first place to advertise their profiles/steam trading businesses.

There are some fucking insane deals if things don't drastically change, I've thrown down as little as 100 gems on some titles and I'm in the top 40 bidders.

The tricky bit is - they're only giving out one of each game each hour. So, as the lower prices start appearing, they'll be more and more tempting to those who are still looking to get in. If you're actually trying to game the system and win something, you're probably better choosing one or two that have mid-range bids across the board, so you can be assured of not much movement and few sudden surprise bets.

If you've got serious stores of gems, then and only then take recommendations. Other than those two options, though, I'd go with the payout.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

You just need to be in the top 100 to win the item.

Except that isn't when the bidding kicks off, it just moves to the next single item every 45 minutes. So it's pretty likely people will bid more when shit starts showing up. I dunno, it's possible that there's magic to be had in the auction but I'm not really feeling it.

Not an edit: Snaked by Telengard.

 

[Phage]

Well, I'll probably be up in the early AM on Tuesday, which should be prime time to snipe some weird titles for 1-2k gems (which is like... a buck)

Worst comes to worst I cash out when the price of gems inevitably rises when everyone starts panicking on the 16th. I predict more 'normal' people will start to notice the auctions when they're occurring which will increase the demand for gems - and when people who have ~15-20k gems invested realize they aren't winning anything they'll start to buy more to try to get something.

Or maybe they'll sell all of their shit and I end up losing a little bit of money. Either way it's been a fun experiment.

 

[Surf Solar]

Dont care for this stupid gem shit. Want to know what games are on sale for how much

 

[Country_Gravy]

Dont care for this stupid gem shit. Want to know what games are on sale for how much

Yeah. This auction is turning Steam and this thread to shit. Can't wait for it to be over and the Winter Solstice sale to begin.

 

[Rahdulan]

I don't even care about all this gems and bidding nonsense, all I care is that it finally let me clear my inventory of all the garbage no one would otherwise buy AND I earned couple of Euro dollars from it.

 

[Phage]

Yeah. This auction is turning Steam and this thread to shit.

How so? By handing rational people free gabenbucks while potentially giving some obscure games out for very cheap? The horror!

 

[Country_Gravy]

Yeah. This auction is turning Steam and this thread to shit.

How so? By handing rational people free gabenbucks while potentially giving some obscure games out for very cheap? The horror!

Because all this thread is about is the auction, and the time required to get even a minimal amount of gabenbucks out of the gems is not worth it.

 

[Phage]

Yeah. This auction is turning Steam and this thread to shit.

How so? By handing rational people free gabenbucks while potentially giving some obscure games out for very cheap? The horror!

Because all this thread is about is the auction, and the time required to get even a minimal amount of gabenbucks out of the gems is not worth it.

What else would this thread be about right now? Someone complaining about the daily deal being shitty and someone else saying that the holiday sale better not be shit this year? This is better and more interesting than nothing.

Also the time to get said gabenbucks is literally using your steam wallet to buy gems from the marketplace. My personal experiment was indeed a bit of a waste of time, but I viewed it as a somewhat autistic game.

 

[stony3k]

I just tried it, and bid on one of the more obscure games on my wishlist. For 30 gems, I'm in place #55 out of 160. It appears that a number of people have just bid a few gems on every game possible

 

[Admiral jimbob]

I still don't even know where my Steam inventory is or what it does let alone anything else. I'm too old for this nonsense.

 

[Haba]

I still don't even know where my Steam inventory is or what it does let alone anything else. I'm too old for this nonsense.

Hi mr. Jimbo, this is your bank.

Please PM me with your credit card number, safety number and expiration date. This is just a routine maintenance check.

Thank you!

 

[Metro]

I just tried it, and bid on one of the more obscure games on my wishlist. For 30 gems, I'm in place #55 out of 160. It appears that a number of people have just bid a few gems on every game possible

Phage tricked me into thinking this was good. I bought two sacks of gems for $1.... muh monies! Since shit is auctioned off one at a time every hour what's going to happen is people will just raise their bids at the last minute. You can probably expect to pay around the top bid for most everything, even the obscure titles as time goes on. So... it's not worth it.

 

[Abu Antar]

I put my gems into a stack and sold them. That's the only sensible thing to do. Everything I bid on was too expensive to even bother with.

 

[Phage]

NO GOYS, BUY MORE GEMS! WE NEED THE PRICE OF GEMS TO GO TO THE MOON!

 

[Jick Magger]

I'm concerned that the winter sale won't be very good after this. I'm guessing they might not have as great a discount on alot of their games as they had last year because they don't want to get a torrent of complaints from users complaining about them holding auctions for games that often got close to their regular price on steam, only to have those games on sale the next week at 25-50% off. It'd make the whole auction look like a giant waste of time.

 

[Phage]

I'm concerned that the winter sale won't be very good after this. I'm guessing they might not have as great a discount on alot of their games as they had last year because they don't want to get a torrent of complaints from users complaining about them holding auctions for games that often got close to their regular price on steam, only to have those games on sale the next week at 25-50% off. It'd make the whole auction look like a giant waste of time.

What?

First off, the people in this thread who genuinely think that all 100 of the auctions are going to be sitting at the current top price are stupid. Very popular games won't end up with great discounts, but a lot of niche titles are going to ultimately end up going for like 80% off easily. Secondly, why would valve give a shit? How does someone go about actually complaining about this? "A bloo hoo hoo, I have brain damage and spent $40 winning an auction on Arma 3, Valve u better not discount da game much!". Secondly, I'm pretty positive that the actual discount rate is left up to the developers. The only thing there is to worry about is that the winter sale will be another one of these lazy "craft badges for a chance to win X!" kind of events - which it will be since you can make booster packs out of gems.

 

[LundB]

Just hit 1500 games. Feels like just yesterday I had 1400.

Edit: Shit just checked, according to this thread I was at 1409 12 days ago how on earth did this happen, don't drink and Steam kids.

I'm concerned that the winter sale won't be very good after this.

So you've just come to the conclusion that most people have come to ever since the last bunch of sales then.

The best deals have been random midweeks and dailies for ages now, the big sales just lure in non-everyday users who don't realise that they're not getting the best discount.

 

[Metro]

If the Humble Sales are anything to go buy at least Castle of Illusion will be $3.75... or like $1 Russian.

 

[WhiteGuts]

The cheapest game is worth like 15k gems. I barely have 50, it's fucked up, men.