Do you buy most of your games on steam sales?

fivoroth

I am curious how many people wait for steam sales to buy a game they want especially for major releases. If a game you really wanted came out now, would you wait 6-12 months to buy it at 75% off? E.g. Did you buy fallout for the full price or are you waiting until it's like 15-20 bucks or even less?

Do you think that AAA releases are often released later for the PC or not released at all because of the mentality of always buying games from the bargain bucket? Do you think a AAA game like fallout 4 can recoup its cost if everyone decided to wait for the 75% off and bought it for $10?

Distopia

I usually use GMG's 20% off for new titles like FO4. Or more recently Dragon's Dogma:DA for PC. Although I do make quite a few purchases during steam sales, up to 125 titles in my steam account now if that says anything about that.

Colt47

I would say about 75% of the games I own were purchased either during steam sales or humble bundle deals, but the majority of games I actually play for good lengths of time are purchased outside of the steam sales.  This is obviously true for PS4 games since I bought Samurai  Warriors IV-II at gamestop for 40 bucks recently and have been going through the scenarios.  That and Civ V have all my time at the moment. 

OhhPaigey

I don't buy many games.

fivoroth

Robokapp said:

fivoroth said:

 Do you think a AAA game like fallout 4 can recoup its cost if everyone decided to wait for the 75% off and bought it for $10?

I'm going to have to draw your attention over this thought pattern. 

If there's 200,000,000 voters, then your vote is worth 1/200,000,000. If everyone individually thinks that way, nobody would vote, so your vote would now be worth 100%. 

Long story short, "Everyone" will never do the same thing. Those who truly want to play Fallout 4 will buy Fallout 4. Some will wait for discount. Those who are have heard of it and want to try something new will buy it at discount. Some of them at full price. Rest might not get it even when it's free. Or might buy it at full price and gift it for all I know.


Now to answer your topic, if it's a game I WANT, then I'll buy it whenever I feel the free time I have allows me to play it. That has more to do with how my work is in terms of time consumption rather than the price of the game. 

I know, it's extremely unlikely that everyone will decide to put off buying a game, then we will see something ridiculous like a AAA game launching and selling 0 copies which will never happen

fivoroth

Colt47 said:

I would say about 75% of the games I own were purchased either during steam sales or humble bundle deals, but the majority of games I actually play for good lengths of time are purchased outside of the steam sales.  This is obviously true for PS4 games since I bought Samurai  Warriors IV-II at gamestop for 40 bucks recently and have been going through the scenarios.  That and Civ V have all my time at the moment. 

Yeah, it's the same for me. I have hundreds and hundreds of games on steam and a lot of them came from humble bundles or steam sales. Just like most of them remain unplayed or I have played very little. 

I have also got better at not buying too many games. WHen steam sales became a thing, I used to buy an insane amount of games and I bought them simply cause I enjoyed shopping but most of them I never played. I probably have like 200 games which I haven't even started. Nowadays I almost don't buy anything on those sales. During the christmas and halloween and black friday sales I didn't buy a single game and there wasn't anything I wanted. I find that all the games I want are full price and I bought them and play them almost exclusively (Fallout 4, Star Wars, Witcher 3, Halo MCC & 5 and Forza)...

Elvoc

I would say 90% of my games are Steam games, I use to use GMG but now that Steam has a proper refund policy I typically use them unless the Deals on GMG are like 75% off..

Typically all the Indy and EA games are sale games the big name ones usually come from GMG...

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fivoroth

blueturtle13 said:

Honestly I rarely buy a game brand new at full price. I tend to buy games in bulk and then spend a length of time playing them and by the time I get through them other games that have come out in that time tend to be cheaper. I did buy MGSV though. I am a big fan and am loving the game. I will also buy Far Cry Primal as I love the series. I would say I buy maybe 4 games a year at full price and sales for everything else.

Did you like mgsv and far cry? They are on my wish list but still undecided if I want to buy them, still have so many games to finish anyway.

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jmcdermottuk

I only ever buy from Steam during sales but I don't really use Steam that much if I'm honest. I like to have a box with disks inside it. I've also found that even with new titles you can get much better deals by avoiding Steam.

Amazon, Game, Paladin, all offer decent discounts on new or even pre-order games. I don't see a problem for devs. They and the publishers are getting their cut from whoever they ask to sell these games. If Amazon are happy to knock 5 or 10 quid off the box price, who am I to argue?

tawess

Nope. I pick a game up when the ley lines of money, interest and time cross. If that happens to be during a sale, great but it is not critical. 

With that said i am much more inclined to pick up a game that i am on the fence about when it is on sale. 

cheyane

Unfortunately the dolt is strong in me. I bought Divinity Original Sin EE from Steam and paid almost 40 Euro for it. Had I been clever enough to realise I wanted to play it before X'mas and I would have got it for like 20 Euro during the sale. Anyway they deserve my money and I am not regretting buying nor am I going to exercise any patience to play the game. I am the type of person that cannot wait and often if I wait I lose interest so best to strike while the iron of my desire to play is still hot.


I cannot believe I have spent sometimes  like 15 minutes on a single battle. Every small thing counts like moving the melee character out of the poison and expending precious AP on that and how to make sure none of your party member get hit by friendly fire. Super game.

PsYcHoGBR

I rarely buy games at full price I wait for a while to see how the reviews and player comments are. I use cdkeys.com and g2a.com which can be risky but I have bought a shedload of games from cdkeys and never had a problem.

rpmcmurphy

No. Not a fan of Valve owning the shit that I've paid money for.

PsYcHoGBR

rpmcmurphy said:

No. Not a fan of Valve owning the shit that I've paid money for.

Unless you live in France :pleased: 
GOG is becoming popular as you own your game not like Steam. Since The Witcher 3 GOG have become more popular.

flizzer

I've got close to 200 games on Steam and maybe played 20 or so. I seem to like collecting games more than playing them.  In fact, I prefer MMOs I realize since I spend most of my time in them.  I have all the Fallout games not including Fallout 4 and I have never played any of them. I have Dragon Age Origins and have yet to play it. I have all the Total War games.  I have Morrowind in my Steam LIbrary and never played that game. I did buy Skyrim and played it for about 100 hours until I started playing ESO and find it superior as it feels like Skyrim Online to me.  Also, for some odd reason when I downloaded ESO it erased Skyrim and all mods on my hard drive and been unable to get them back.

Anyway, I dont buy any game full price. I will wait for the GOTY edition at discounted price to buy.  Still waiting for Witcher 3 GOTY edition to buy.  I have Witcher 2 which I still have not played yet.  Almost bought Original Sin Enhanced Edition but not big enough discount for me.  I might buy that game in 6 months to a year when it goes to 50 percent off, and, of course, let it sit in my library for a few years. 

You think I have a problem?

Distopia

cheyane said:

Unfortunately the dolt is strong in me. I bought Divinity Original Sin EE from Steam and paid almost 40 Euro for it. Had I been clever enough to realise I wanted to play it before X'mas and I would have got it for like 20 Euro during the sale. Anyway they deserve my money and I am not regretting buying nor am I going to exercise any patience to play the game. I am the type of person that cannot wait and often if I wait I lose interest so best to strike while the iron of my desire to play is still hot.


I cannot believe I have spent sometimes  like 15 minutes on a single battle. Every small thing counts like moving the melee character out of the poison and expending precious AP on that and how to make sure none of your party member get hit by friendly fire. Super game.

Divinity OS has the best co-op combat I've ever seen in the RPG genre. The co-op experience as a whole is superb, no regrets in buying that game twice at full price (for my wife and I).

Colt47

On the subject of game ownership and steam: People are worrying way too much over it.  Steam has been around for a long time now and they have zero reason to start doing strange things to our games.  It's like people think they are going to start charging some playstation style subscription in order to play games or something, which just isn't going to happen.  Even if they did do a sub service, they definitely would include a policy that would let people play games they already have without it or they would have a true riot on their hands in the gaming community.

The only systems that I've had problems with are Ubisofts distribution platform, EA Origin, which is a "late to the game" attempt to grab some of steams pie, and the old Games for Windows Live.  Thankfully that last one is now dust in the wind.

JeffSpicoli

yes

JeffSpicoli

rpmcmurphy said:

No. Not a fan of Valve owning the shit that I've paid money for.

I personally  love having all my games in one place, I love the steam sales and even the icon app i have for windows 8

Albatroes

I've only bought games 3 times outside of steam sales: Tales of Zesteria, Lightning Returns and Type-0

svandy

Depends on the value. Great example is Rainbow Six, I want the game a lot, but I absolutely refuse to pay more than $20 for a lobby based shooter with absolutely no content other than "shoot the other team," so I will wait for a sale. I'm sure the game is plenty fun, but the question of value makes me shy away. Meanwhile, I was happy to spend full price on Fallout 4, because it was more than worth it for me.

Developers basically think they are entitled to the default AAA price for a game, regardless to the amount of content actually contained within. And I am equally sick of this "free dlc!" nonsense gamers have been praising. It is the same scheme... pay us full price for half a game, and we will give you enough "free" content to make it 3/4 a game! Only game in recent memory that handled free DLC well, in my opinion, was Witcher 3. The free DLC added to an already full experience, it didnt attempt to make a shallow game worth your time.

Kyleran

If i saw a game I wanted to play the cost savings vs time isn't worth it. I don't even have Steam loaded on my gaming laptop.

TormDK

Nah, I rarely purchase anything in sales these days, as I have most of the games that interest me currently, either from a preorder or Day 1 purchase.

Aethaeryn

I have purchased about 75% of my games when they were on steam sales.  I also haven't played about 30% of those "yet".  

If it is a big new release I get it, sometimes through Green Man Gaming for the 20% off.  I can also buy there with BitCoins.

Aside from that steam sales have been pretty weak lately.  They are a great way to get old games you don't have or want to play again but I have found myself using GoG. . GMG, D2D etc. more often lately.