The Steam Deal Thread V6. We're all pumped for CAG 3.0!

Status
Not open for further replies.
eastx

eastx

CAGiversary!
Feedback
92 (100%)
Welcome to the Steam Deal Thread V6! You can find link to past threads at the bottom of this post. Read post #2 of this thread for Steam FAQs and more.

With the V6 Thread, we're trying a slight formatting change. We used to list every possible Steam deal in the OP, but they change too frequently for anyone to keep up with (even in the Wiki format). So now, we'll leave regular minor sales out of the OP. This post will keep track of major sales (Winter sale, etc.), Steam deals available through other sellers (like Amazon), Preorder deals, and Group Buys.

I would still greatly appreciate help from you folks at home in keeping this smaller-scale OP up-to-date. This is a Wiki post so anyone can contribute. Wiki instructions:
Thanks for your help! If you notice a sale has ended, feel free to delete its line from the sale list. Of course, if you see something does need to be added, then kindly add it to the list.

Make sure your changes match the thread's format! For example, every game that's on sale is part of an unordered list. When adding a game to the list, copy an existing line and update the link, title, and prices. That way, the format stays correct. Do not list percentages off! We list the original price and the sale price here. If you have any suggestions for major changes to the post/thread, PM me (EastX) about them.

Steam Sales - Updated 1/22


CAG Threads Featuring Steam Games on Sale Elsewhere - Updated 1/9


Preorder Deals - Updated 1/10
Group Buy Deals - Updated 1/9/13
Several multiplayer Steam games are available in 2-packs or 4-packs. These packs offer a discount over buying multiple copies of a game separately. We also maintain group buy trade threads for several games, so please use those threads if you're interested in setting up a group buy.


Free Stuff - List needs updating with F2P games!
There are several free games and mods on Steam. These are a few choice ones; you can find a full list here. Note that free games are not permanently attached to your Steam account like actual purchases would be. You'll need to manually download a game again from the website if you uninstall it.


Steam around CAG

If you are interested in joining the Steam CAG Community or participating in a trade or group buy with fellow Cheap Ass Gamers, please do so in the dedicated threads and not in the deal discussion thread. In the dedicated threads you will find CAGers with the same specialized interest who will be much quicker (and happier) to respond than in the Deals thread.

Past Special Sales

Visit www.steamgamesales.com to check previous sale prices on Steam games. We do keep track of some older sales here though:

Steam Retail Key List

What is a CD key and where can I find it?

Steam's explanation and list of Steam-activatable keys

The CD Key is a serial number with a combination of 13, 18, or 25 letters and numbers - it can be found on a sticker inside your game's case or printed on the game's quick reference card. The CD Key acts as your proof of purchase for the game - Steam Support may ask for it if you need to establish your ownership of an account. It is recommended that you keep your CD Key in a safe place to ensure the security of your account.

Other Keys that can be redeemed on Steam (CAG tested & verified)
11.gif

  • The Ball (bought @D2D, tested by voken)
  • Supreme Commander Forged Alliance (gives both FA and original, bought @amazon, tested by vism)

Indie Bundles thread on Steam forums (link)

Past CAG Steam Deal Threads
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Upvote 0 Downvote
[quote name='dracula']i have been visiting relatives and not paying attention to this sale at all. have either skyrim dawnguard or ys origins or ys the oath gone on sale as flash sales already?[/QUOTE]

Skyrim + DLC has been both a daily and a flash deal. So unless it appears in a customer vote & wins, or there is a recap day the end of the sale, you've missed your chance on that one.

The Ys games have been flash deals already. I think they might have been in a customer vote too. But they haven't been dailies yet. So there's still hope there.

[quote name='dracula']ah ok, i can wait for another deal on it, hopefully for under $5, i still have a $5 off digital coupon that doesnt activate until 2013 so hopefully amazon drops the price to $7.50 at some point in january(tho i thought that the $5 off only worked on items over $10?)[/QUOTE]

Yeah, you might still have a shot with Amazon in January.

As for $5 coupons for January, there has been no mention of any restrictions put on the coupon in any of the emails. So I think you can use it on any game as long as it's on the Editor's choice list.

Last year it was actually possible to get a few games for free. In both cases it was because Amazon price matched steam on a sale price of something that happened to be on the Editor's choice list. So there's no way to say for sure if we'll find ourselves in the same situation again.
 
[quote name='The End']Skyrim + DLC has been both a daily and a flash deal. So unless it appears in a customer vote & wins, or there is a recap day the end of the sale, you've missed your chance on that one.

The Ys games have been flash deals already. I think they might have been in a customer vote too. But they haven't been dailies yet. So there's still hope there.



Yeah, you might still have a shot with Amazon in January.

As for $5 coupons for January, there has been no mention of any restrictions put on the coupon in any of the emails. So I think you can use it on any game as long as it's on the Editor's choice list.

Last year it was actually possible to get a few games for free. In both cases it was because Amazon price matched steam on a sale price of something that happened to be on the Editor's choice list. So there's no way to say for sure if we'll find ourselves in the same situation again.[/QUOTE]

I don't remember 100% but I'm pretty sure some of the free or super cheap games were not price matches but just sort of intentional low prices.
 
[quote name='CheapLikeAFox']Makes sense to me. This game had a AAA MSRP when it came out. Not that it might make it better, but it had more going for it. Sort of like when Prey was supercheap. [/quote]
Yes, exactly!
 
I know I'm 2 years too late but Alan Wake is a gorgeous ass game. Shits booootyful. & why the fuck ain't Harry Nilsson's "Coconut" not on the CE's soundtrack? lmao
 
[quote name='Terlan']Man, doesn't look like any other Assassins creed games are getting the 75% discount. :/[/QUOTE]
The only reason that I voted for ACII was that I was expecting the whole lot to be discounted. :roll:
 
[quote name='Detruire']Pity that you can't go for a 4pk.[/QUOTE]

I assume it would be like $10 for the game! One can dream... or wait 18 months for that to happen!

EDIT: I'm assuming it's a typo - they probs were putting the Borderlands: GOTY edition for 75% and misclicked the game titles to modify... either that or they're serious and we're about to be spoiled!
 
[quote name='mjontrix'].. also the season pass is $7.50!!![/QUOTE]

Being greedy here... I wish they'd put the CE Content DLC on sale too.
 
[quote name='mjontrix']I assume it would be like $10 for the game! One can dream... or wait 18 months for that to happen![/QUOTE]
It would be ~$10 after coupon code.
 
[quote name='Fell Open Ian']For anyone purchasing games elsewhere due to Steam's lackluster deals: How many of those purchases are still for Steam keys? I'm about 75% elsewhere and 25% directly via Steam but they've all been Steam keys. (I'm talking purely digital downloads of course)[/QUOTE]
[quote name='homeland']All of them for me. Got games at Amazon, GMG, and GG. All steam games.[/QUOTE]
[quote name='Blade']I think this is what's on my mind. Both summer and winter sales last year had prizes, I'm sure we all remember that. I'm thinking 2010 had some sort of event for both major sales, too. When comparing years, they have changed their event layout to straight deals, without any free prizes. It denotes a lack of surplus to me, and the higher, recycled prices are a stark contrast to conventional marketing competitiveness in lieu of the increasing number of digital distributors. [/QUOTE]
[quote name='Motoki']Valve has an economist on payroll. Trust me, they know what they are doing. And Amazon as a PC digital download retailer is slim pickins beyond the deal sites microcosms. [/QUOTE]Regarding the bolded part of Blade's post, there is no surplus and/or scarcity of digital goods. It's not like having X copies of Game Y piled up at the warehouse or selling out of it. Digital distribution means infinite copies as needed. Or not needed. It's not taking up limited space on a shelf in a store; just a few GB on a server someplace.

Because so many games use Steamworks for their DRM and distribution and for all of Gabe Newell's endless lies and lies and lies - seriously, if he told me that my name was DirkBelig, I WOULDN'T BELIEVE HIM! - most of us are pretty invested in Steam because of their massive head start in digital distribution. It's convenient for us to keep our games in a central location and seek out deals for Steamable games from other retailers.

And that's the problem Valve has, know-something staff economist notwithstanding. SAVVY SHOPPERS ARE SPENDING THEIR MONEY EVERYWHERE ELSE BUT STEAM PROPER FOR THEIR STEAM GAMES! Look at the lists Tony posts on the Amazon PCDD thread - they're mostly Steam key games at FAR BETTER PRICES than can be found at Steam itself. People buy 20 games for a buck a pop thru Humble Bundles and unlock them on Steam. I got Legend of Grimlock for beating the average by a couple of dimes; I didn't pay Steam either the momentary price of $3.75 or the regular ticket of $15.

I don't know the payment system by which Steam gets compensated for games sold elsewhere that are pushed to end users thru their pipes (see what I did there?) but I'm sure they can tell that a diminishing percentage of the content they're serving is actually being purchased from them. People are buying $5 keys from A'zon to get both Bioshock games instead of paying $20 (sale) or $40 (regular) to Steam. Another $5 to A'zon adds Spec Ops: The Line to the bundle when Steam commands another $10. Hmmm, $10 for three games or $30? The 2K Shooter Pack is $10 at A'zon and $55 from Steam. The 2K Mega Pack is $30 vs. $132.50!!! (And there's another non-Steam game in that pack.)

As CAGs, we're all about the deals and we don't care if we hand our dollars/dinars/Deutschmarks/drachmas/goats to Steam or Amazon or Green Man Games or Get Games or whoever (yes, even Origin, haters) as long as we give as few as possible to the merchants we choose in order to get our gaming fix. The problem Steam has is that they're not even trying to compete for our dollars and a company that doesn't seem to care about getting customers in simply doesn't care, period.

Perhaps Motoki is correct in his presumption that Steam is fine and the Super Smart People there (i.e. not Gabe "Episodic gaming is best for gamers. Can I have more pie now?" Newell) are satisfied with how business is going, but the ash heap of capitalism is littered with companies that thought they were so far in the lead that they didn't ever have to look over their shoulders. Anyone still have an AOL account? They were so rich just over 13 years ago they bought Time-Warner; now they're a joke from a bygone era. 13 years isn't that long. (Steam is 8 years old. Tick-tock-tick-tock...) Anyone still on MySpace? When they made Kick-Ass, MySpace was THE social networking site; by the time it was released about 18 months later, Facebook had already erased them.

My point of all this is that Steam appears to believe that they can coast on name-recognition and user inertia alone. They hope that by making "Steam" the first place people think of for buying downloadable computer games, they can survive the bleeding of sales to other dealers of keys that register on their service. Hey, someone has to be going to those terrible record stores at malls to buy Taylor Swift CDs for $18.99, right? Except those stores are going away, aren't they? Tower Records is gone; FYE is a shrunken ghost of itself. Hollywood Video is history; Blockbuster is dying. All killed by price competition.

When you're selling the exact same thing as your competition at double, triple, QUINTUPLE the price, you're not going to stay in business long. Why do you think Gabe Newell stopped stuffing his fat lying face long enough to burp out word that a "SteamBox" (read: PC you hook up to your TV for those not technically-proficient enough to build yourself) was coming in 2013? They're hoping to shore up their software side with some low-margin hardware in hopes that people will just lazily buy via the SteamBox's interface and not schlep over to their real computers, go to Amazon and save $20-$100 on a bundle of games.

Despite all the childish "U mad bro?" replies to my comments, I'm not wishing for Steam to die - now if Gabe ends up burning in Hell with Satan pumping hot molten lava up his fat arse until he admits his serial lies is another matter - because like so many others here, I've got a lot of games tied up in their continued existence. Calling out the apparent laziness and sloth of Steam/Valve/Gabe isn't "rage" or "hate" but soberly trying to understand why a former leader has wandered so far afield from their original trailblazing. Steam sales used to be when our wallets were hurting from all the great deals we couldn't pass up. Now our wallets only hurt if we're too dumb to not go to the myriad other e-tailers selling cheap keys.

Just compare Steam's customer support to Amazon's. No contest, is it? Amazon has an employee basically living here at CAG acting as a liaison for issues. Got a problem with your PCDD purchase, PM T-Money and he'll take care of it. Got a problem with Steam? Open a ticket and wait. While you're waiting, why not write a letter to Santa asking for a pony and see which gets acted upon first?

Steam doesn't care like it used to. Why should we carry a torch for them? Give your money to stores that care. If Steam wants our money, all they have to do is offer deals like they used to.
 
[quote name='mjontrix']what coupon code tell me plz!!![/QUOTE]
That's only if you could buy a 4pk, and if the coupon worked on the total purchase (it only seems to work on the cheapest item.)

The coupon is IAMANELDERGEEK and it does -5% on the cheapest item in your cart. (But you can, if you want to risk them fixing the price, buy bluecoins using that code.)
 
[quote name='DirkBelig']

(snip)

Just compare Steam's customer support to Amazon's. No contest, is it? Amazon has an employee basically living here at CAG acting as a liaison for issues. Got a problem with your PCDD purchase, PM T-Money and he'll take care of it. Got a problem with Steam? Open a ticket and wait. While you're waiting, why not write a letter to Santa asking for a pony and see which gets acted upon first?

Steam doesn't care like it used to. Why should we carry a torch for them? Give your money to stores that care. If Steam wants our money, all they have to do is offer deals like they used to.[/QUOTE]

100% agree with the above - also steam does get some money through steamworks I believe. So they know what they're doing :)

[quote name='Namerson']http://www.gamersgate.co.uk/games?prio=relevance&q=borderlands 2 looks like it's cheaper in the UK £7.49 for the game and £4.99 for the season pass. go go go![/QUOTE]

DAMMIT WHY DID I SEE THIS JUST NOW AND NOT THINK OF THIS EARLIER :( But I think they've fixed the price now...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
[quote name='DirkBelig']
Despite all the childish "U mad bro?" replies to my comments, I'm not wishing for Steam to die - now if Gabe ends up burning in Hell with Satan pumping hot molten lava up his fat arse until he admits his serial lies is another matter - because like so many others here, I've got a lot of games tied up in their continued existence. Calling out the apparent laziness and sloth of Steam/Valve/Gabe isn't "rage" or "hate" but soberly trying to understand why a former leader has wandered so far afield from their original trailblazing.
[/QUOTE]

This section is meant to be a parody of itself, right?

Your personal vendetta against Gabe Newell is, quite frankly, a little disturbing, and it makes it hard to take any of the other points you're making seriously.

[quote name='jrodri86']Season Pass still showing as $7.50.[/QUOTE]

The main game is still $14.99 for me, too. That's a great price. I almost forgot I didn't want Borderlands 2 and jumped on it. Also, Gamersgate's site seems to be slowing down, and I dealt with that more than enough getting that Bethesda pack.
 
[quote name='Eldredpe']This section is meant to be a parody of itself, right?

Your personal vendetta against Gabe Newell is, quite frankly, a little disturbing, and it makes it hard to take any of the other points you're making seriously.[/QUOTE]

You actually bothered to read all that?
 
[quote name='The End']You actually bothered to read all that?[/QUOTE]

Honestly, I skimmed it and the image of molten lava being funneled into Gabe's rectum by the dark lord caught my attention.

Also, the claim that anything in that post is being done "soberly" made me smile.
 
[quote name='The End']You actually bothered to read all that?[/QUOTE]

Speed reading :) How else do you think people can clock JRPGs in one day and return it to the video store the next day AND write a review with multiple quotes :)
 
[quote name='nategator']Must....get...to...checkout...paypal...[/QUOTE]
Bethesda adventures taught me that once I get that initial confirmation from GG, I'm golden :D
 
Paypal.... confirming... payment... Almost there! D:

EDIT: Well if that initial confirmation means we're good, then I feel pretty good right now :)

EDIT 2: Wooo! Went through! Finally got to experience one of these "glitches" ;). Staying up to check CAG one last time paid off yet again.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
bread's done
Back
Top