Steam+ Deals Mega Thread (All PC Gaming Deals)

Neuro5i5

Neuro5i5

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This thread will attempt to provide a place to discuss past/present/future PC gaming deals. While mainly focusing on Steam games, any standout sales may also be presented. I will not be updating every Daily/Weekly/etc. sale. The tools to help individuals become a smarter shopper will be provided below.

See this POST for links to store sale pages, threads of interest and other tools to help you become a more informed PC game shopper.
 
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hal said:
I'm 100% okay with the no flash/daily format. Just give us decent discounts to go along with that.
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Pretty much this, don't get me wrong the deal hunter in me will miss them on some level but its not the end of the world... But if they are going to do this then they need to get Ubisoft to play by the same rules all the other publishers have to follow. (or make an automatic price guarantee for the same length of time as their refund policy.)

As for Valve's numbers from the steam sale... I would be shocked as hell if there had been less sales than last year... Users are way up so they really should be looking at the avg sales per a user for each year. (My guess that last years would have the average user having spent more.)

I sort of enjoyed the cards for looking at my queue... I found some games to toss on my "Wishlist" (If you look at my wishlist its more of a reminder for bundles, aka buy bundle if this game is in it and its like a 160 games total at this point) and I got two steam badges while turning a profit. Hard to complain about that.

Not sure if I bought anything from my queue... Windward might have been in it. If so its an even more worthwhile addition to Steam but I don't think it proves what Value is trying to say it proves. (They simply don't want to do refunds... End of story.)

 
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EldritchOnRye said:
Nope, just got a $-9.90 charge (aka a credit) because they were "Unable to add". Guess they really meant "As a token of our appreciation, we will allow you to keep 5 codes for free."
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Oh yeah, that was the intent. Full refund and you got 5 free codes. I think the people who ordered less than five still had to pay for theirs? Even if the codes were bad? Or did they get a full refund too?

 
FoxyPie said:
And speaking of Newegg, did any of you Dirt Rally glitch getters ever get an email from Newegg with your 5 good codes in it?
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I contact my dealer after everyone posted their emails from Newegg... He didn't even get an email about it and considering there hadn't been any issues on my end (or anyone else who got a steam key) I don't see a reason for him to be anything less than honest.

Still no issues running it on my end. (Fingers crossed/knock on wood.)

 
INMATEofARKHAM said:
(They simply don't want to do refunds... End of story.)
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I think the real problem is Valve's insistence that (almost) everyone have their games on sale for the entire duration of the sale*

It's reasonably confusing to not so hardcore deal hunters that a game might be 40% one day and 60% the next. That's what would get them mass refund requests. On sale vs Not on sale not so much. So they needed to ditch that tier system. But the publishers and developers are reluctant to drastically discount their games for almost two weeks straight, and who can blame them?

If Valve let a subset of AAA and select indie games be on sale only for 48 hours (daily feature plus 24 hour grace period) plus an encore day that could work and would probably see larger discounts because it's more limited. But Valve doesn't want to do that. Part of it may be laziness due to the sheer volume of games on Steam now but if they are picking a select set of games to feature daily anyway why not just make them only on sale for that day?

*Unless you're Ubisoft

 
Just FYI guys from someone who had a key revoked before (thank you Gamersgate) there is a lag time between when the store/publisher requests it and Valve actually yanks it. I think it was four or five days for me from the time Gamersgate refunded me and said they were revoking Tomb Raider Osiris to the time I actually got the big ugly box with red letters telling me the game was yanked out of my account.

A refund could mean they're revoking keys but OTOH why would they bother to issue new ones in the first place?

Anyhow, I'd give it another week from today (refund day) to be on the safe side. If nothing by then then you're probably out of the woods. Unless someone at Valve is being extra lazy which is also possible. :p

 
Motoki said:
Just FYI guys from someone who had a key revoked before (thank you Gamersgate) there is a lag time between when the store/publisher requests it and Valve actually yanks it. I think it was four or five days for me from the time Gamersgate refunded me and said they were revoking Tomb Raider Osiris to the time I actually got the big ugly box with red letters telling me the game was yanked out of my account.

A refund could mean they're revoking keys but OTOH why would they bother to issue new ones in the first place?

Anyhow, I'd give it another week from today (refund day) to be on the safe side. If nothing by then then you're probably out of the woods. Unless someone at Valve is being extra lazy which is also possible. :p
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This is what I told Spoder.

Also take into account the time it might take for whoever at AMD would have the unlucky task of reviewing orders during that time period to determine which keys were legit and which were from the glitch.

Has this happened before? IIRC usually when Newegg sold these keys they would just sell them out and be done with it, wouldn't they? Or have they done this whole invalidate keys, refund, issue new ones thing before?

 
Motoki said:
Just FYI guys from someone who had a key revoked before (thank you Gamersgate) there is a lag time between when the store/publisher requests it and Valve actually yanks it. I think it was four or five days for me from the time Gamersgate refunded me and said they were revoking Tomb Raider Osiris to the time I actually got the big ugly box with red letters telling me the game was yanked out of my account.
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Ran into bugs I take it...? (I've avoided that title because I know it has rather bad ones... Save eating bugs being the worst I've read about.)

You have a screenshot of that message...? Does it only pop up when you try to play the game or just whenever the key is revoked?

 
And that's why I kept a Steam key in reserve from this new batch. Doubt they would go through the trouble and then invalidate them all again.

FoxyPie said:
Also take into account the time it might take for whoever at AMD would have the unlucky task of reviewing orders during that time period to determine which keys were legit and which were from the glitch.
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That shouldn't take too long thanks to the magical wonders of databases.

 
FoxyPie said:
Has this happened before? IIRC usually when Newegg sold these keys they would just sell them out and be done with it, wouldn't they? Or have they done this whole invalidate keys, refund, issue new ones thing before?
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I think this is new... The funny thing is the keys expired, where nonredeemable, and then started working again...
I think AMD/Newegg had keys they had paid for that weren't used during the promotion and they turned it back on to make some money back.

Still, never seen this before...

 
FoxyPie said:
Oh yeah, that was the intent. Full refund and you got 5 free codes. I think the people who ordered less than five still had to pay for theirs? Even if the codes were bad? Or did they get a full refund too?
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Yep, the people that bought less than 5 didn't get a refund and don't get new codes. That'll teach you people with morals. Douchebags win again! But really, it didn't make a whole lot of sense the way newegg handled it.

I know there's a delay in revoking keys, I just doubt AMD will bother because of the hassle of manually checking which AMD codes were redeemed or not. It doesn't seem like it'd be an easy process.. unlike GG where they just revoke all keys bought in a certain time period.

EldritchOnRye said:
That shouldn't take too long thanks to the magical wonders of databases.
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This is AMD we're talking about, they're not that competent. They deleted all of my AMD redemptions from a year ago (AMD Gold Newegg glitch and Dirt Rally from ebay). AMD can't even get their drivers sorted out, what makes you think they have a nicely filtered database lol.
 
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Emuaust said:
RIP Daily and Flash Steam Sales https://steamdb.info/forum/790/
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I wouldn't be so pessimistic as majority of people here.

This whole article sounds very vague. A lot like "Hmm, the sale was underwhelming, lets polish this turd a little bit. Pick up a a few good statistics and exalt them."

My points:

I can't believe any sane company will have wishlist addition during their biggest sales of the year as metrics for success. It is more like, Lot of people discovered interesting stuff, but our value proposition wasn't strong enough to convert to sale.

Also boosting about increased revenue of titles outside of Top500 is meaningless. It is niche for Steam. I pretty sure it generates less than 20% of revenue for the company.

The reasonable metrics are just not there, so I wouldn't jump to any conclusion yet. We will see during the Summer Sale how it worked out.

 
Unless sales start dropping I don't think Valve actually cares about sales.  They, like most companies in similar fields these days, are probably far more interested in "engagement" because even if it doesn't mean a sale today if a user is actively "engaged" with your product that means they'll likely convert to a sale eventually and gives them the opportunity to sell them other things.  What engagement means varies from company to company and how they run their metrics but for something like Steam browsing the store, adding things to wishlists, going through queues is probably the kind of behavior they're targeting.  So if we're watching more games, going through more pages to find deals, etc. that's going to lead to incidental sales as well.

 
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FoxyPie said:
I don't know if I trust spoder to refund.
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photo.jpg


 
INMATEofARKHAM said:
Ran into bugs I take it...? (I've avoided that title because I know it has rather bad ones... Save eating bugs being the worst I've read about.)

You have a screenshot of that message...? Does it only pop up when you try to play the game or just whenever the key is revoked?
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No it was a price mistake on their part and they took the keys back.

I don't have a screenshot of it but I found one on the net that looks just like it. Sorry, it wasn't red lettering but a red box. I knew there was red in there somewhere. :p

6IoROjy.png


Incidentally, I found that from a Reddit post someone made about their G2A experience. I can't imagine why because they're totally legit.

 
EldritchOnRye said:
Unless sales start dropping I don't think Valve actually cares about sales. They, like most companies in similar fields these days, are probably far more interested in "engagement" because even if it doesn't mean a sale today if a user is actively "engaged" with your product that means they'll likely convert to a sale eventually and gives them the opportunity to sell them other things. What engagement means varies from company to company and how they run their metrics but for something like Steam browsing the store, adding things to wishlists, going through queues is probably the kind of behavior they're targeting. So if we're watching more games, going through more pages to find deals, etc. that's going to lead to incidental sales as well.
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On top of which, they figured out a way to make profit from this behavior by linking the acquisition of trading cards to browsing the queue. Not only does this increase visibility on more of the catalog (and probably got some sales, and certainly wishlist additions) but then they get a cut from all the users selling the cards they got on the market.

YWiHU.jpg


 
Motoki said:
No it was a price mistake on their part and they took the keys back.

I don't have a screenshot of it but I found one on the net that looks just like it. Sorry, it wasn't red lettering but a red box. I knew there was red in there somewhere. :p
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You should probably send them a thank you letter for doing so... Just a buggy mess that SE is never going to fix. (Bunch of assholes. Plus it got bundled!)

Thanks for the pic... I had often wondered if I would know if I had a game removed... I mean, I don't count my games everyday, and like all of us there has been plenty of times I thought I didn't own a game but did.

Too all; speaking of shady key sellers... Where does CDkeys.com rank among the list?

 
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The message is a popup that you get immediately after you login for the first time after the game has been revoked so you definitely can't miss it.

CDkeys is back alley out of some greasy looking sketchy dude's overcoat shady. But plenty of people say 'I haven't had a problem with them' so eh. The odds are at least better you'll get (and keep) something decent than the GMG mystery boxes. That's something, right?

 
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INMATEofARKHAM said:
You should probably send them a thank you letter for doing so... Just a buggy mess that SE is never going to fix. (Bunch of assholes. Plus it got bundled!)

Thanks for the pic... I had often wondered if I would know if I had a game removed... I mean, I don't count my games everyday, and like all of us there has been plenty of times I thought I didn't own a game but did.

Too all; speaking of shady key sellers... Where does CDkeys.com rank among the list?
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CDKeys is like G2A, but with a name that slightly describes the products they sell.

 
INMATEofARKHAM said:
Too all; speaking of shady key sellers... Where does CDkeys.com rank among the list?
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From my own experience, they're the only ones I've not read about any sort of serious problems with. No doubt some people have had problems, but over the last year I've gotten 4-5 games from them from pre-orders to stuff already out and every key worked without issue. I actually had a slight issue where I bought a game and then like a week later it was like $10 cheaper, I contacted them and they refunded me the difference without hesitation. A friend of mine followed my lead and bought the same game but got a dupe key, they immediately replaced it.

Where they get their keys is anyone's guess, obviously they're grey market and should be considered shady, but I would rank them highest from my own experience in terms of customer service at the very least.

 
archbishopthedoge said:
From my own experience, they're the only ones I've not read about any sort of serious problems with. No doubt some people have had problems, but over the last year I've gotten 4-5 games from them from pre-orders to stuff already out and every key worked without issue. I actually had a slight issue where I bought a game and then like a week later it was like $10 cheaper, I contacted them and they refunded me the difference without hesitation. A friend of mine followed my lead and bought the same game but got a dupe key, they immediately replaced it.

Where they get their keys is anyone's guess, obviously they're grey market and should be considered shady, but I would rank them highest from my own experience in terms of customer service at the very least.
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same here. Among the shady sellers, GMG and CDkeys are the more decent ones that I dealt with. Haven't had any problem so far.

 
agentghost said:
same here. Among the shady sellers, GMG and CDkeys are the more decent ones that I dealt with. Haven't had any problem so far.
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I have relative confidence dealing with either of them. The ones I am most wary about are G2A and Kinguin b/c of the marketplace aspect and buying from people rather than a "company". I also will not even bother with the ones that require a license or passport scan to be sent in for "ID verification". That said, I've had no issues the very few times (2-3 each) buying from either G2A or Kinguin, except for G2A kicking out a couple of transactions during their "security" check for whatever reason. Plus G2A has a damn charge for using Paypal which is ridiculous. i.e. last night I saw they had beta codes for "The DIvision" available for $0.60 and while undoubtedly it will be free at some point during the beta I thought about getting one, I got to the checkout and they wanted to charge $0.42 just for using Paypal lol.

 
archbishopthedoge said:
Where they get their keys is anyone's guess, obviously they're grey market and should be considered shady, but I would rank them highest from my own experience in terms of customer service at the very least.
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agentghost said:
same here. Among the shady sellers, GMG and CDkeys are the more decent ones that I dealt with. Haven't had any problem so far.
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Cool, thanks for the info! I've been kind of eyeing Mad Max from them... (I have too many top of the backlog games to play first to truly do it.) But they have Overwatch for preorder for 38 bucks and I'll likely want that one at launch since I don't think a price drop will happen anytime soon. (Also have Warhammer: Total War 32 bucks.)

 
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INMATEofARKHAM said:
Cool, thanks for the info! I've been kind of eyeing Mad Max from them... (I have too many top of the backlog games to play first to truly do it.) But they have Overwatch for preorder for 38 bucks and I'll likely want that one at launch since I don't think a price drop will happen anytime soon. (Also have Warhammer: Total War 32 bucks.)
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I would say you're fine getting something like Mad Max at this point. Worst case scenario you get a bad key and they'll almost assuredly replace it or refund you and while I dont have the first hand experience, Ive read that they go above and beyond to fix things when there have been occasional issues. Obviously, its your own risk blah blah shady blah blah, but its low risk IMO. If it was Azamat on Kinguin or Bagatov on G2A, I'd be more likely to hesitate myself. Its one thing if Im risking it on a older bundle game I cant find for trade, its another if Im spending more than $5 or pre-ordering.

Past couple of months Ive gotten NBA 2K16 and Just Cause 3 from CDKeys, perfectly fine and I am still playing both.

 
agentghost said:
same here. Among the shady sellers, GMG and CDkeys are the more decent ones that I dealt with. Haven't had any problem so far.
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GMG isn't even in the same arena as the shady sites that just act as middlemen for other sellers. GMG has actual publisher agreements for most of their stuff. Yes, some games get bought in from "authorized retailer" but if you look at a Bethesda game you see the source is Bethesda, look at a WB game and the source is WB, etc. That ain't the case for the true grey market sites.

People cheerleading for the G2A/CDKeys of the world try to make them all sound the same basically so the shady-shady sites can ride off GMG's 95% legitimacy.

 
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spoderman said:
This is AMD we're talking about, they're not that competent. They deleted all of my AMD redemptions from a year ago (AMD Gold Newegg glitch and Dirt Rally from ebay). AMD can't even get their drivers sorted out, what makes you think they have a nicely filtered database lol.
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Wait, what? If I bought a Dirt Rally key from E-Bay months ago I've got to worry about it getting yanked for some reason? I thought this only affected the newegg glitch.

 
I pray that they don't revoke my Dirt Rally key. Not because I love the game and couldn't live without it. But because it might adversely affect my ability to taunt people who missed out on the deal. And that would be the real tragedy of this whole affair.

 
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spoderman said:
This is AMD we're talking about, they're not that competent. They deleted all of my AMD redemptions from a year ago (AMD Gold Newegg glitch and Dirt Rally from ebay). AMD can't even get their drivers sorted out, what makes you think they have a nicely filtered database lol.
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The typical response here is that the key redemption customer service team probably isn't the same as the driver programming team. But maybe they are, which would certainly explain a lot about AMD.

 
Is anyone actually able to redeem their Dirt Rally keys on the AMD site? I keep getting a verification prompt, so I don't get what good 5 new AMD codes would do.
 
meh, everyone complaining about grey market this and shady seller that, yet no problem buying off the russian traders when that was still possible. This is cag, your supposed to be cheap, who gives a crap if the store is shady or not, if they have a majority success rate and offer prices well below other stores why would you not go there.

I got no issues with cdkeys, most of my purchases (and my friends purchases) have been from them for the past 6 months now with no issues. They also have great customer service, any issues friends had (and I can only think of one because he has odd payment methods) were solved within hours.

G2A is still just a damn free for all since it is a marketplace, your never really guaranteed any customer service from g2a despite what they say since they are just there to host others. Besides with all their extra add-on fees and ridiculous conversion prices their prices are mostly crap anyway. However if they manage to have a good deal from someone even with fees, then why not go for it. Worst that happens is you end up waiting a month for some refund

 
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lakers714 said:
Wait 5?? Did everyone receive 5, I only got my one code and that was it
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No, if you bought less than 5 you got the short end of the stick on this apparently. Like me. I bought three and was only able to redeem one before I went to sleep that night and now the other two don't work and I haven't been refunded or issued new codes.

I sent in an email to Newegg to see what they're going to do about it.

 
ezelkow1 said:
meh, everyone complaining about grey market this and shady seller that, yet no problem buying off the russian traders when that was still possible. This is cag, your supposed to be cheap
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No one here gives a shit if you're pushing over Moscow orphans and stealing their video games. Sites get called "shady" because, whether it's affected you or not, they do have a greater "failure" rate than legitimate sites. Whether or not someone thinks the risk vs reward is in the positive for them is up to that person but G2A/CDKeys/Etc isn't the same as Steam/GG/Amazon or, yeah, GMG.

 
Kyanos said:
No, if you bought less than 5 you got the short end of the stick on this apparently. Like me. I bought three and was only able to redeem one before I went to sleep that night and now the other two don't work and I haven't been refunded or issued new codes.

I sent in an email to Newegg to see what they're going to do about it.
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Same here, I bought 4 redeemed one. Haven't received any new codes from newegg. At least we got one 60 dollar game :)
 
Syntax Error said:
No one here gives a shit if you're pushing over Moscow orphans and stealing their video games. Sites get called "shady" because, whether it's affected you or not, they do have a greater "failure" rate than legitimate sites. Whether or not someone thinks the risk vs reward is in the positive for them is up to that person but G2A/CDKeys/Etc isn't the same as Steam/GG/Amazon or, yeah, GMG.
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This is why I gave up on GMG. Starting a few months ago they had huge failure rates with every single one of their pre-orders. Masses of complaints on their forums about duplicate keys and keys not being redeemable. Thats why I stopped caring about where I went because GMG seemed to have the same, or higher, failure rate as places that were considered shady

Though Im definitely not saying g2a/cdkeys/gmg are in the same league as steam or amazon

 
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I'd only heard of a problem with one or two of GMG's preorders (which were corrected).  It couldn't have been all of them since my FO4 and JC3 worked just dandy.

My own simple guide:

Non-Shady: Sells only games as authorized by the publishers.  Steam, GOG, Amazon, Gamersgate, Nuuvem, etc

Semi-Shady: Primarily has distribution agreements but also engages in some "rewholesale": GMG, Funstock, Gamerocket (I believe), probably DLGamer

Shady: No (or very few) authorized distribution agreements.  Re-sells from other sources: G2A, CDKeys, etc.

Shady sites are more prone to issues since they get keys from questionable sources, don't have to worry about reputation with publishers and potentially face publisher wrath such as the Rebellion and Ubisoft key revocations.  If you want to use them, go ahead and use them.  No one here really cares and you don't have to make some moral argument for it or say "But you guys once bought a game from Russia!".  Just do it instead of worrying about our opinion. 

 
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Don't listen to Syntax, please continue to publicly white knight these resellers for my totally legit amusement.

 
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Syntax Error said:
I'd only heard of a problem with one or two of GMG's preorders (which were corrected). It couldn't have been all of them since my FO4 and JC3 worked just dandy.

My own simple guide:

Non-Shady: Sells only games as authorized by the publishers. Steam, GOG, Amazon, Gamersgate, Nuuvem, etc

Semi-Shady: Primarily has distribution agreements but also engages in some "rewholesale": GMG, Funstock, Gamerocket (I believe), probably DLGamer

Shady: No (or very few) authorized distribution agreements. Re-sells from other sources: G2A, CDKeys, etc.

Shady sites are more prone to issues since they get keys from questionable sources, don't have to worry about reputation with publushers and potentially face publisher wrath such as the Rebellion and Ubisoft key revocations. If you want to use them, go ahead and use them. No one here really cares and you don't have to make some moral argument for it or say "But you guys once bought a game from Russia!". Just do it instead of worrying about our opinion.
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Pretty much this. I call them shady cuz they are, but on occasion I may buy from them if I think the price is cheap enough to warrant the risk.

The thing with the shady sites though is that they're mostly only good if you must have the latest and greatest AAA game released 5 minutes ago RITE NAO and absolutely cannot wait. Then you pay like $30 or $40 for a $50 or $60 game.

But they never really lower their prices much beyond that so if you're patient a good 75% or even 66% off sale is going to beat those scheistery sites by quite a bit.

 
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Oh, and saying "Someone got a key from GMG revoked so I might as well buy from G2A/CDKeys" is like saying "Someone got food poisoning from Chili's so I might as well start eating out of dumpsters."  You're not actually helping your odds  :lol:

 
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