Amazon PCDD - Important Update New Community Manager Incoming!

Status
Not open for further replies.
Amazon DVG Deals

Amazon DVG Deals

Official Representative
Feedback
4 (100%)
Hey CAGS,

I’ve got some news I’m both excited and sad to share with you at the same time. I’ll be leaving the Digital Video Games team in Mid-March to join the marketing team for Amazon.com’s Loyalty and Rewards program, Amazon Coins. My boss and I have talked extensively about how to maintain and continue our presence here and across the other communities we’ve created in the past couple of years. To that end I’d like to introduce you to Josh, who take over monitoring, updating, and responding to this thread. Josh will be ramping up over the next couple of weeks, he  will be posting shortly to introduce himself.

Now that the “what’s going on” part of the message is out of the way I want to tell you all how much I love CAG and the posters here. This was the first community I joined when I started this job (anyone still remember that first thread?) and all of you have had a huge hand in shaping how we think about and execute Community Development and Management here at Amazon, which has in turn shaped my career these last two and a half years.

I started to write out a section calling out the regular posters and realized the list would be both overly long and incomplete at the same time. Instead I’d like to thank you all again, you all have my deep and sincere gratitude. I’ll still be around and my gaming accounts aren’t going anywhere so feel free to hit me up anytime you want to chat. I’ll probably still hang out in the thread too :).

Thanks again everyone, let me or Josh know if you have any questions!

The Indie Store has launched!
Amazon.com is launching a storefront dedicated to supporting and promoting PC/Mac/Web-based Indie Games. Our Digital Video Games team is a small group of passionate gamers and we’re all really excited to help Indie developers reach more customers quickly by providing a quick and simple process for bringing their games to market. Additionally we’ll be supporting the Indie Store with a ton of promotions, both at and after launch. Many of these promotions are designed to give the developer the opportunity to maximize their revenue. For example, Amazon is forfeiting all royalties from bundle sales and passing them along directly to the developer, we’ve also created an “Indie Spotlight” program to help customers learn more about the games and developers they love. We view the Indie developers as some of the most creative in the industry and we want to help them continue to create new and innovative experience for customers.

Why we are doing this:

  • Allow customers to discover an entirely new category of games on Amazon.com
  • Help developers reach new customers quickly. Our onboarding process is straightforward and we want to sell every Indie game available
  • We want to leverage our strengths to support and help the developers who are driving forward innovation and creativity in the games industry
General Information

Hi CAGs,
I'll be posting deals we're running on Digital Games (PC/Mac, Free to Play, Sony/Microsoft Points/Subs).

I'm also here to answer questions you might have, get you closer to the developers by hosting Q&As, setting up podcasts, live streaming gameplay etc. If I don't respond to a question you have in thread please send me a PM. These ping my email address and make it more likely that I will see your question and respond more quickly.

Cheers,
Tony


FYI. EA Games sold by Amazon will not activate on Steam.
F.A.Q.S.:

1. Does the game I'm buying from Amazon Activate on Steam/Origin/Uplay? What DRM does the game use?

There are two places to identify DRM on a digital video game detail page:

At the top of the page, below the title:

16hm7a8.png


In the "Product Description" section:

r06ykl.jpg


2. Note on Electronic Arts Games - For the most part, EA games sold on Amazon do not activate on Steam. Most activate on Origin.

3. Note on DRM with limited activations:

Our Policy



4. Sometimes I'll do giveaways.

5. I work with developers and publishers to get fun (or at least what I think is fun) content to share with you all. Here are some examples:

a. Check out the Pax Gameplay videos here: Xcom: Enemy Unknown I played Xcom with Jake, the Creative Director for the game, a few months before the game came out Also, on this page, check out the Q&A, also a community driven event.

b. Check out the interview on this page: Borderlands 2 we did this interview at E3 with Randy Pitchford this year.

c. We've partnered with the ++GoodGames Podcast to feature many of the games we carry. They talk to the developers about the game development process, how the games are conceptualized and managed, all kinds of fun stuff. I'm working on putting together full link list and will update when I have it.

What else do we sell?

Xbox Live Points and Subscriptions:

1600 Microsoft Live Points
4000 Microsoft Live Points
12 Month XBOX Live Subscription
3 Month XBOX Live Subscription]
12 Month + 1 XBOX Live Subscription

PSN+ Subscriptions and PSN Points:

$20 PSN Points
$50 PSN Points
12 Month PSN+ Subscription
3 Month PSN+ Subscription

We also have a Free-2-Play store supported by our GameConnect technology. Gameconnect allows you to link your Amazon.com account with free-2-play and MMO accounts so that you can buy things like in game currency, premium game time/subscriptions, in game items, etc. on Amazon.com using your Amazon.com payment options and have this content delivered directly into your game.

5. Price Matching notes: Generally we do not match international retailers (GMG, Gamersgate, etc) or physical retailers (Best Buy, Newegg.com, etc.)
To check out the Free-2-Play games we offer you can visit our storefront here: Free-2-Play Store

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Upvote 0 Downvote
yangwenli said:
And this is sorta why there is that occasional negative message here. In the old days, as Amazon DVG was being built out, the $5 EC coupon was a real $5 off a game. It was, in a way, Amazon's gift for people to try and buy from their new DVG store and get them in the "game" so to speak of selling games online. They didn't care as much about making profits or what not and was ok with giving a bit away to get people buying and getting used to buying from them.

The EC coupon now completely takes into account what the final price is and Amazon isn't really giving anyone $5 I don't think as they negotiate with the publisher on the price and unlike before, I don't think, or don't feel they are really as into what was done 2 years back. There will probably be some deals later, but compared to 2 years ago, nothing will get close to that. Again, I don't expect any free games or any insane deals like from the past, but, when they were price matching steam left and right just during the holidays and don't price match now JUST BECAUSE PEOPLE HAVE AN EC COUPON clearly shows they don't want to give much value to the EC coupon anymore. Again, Amazon can do whatever they want with pricing and I have just chosen to buy insanely less, but them's the facts of how things are now which is ok, but just a little disappointing of course. Good thing I have less than 5 coupons I guess.

Would love to be wrong on this on the "Brothers" game and see them match with steam since that's running all week, but I doubt they'd match it.

Yes, I'm griping and don't have an Avatar pic neither (I actually don't have an Avatar for any forums I visit). I think this is simply me having the attitude that like any public forum on the Internet, my opinion is simply worth what you paid for it and that's not much so I don't take my online comments/views as seriously as most. If you don't likey, just ignore me and move on.

Thank goodness for huge backlogs and tons of patience to wait for even lower prices. As I say, if you don't like the deal, simply don't buy it.
Click to expand...
You made a well-reasoned post that I agree with, but no avatar so fuck that noise.

On a serious note, I never expected future EC promotions (or any other digital game promotion, ever) to match the first one. The fact that last year even came close was an achievement in itself.

 
seamoss said:
I always use mirrored disks for any PC that does not have its data backed up or mirrored somewhere else. For example, my desktop PC has two 2TB disks in a RAID 0 (mirror) array, but my HTPC only has one 2TB disk since I have all the music, movies, etc. backed up.
Click to expand...
RAID 0 is striped, btw.

MrRedrum said:
I love my SSDs (yes, I have two in a RAID-0 because I can lol) for gaming with the awesome near instant load times.
Click to expand...
Unless things changed in the last 2 years, that's a bad idea. Having it striped on two drives can actually make your SSD slower. Also, if you lose one SDD, they're both lost. You basically made things less reliable.

Mooby said:
That and aren't SSDs prone to die a lot faster than standard HD's?
Click to expand...
When SSDs first came out, the flash memory had a about 10,000 write cycles. Nowadays, they have 100,000+ write cycles, and firmware that spreads out the writes. So they are supposed to be able to more than decade, and can be used as cache (not that I would still). If you leave them unplugged, they do eventually drain and lose data, but that takes more than a decade, usually. This applies to flash-based thumb drives as well.

targetbsp said:
SSD's are like air con in a car. Yes they are an optional luxury. But they're an optional luxury you'll always have forever more once you've experienced what you're missing!
Click to expand...
Mooby said:
That's not even close to a good analogy. It's more like GPS in a car… even then it's probably a bad analogy.
Click to expand...
I think it's more like headlight wipers... Expensive, and adds very little. Sure, if you want to spend more money, why not add headlight wipers? And yes, I use an SSD (Samsung 830 with 240 GB), but it'd be too expensive to replace my 3x 2TB WD Blacks. I'll stick to using rsync and portable drives for backup until it's economical to switch.

 
elessar123 said:
Unless things changed in the last 2 years, that's a bad idea. Having it striped on two drives can actually make your SSD slower. Also, if you lose one SDD, they're both lost. You basically made things less reliable.
Click to expand...
I wasn't going for reliability I was going for speed. I average out on a random HDD/SSD bench at just over 1GB/s read/write.

 
asheskitty said:
:rofl: Good luck with that... C2 Max and Shift 2 were the last big EA titles released on steam almost 3 years ago. Read here to crush your hopes.
You can't ignore both ignore Origin and play newer EA releases.
Click to expand...
As I remember Crisys 2 was removed from Steam and it returned later as maximum edition, this is why I was hoping for new Cryssi as wells. However if EA decide not to release games on Steam i will not buy them. There is not so many interesting games from EA for me. I already decided to pass on ME3.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Last edited by a moderator:
The deals that start on 01/09 are the best by far and best prices for all those games so far.  I wish the price on Final Exam was better.  It was already $2.50 on Uplay in December so wasting a coupon to get it for .50 cents more doesn't make any sense.  

 
elessar123 said:
You're right, I didn't realize he put GB/s. Which makes me doubt his stats too though.
Click to expand...
Hmmm... Well I dunno. Those are the results i get when I run the array through ATTO or other benchmarks. I honestly didn't even think about the constraints of SATA 3... Now I too question the validity of my bench results. I wonder if it's a burst speed that's arbitrarily inflating the actual results? Some things to consider for sure then. In any case I've been looking for a reason to reinstall windows so I just might dismantle the array then, especially if the results are incorrect (which leads me to believe that they are) and serves no purpose.

macro_the_more_you_know.gif


 
Last edited by a moderator:
All this hardware talk begs me to ask:

Does anyone else set their graphics as low as possible, just for fun, to see how bad the game can look?

I did that with Mass Effect 2 and Far Cry 2, and it looked like I was playing Playstation 2 versions :)
 
Trusty Mutsi said:
All this hardware talk begs me to ask:

Does anyone else set their graphics as low as possible, just for fun, to see how bad the game can look?

I did that with Mass Effect 2 and Far Cry 2, and it looked like I was playing Playstation 2 versions :)
Click to expand...
And lowest rez possible... only when I'm testing for bottlenecks.

 
Trusty Mutsi said:
All this hardware talk begs me to ask:

Does anyone else set their graphics as low as possible, just for fun, to see how bad the game can look?

I did that with Mass Effect 2 and Far Cry 2, and it looked like I was playing Playstation 2 versions :)
Click to expand...
Nope

Are you bored or something? :D
 
sunasun said:
u sure it's not a ramdisk?
Click to expand...
Yeah. The benches were ran on my OS SSD array. I don't have a ramdisk created. So taking the limitations into consideration not sure how the results ever really came to be, and on multiple different runs at that. Very perplexing.

 
Palinn said:
I submitted a lower price ticket through the game page but I'm wondering if CS got the word not to match digital game prices.
Click to expand...
Yeah, with the whole "not starting until after Steam sale" thing, I wonder the same.

Sepioth said:
Probably because it's going to be $7.99 in two days (minus the coupon and it will be 2.99)
Click to expand...
Whereas if they match Steam it'll be $7.49 now and $2.49 after coupon.
 
Updated the Spreadsheet .. added the games that are on the EC list on Amazon but have no official word from Tony as to when they will be on sale and for what price (a few of them are on sale now but nothing crazy). Also coupons don't work on everything just yet. Even if the game is not on sale shouldn't the coupons actually still be working on them? It does say use these coupons on ANY game on the EC list.

Spreadsheet is in my sig.

Also while adding games to the spreadsheet I noticed a few things ...

1 - Cities XL Platinum has Origin listed as it's DRM at top of page and Steam in the description. I'm almost 100% positive it's Steam.

2 - Mirror's Edge - Have Faith Bundle - Is listed as having "Mixed DRM" -- SecuROM for the base game and Origin for the DLC. If the DLC is on Origin wouldn't the base game need to be there as well? Does the base game have both Origin and SecuROM?

 
Sepioth said:
Updated the Spreadsheet .. added the games that are on the EC list on Amazon but have no official word from Tony as to when they will be on sale and for what price (a few of them are on sale now but nothing crazy). Also coupons don't work on everything just yet. Even if the game is not on sale shouldn't the coupons actually still be working on them? It does say use these coupons on ANY game on the EC list.

Spreadsheet is in my sig.

Also while adding games to the spreadsheet I noticed a few things ...

1 - Cities XL Platinum has Origin listed as it's DRM at top of page and Steam in the description. I'm almost 100% positive it's Steam.

2 - Mirror's Edge - Have Faith Bundle - Is listed as having "Mixed DRM" -- SecuROM for the base game and Origin for the DLC. If the DLC is on Origin wouldn't the base game need to be there as well? Does the base game have both Origin and SecuROM?
Click to expand...
1. Is a mistake for sure and I'll get it fixed now.

2. Not sure, asking.

Thanks for dropping me a note to point me at this.

Cheers,

Tony

 
Sepioth said:
Updated the Spreadsheet .. added the games that are on the EC list on Amazon but have no official word from Tony as to when they will be on sale and for what price (a few of them are on sale now but nothing crazy). Also coupons don't work on everything just yet. Even if the game is not on sale shouldn't the coupons actually still be working on them? It does say use these coupons on ANY game on the EC list.

Spreadsheet is in my sig.

Also while adding games to the spreadsheet I noticed a few things ...

1 - Cities XL Platinum has Origin listed as it's DRM at top of page and Steam in the description. I'm almost 100% positive it's Steam.

2 - Mirror's Edge - Have Faith Bundle - Is listed as having "Mixed DRM" -- SecuROM for the base game and Origin for the DLC. If the DLC is on Origin wouldn't the base game need to be there as well? Does the base game have both Origin and SecuROM?
Click to expand...
Don't know if Mirror's Edge has securom, but it an activation limit on Origin. Has no extra DRM on Steam. I'm pretty sure the key in that amazon bundle activates on Origin.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thermopyle said:
Well, I'm hoping Tony will wake up and get a PM going on. We'll see.
Click to expand...
Lol I'm awake, I've been heads down on projects and meetings all day unfortunately.

Everyone say "thank you Sepioth", I wouldn't have seen the miss if he hadn't PMed me to answer the questions above.

The match should flow through soon, I just approved it.

Cheers,

Tony

 
Neuro5i5 said:
He likes me. He really, really likes me.

[customspoiler=sunasun likes this]
odkm.png
[/customspoiler]
Click to expand...
oh reeeally now aj hack me why ur gf crazy and black widow me to do this heeh h um tony eu4 is on it plz be same price as i brought it during winter sale

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Status
Not open for further replies.
bread's done
Back
Top