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Palpek
Dec 27, 2008


Do you feel it, Zach?
My coffee warned me about it.


((( Use IsThereAnyDeal to track your Steam wishlist on all the sites everywhere forever. )))
((( My Steam ID in case you have suggestions/questions: http://steamcommunity.com/id/Palpek/ )))



:gaben: Welcome to the Steam (and other distribution platforms) X-mas Sale 2014 Thread. If the leaks are right it should start on December 18th. Pro-click: http://store.steampowered.com/

The thread has been started early due to the Steam Gem Event taking place right now which will or will not have something to do with the Steam Sale.

DAILY DEAL = FLASH DEAL = COMMUNITY DEAL It won't get cheaper if the slot the deal sits in changes, stop asking about that (unless it's a pricing error :v:).

:siren: Join our #steamgoons IRC channel! :siren:

Buy dirt cheap games now and buy them hard as the next occasion may not present itself too soon. At the same time wait for the game to become a daily deal. If it never becomes a daily deal you can still buy it on the last day being sure it has not in fact become a daily deal.

Let me repeat that one more time. As a wise man once said:

A wise man posted:

Wait for the game to become a daily deal!

Yep and now you do that. Oh and by the way:

homeless snail posted:

It's kind of pointless to ask people to make steam sale predictions.

:gaben: Other distribution services:

Anyway, gently caress Steam Sale because there are better deals on (always ctrl+f to make sure the deal offers a Steam key):
  • Amazon.com has a fantastic Digital PC Downloads section that has been destroying Steam
    over and over. If Steam is somehow cheaper they often price-match. Put in a fake US address to buy outside US, also this doesn't work for everybody.
  • Greenman Gaming sometimes just has the best deals and often offers a discount code that additionally shaves off 15-25% from the sale price. If you can't see the code on the main page search their blog for it.
  • Nuuvem is a brazilian site but has already made a splash. Some of their deals are insane and don't worry - they're legit and goon-approved. Be aware though they may not accept a card from your region for no apparent reason.
  • Gamers Gate offers some cool daily deals but nothing too epic UNTIL they gently caress up the prices. $20 Bethesda's Catalogue anyone?
  • Humble Bundle has opened a full-fledged store. Always remember to check their regular and weekly bundles while you're there.
  • Bundle Stars has also opened a store. They have some good deals on often obscure titles that aren't a highlight anywhere else.
  • Gamefly offers standard deals but then there's this ONE game that is absolutely cheaper than anywhere else.
  • Indie Royale may be that-bundle-that-used-to-be-great-but-now-sucks but they also launched the Daily Royale site that has cool fresh deals every day.
  • Groupees always has 2-3 bundles going on at the same time. Better check them before you drop money on an obscure indie game.
  • Indie Gala has a store. It sucks. But hey, sometimes it doesn't!

:gaben: Actually Steam sucks so much that I don't even need Steam keys:
  • Good Old Games also offers new games now. It's one of the only truly DRM-free services out there if that's important to you. GOG owns.
  • Yeah, yeah I know - Origin. But it DOES have big sales now as it turns out brands aren't cheapened by those that much. It offers EA's big popular games that are not available on Steam: Battlefield, Fifa, Mass Effect 3, NFS, SimCity and other crap.
  • Ubisoft Store offers Ubisoft games. Be sure to use the same Uplay account on Steam games that require it. Otherwise you'll end up with 2 stupid accounts that can't be merged.

:gaben: Just kidding, I still love Steam! Sale window: December 18th, 2014 through January 1st (???) 2014 (+ maybe an encore weekend).

Types of deals:
  • Daily Deals - The standard way of Steam to offer amazing deals during these sales. You have 24 hours to get a game, then another 24 hours after the deals change to compare the current deals and the deals still live from one day ago. Makes it much easier to make up your mind where to spend your hard earned cash.
  • Flash Deals - The new way of getting your money - each game gets 8 hours of being on sale, and it might or might not show up multiple times during the entire sale.
  • “Community Choice” Deals - A new vote starts every 8 hours where you choose 1 of 3 proposed games and the most voted one will become a deal.
  • Deals swap over at 10am Pacific Time. Also more often than not, you should see an "Offer ends in" timer to give you an idea how much longer for you can get the game at a certain sale price. For the sale, they're giving is two day (48 hour) timers.
  • There will most likely be an encore of the most popular deals at the end of the sale

:gaben: Rules of sale:
  • If the game you want isn't a daily/flash deal - wait for it to become one or buy it on the last day. "Aw hell I just bought Skyrim for $30 and now it's a daily for $10 " is something we read in the sale threads on every single page.
  • Put a set amount of money to your Steam wallet AND NO MORE*. You don't want your card being knocked back when you try and buy that Nancy Drew game you've been waiting for with 5 minutes on the sale clock.
    *Unless you are from and area that gets screwed by regional pricing a lot (eg. Australia). Put that sweet cash in your paypal, and you'll be sending off cash to one of our many regional gifters in no time, with no fuss!
  • Consider buying games as gifts into your inventory instead of your library and only open them when you intend to play them. When you finally wake up from the shopping spree you'll wonder why the hell you bought all those games but if they're gifts you'll be able to trade/sell them. Believe me we have all been there.
  • Organize 2 or 4 packs where possible. It can often save you and your fellow goons a good sum of cash.
  • There are usually tons of games discounted 75%+ that aren't mentioned on the main page. Go hunting.

:gaben: This year's metagame is Gems:

Downs Duck posted:

Steam gems finally lets you get rid of all the rubbish community items in your inventory, like backgrounds and emoticons. Trading cards also can be converted into gems - that they fetch for lesser gems than the community items as well.

You can:
-Bid with your gems on games during the auction event. The auction STARTS on the 15th of December by closing the first bidding and starting a chain of 40 minute auctions, one after another, until the 18th when the actual sale begins.
-Convert a sum of gems into a booster packs for a game you own (1 booster pack a day for each game): http://steamcommunity.com/tradingcards/boostercreator
-Gems were previously possible to trade and buy, but not anymore. This might change when Steam resets the system after some jackasses found some exploit somewhere.

Princey posted:

In preparation for the winter sale, Steam unveiled a game auction, where you could bid to win games that were donated by developers. Instead of bidding with money, you bid with the newly created "gems," which you could obtain by converting items in your inventory like emoticons, backgrounds, and cards. This was probably intended to help clear the market of all the useless $0.03 crap cluttering everybody's inventories.

A second thing you could do with these gems was use them to craft booster packs. Crafting a pack cost anywhere from 400-2000 gems (approximately, I'm not 100% sure of the actual limits), depending on the game. You could craft one booster pack per game (and you had to own the game to craft the pack) per day.

Gems could also be bundled into groups of 1000 and traded or sold on the market. And here's where things went crazy: gem prices tanked, largely due to the inevitable bunch of people who found and exploited a glitch that let them duplicate gems. Pretty soon, a bag of 1000 gems was going for $0.03. Now, the most gems you could get out of an item was 100 (I believe), so this was nuts. It became incredibly profitable to buy huge amounts of gems, convert them into booster packs, and then turn around and sell either the pack or the individual cards from the pack. Booster and card prices started to tank too.

Meanwhile, less clever people were using these ridiculously cheap gems to bid on auctions as well, driving auction gem prices into the millions.

This went on for a few hours before Valve pulled the plug on the whole operation, removing the auctions and booster pack creator, making gems untradeable and unmarketable, and then waffling between taking away the gems entirely or not, as they keep appearing and disappearing from people's inventories.

:gaben: Tips & Tricks:
  • Did you know we have an official Steam Goons IRC channel? If you want to talk about games, deals, find gifters, give out games or just chill out - come on over. We're active throughout the year. Just don't be a dickhead and don't beg for games.
  • IsThereAnyDeal will e-mail you about deals on games from your wishlist when they hit prices you specifically set. It scans ALL distribution sites for those. This is an amazing service that will also make you spend all your money.
  • Use Cheap Shark to find good deals and Steam Prices to find out where it's the cheapest!
  • Augment your Steam! Install Enhanced Steam: for Chrome, for Mozilla.
  • If you're looking for the main Steam thread, it's here. If you want to trade games, go here. If you want to trade Steam Cards, go here. If you're feeling generous and want to give away games, go here.
  • "This might be a stupid question, but how do you get to the regular store screen?" -You can't. Big sales traditionally take over regular Steam until they're over.

:gaben: Goon Gifters

Sometimes there's just a better deal in another region. That's when you contact fellow goons that are willing to gift you a game after you paypal them the money.

If you're going to be contacting one of the gifters in this section, it's probably a good idea to at least be in the SA Goons group, so we know you're not just a random pubbie trying to do a lovely trade. If you want to join the group, go post in this thread - don't request an invite in this one!.


If those guys helped you a ton, why not tip them with game gifts once in a while? Take from the community and give back and all. If you want to be added to the OP as someone who is willing to help other goons save money, please let me know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SGCWhWBjYc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUo1PgKksgw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoGxA48HQ1g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IX8aMiCJQ0

:gaben: http://gaben.tv/ :gaben:

Palpek fucked around with this message at 10:51 on Dec 19, 2014

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Palpek
Dec 27, 2008


Do you feel it, Zach?
My coffee warned me about it.


:siren:A google doc with a list of game recommendations with short descriptions gathered over the years.:siren:

Grawl also made an SA Steam curators group. Feel free to join and/or add me to fill the list.

If you're hunting for hidden gems or aren't sure if a big game you heard about is good then this is a link for you.

Palpek fucked around with this message at 10:49 on Dec 19, 2014

Doom Goon
Sep 18, 2008


Man this sale sucks.

Doom Goon
Sep 18, 2008


Just kidding, never did that before believe it or not.

I was going to post this in the other thread agreeing about trying to do gems right now being dead, and for awhile, too. Not only did I find a pretty good background (it was under .06 at the time), but I recently got one of those non-sale, obscure games for free lately in some obscure thing. After taking out Steam's cut in reselling I made... 10 cents. And then my sick background score got found out. :negative: Don't kill yourself right now over the stress of a swinging market and let some emotionless bot make hundreds of dollars in pennies.

Jippa
Feb 13, 2009
I am currently "playing" mountain. This thing is weird but interesting.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/313340/

Ragequit
Jun 1, 2006


Lipstick Apathy
There are plenty of sales on many different sites, but I went for the Mordor/Divinity:Original Sin deal at G2A.com. $30 for both games combined. Between that, the GOG sale, and the occasional daily at GMG, the only thing I'll pick up on Steam is Pinball FX2 and Gauntlet DLC. Possibly the new Payday 2 DLC, as some more hidden achievements appeared. The devs said Payday 2 is going to be supported for another 24 months, so I am sure there will be plenty more DLC to be had.

pentyne
Nov 7, 2012

Ragequit posted:

There are plenty of sales on many different sites, but I went for the Mordor/Divinity:Original Sin deal at G2A.com. $30 for both games combined. Between that, the GOG sale, and the occasional daily at GMG, the only thing I'll pick up on Steam is Pinball FX2 and Gauntlet DLC. Possibly the new Payday 2 DLC, as some more hidden achievements appeared. The devs said Payday 2 is going to be supported for another 24 months, so I am sure there will be plenty more DLC to be had.

G2A.com isn't included in the OP because there may or may not be some shadiness going on with their key acquisitions. A bunch of people praise it for getting cheap games, but whenever its mentioned there's always people ready to jump in and call it a scam for one reason or another. Nuuvem is 100% reliable and almost always has the cheapest games by far with no hassle or worry.

owl_pellet
Nov 20, 2005

show your enemy
what you look like


I wish I could turn my gift copies of Half Life 2 and HL2: Episode One into gems. They've been sitting in my inventory for years.

Xander77
Apr 6, 2009

Fuck it then. For another pit sandwich and some 'tater salad, I'll post a few more.



owl_pellet posted:

I wish I could turn my gift copies of Half Life 2 and HL2: Episode One into gems. They've been sitting in my inventory for years.
I wonder what on earth you could possibly do.
...

Guess you'll just have to delete them.

Ragequit
Jun 1, 2006


Lipstick Apathy

pentyne posted:

G2A.com isn't included in the OP because there may or may not be some shadiness going on with their key acquisitions. A bunch of people praise it for getting cheap games, but whenever its mentioned there's always people ready to jump in and call it a scam for one reason or another. Nuuvem is 100% reliable and almost always has the cheapest games by far with no hassle or worry.

Ah, I did not know that. I've never ordered from either before. Are the prices comparable?

Tippis
Mar 21, 2008

It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Xander77 posted:

I wonder what on earth you could possibly do.
...

Guess you'll just have to delete them.

Then again, is there anyone in the entire world that doesn't have HL2 and Ep1 already that you can actually gift them to?

The greatest gift of all would be an option to delete inventory items. :(

Ragequit
Jun 1, 2006


Lipstick Apathy

Tippis posted:

The greatest gift of all would be an option to delete inventory items. :(

Also games.

Xerol
Jan 13, 2007


Tippis posted:

Then again, is there anyone in the entire world that doesn't have HL2 and Ep1 already that you can actually gift them to?

The greatest gift of all would be an option to delete inventory items. :(

https://scrap.tf/raffles/JC6T3J

owl_pellet
Nov 20, 2005

show your enemy
what you look like


Xander77 posted:

I wonder what on earth you could possibly do.
...

Guess you'll just have to delete them.

I know it sounds dumb but everyone ever owns those things :(

Palpek
Dec 27, 2008


Do you feel it, Zach?
My coffee warned me about it.


Ragequit posted:

Ah, I did not know that. I've never ordered from either before. Are the prices comparable?
Nah, G2A is always cheaper, http://www.gamecodes.pl/ is often even better but they're key sites which some people got burned with (regional restrictions, keys getting revoked) so use them at your own risk. Nuuvem is the cheapest of those big legit shops.

Doom Goon
Sep 18, 2008


Ha, speaking of Trashbot (from the other thread).

Downs Duck
Nov 19, 2005
"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free do to anything"

Tippis posted:

The greatest gift of all would be an option to delete inventory items. :(

Ragequit posted:

Also games.

Or recycle them in some way (into gems or whatever).

Downs Duck fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Dec 13, 2014

Xander77
Apr 6, 2009

Fuck it then. For another pit sandwich and some 'tater salad, I'll post a few more.



owl_pellet posted:

I know it sounds dumb but everyone ever owns those things :(
Send them my way. If I can't find someone who wants these by the time the winter sale is over, you'll get a free game (not of your choice) :toxx:
http://steamcommunity.com/id/Xander77

Arnold of Soissons
Mar 4, 2011

by XyloJW
page one of ????

owl_pellet
Nov 20, 2005

show your enemy
what you look like


Xander77 posted:

Send them my way. If I can't find someone who wants these by the time the winter sale is over, you'll get a free game (not of your choice) :toxx:
http://steamcommunity.com/id/Xander77

Bad Rats here I come!

Jizz Festival
Oct 30, 2012
Lipstick Apathy
How did I never learn of trashbot before? Feels good to be rid of those loving pixel piracy coupons finally.

Now if there was just a way to get rid of inventory categories (I'm looking at you Portal 2 items).

Katana Gomai
Jan 14, 2007

"Thus," concluded Miyamoto, "you must give up everything you have to be my disciple."

Ground floor I guess

MediumWellDone
Oct 4, 2010

おいしいよね〜
ソースがね〜
濃厚だね〜
Thank you for buying my collection of lovely wallpapers everyone.

Also my steam Id is 'someone else' so feel free to gift me me hl2

e: where am i, how did I get here?

MediumWellDone fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Dec 13, 2014

Meiteron
Apr 4, 2008

Whoa! You're gonna be a legend!
So lets say I've never given a poo poo about the trading cards or booster packs associated with whatever metagames Steam comes up with for it's sales. I think I've opened my inventory a half dozen times in three years despite cards continually dropping into there.

This auction sounds good in theory but having crafted barely any badges and having only a few pages of cards I probably couldn't even scrape together 1000 gems by clearing it all out right now. Most of the games worthy of note are going for 20-100k gems right now and even the lovely worthless things appear to be going for 5-10k.

Am I correct in assuming there's no real way to take advantage of any of this and I should just ignore it and wait for the real sale which presumably starts on the 19th when this ends?

Anonymous Robot
Jun 1, 2007

Lost his leg in Robo War I
I can't use a humble gift url to add a copy of a game I own to my own inventory, can I?

a7m2
Jul 9, 2012


Meiteron posted:

So lets say I've never given a poo poo about the trading cards or booster packs associated with whatever metagames Steam comes up with for it's sales. I think I've opened my inventory a half dozen times in three years despite cards continually dropping into there.

This auction sounds good in theory but having crafted barely any badges and having only a few pages of cards I probably couldn't even scrape together 1000 gems by clearing it all out right now. Most of the games worthy of note are going for 20-100k gems right now and even the lovely worthless things appear to be going for 5-10k.

Am I correct in assuming there's no real way to take advantage of any of this and I should just ignore it and wait for the real sale which presumably starts on the 19th when this ends?

18th. Yes.

a7m2
Jul 9, 2012


Anonymous Robot posted:

I can't use a humble gift url to add a copy of a game I own to my own inventory, can I?

No.

Meiteron
Apr 4, 2008

Whoa! You're gonna be a legend!

Eruonen posted:

18th. Yes.

Thanks! Always nice to start a day with life becoming a little bit easier.

metricchip
Jul 16, 2014

I find https://steamdb.info/ to be super helpful. It shows you all the current sales and when they end but most importantly it shows you what the lowest price they have ever been.

Palpek
Dec 27, 2008


Do you feel it, Zach?
My coffee warned me about it.


Meiteron posted:

So lets say I've never given a poo poo about the trading cards or booster packs associated with whatever metagames Steam comes up with for it's sales. I think I've opened my inventory a half dozen times in three years despite cards continually dropping into there.

This auction sounds good in theory but having crafted barely any badges and having only a few pages of cards I probably couldn't even scrape together 1000 gems by clearing it all out right now. Most of the games worthy of note are going for 20-100k gems right now and even the lovely worthless things appear to be going for 5-10k.

Am I correct in assuming there's no real way to take advantage of any of this and I should just ignore it and wait for the real sale which presumably starts on the 19th when this ends?
Yeah, it's just a lot of hassle for not much payout, we're talking about $15 of free money if you play all the systems right for hours or something. The only real way to do something more was when the gems could have been duped and you could have turned hundreds of thousands of gems into card boosters. That poo poo ended a couple of hours into the event.

Heavy Metal
Sep 1, 2014

America's $1 Funnyman

Ragequit posted:

Also games.
Getting a steam game is like getting a tattoo. Bad Rats: the Rats' Revenge in your inventory might not be something you're proud of, but you've gotta accept it. Wear it with pride.

CrashCat
Jan 10, 2003

another shit post


Palpek posted:

Yeah, it's just a lot of hassle for not much payout, we're talking about $15 of free money if you play all the systems right for hours or something. The only real way to do something more was when the gems could have been duped and you could have turned hundreds of thousands of gems into card boosters. That poo poo ended a couple of hours into the event.
If you have assloads of booster eligibility and gems ever go back on the market you could probably just put in a lowball gem order for a sack or two and make your most expensive boosters to resell. It wouldn't take a lot of effort but you'd also make at most a buck or two and you'd have that money tied up for a while.

That said, since gems don't expire and the booster creator is seemingly going to stick around as a new feature, I would actually suggest waiting until after the auction when gem prices tank (again, if they are ever marketed again) because people's gems suddenly can't be used to bid on games. I expect a lot of the more expensive boosters will be devalued by then too in the gold rush so you should have to reevaluate if it's even worth flipping gems. Or sit on a big buy order at a lowball price nobody should possibly fill and wait for a panic.

Xander77
Apr 6, 2009

Fuck it then. For another pit sandwich and some 'tater salad, I'll post a few more.



Palpek posted:

Yeah, it's just a lot of hassle for not much payout, we're talking about $15 of free money if you play all the systems right for hours or something. The only real way to do something more was when the gems could have been duped and you could have turned hundreds of thousands of gems into card boosters. That poo poo ended a couple of hours into the event.
Was the "one booster per day" limitation introduced after the event was restarted?

CrashCat
Jan 10, 2003

another shit post


^ nah, that was in there even during the duping bug. Or I probably would have got myself banned for abusing it

Heavy Metal posted:

Getting a steam game is like getting a tattoo. Bad Rats: the Rats' Revenge in your inventory might not be something you're proud of, but you've gotta accept it. Wear it with pride.
Tattoos can be 'removed' though, with great cost and effort. Maybe they can make that a new use for gems; pay 10,000 gems to remove Bad Rats from your Library.

And get it gifted back to you immediately.

Palpek
Dec 27, 2008


Do you feel it, Zach?
My coffee warned me about it.


Xander77 posted:

Was the "one booster per day" limitation introduced after the event was restarted?
It always was and still is "one booster per day per game" so people with a lot of games could still get a lot of boosters.

Downs Duck
Nov 19, 2005
"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free do to anything"

metricchip posted:

I find https://steamdb.info/ to be super helpful. It shows you all the current sales and when they end but most importantly it shows you what the lowest price they have ever been.

Is there any point to use steam.db's Chrome Add-On? It looks like it features some/the same things as Enhanced Steam (or maybe it IS Enhanced Steam idk?).

Logan 5
Jan 29, 2007

Bash -> To the Cop
So what will likely net me the most steambux, selling my cards/boosters/other junk or turning them into gems and then selling those? I don't care about much else other than having a few extra steam dollars to use for the sale. I'm guessing the first, seems like the least amount of :effort:

Party Plane Jones
Jul 1, 2007

by Reene
Fun Shoe

Palpek posted:

It always was and still is "one booster per day per game" so people with a lot of games could still get a lot of boosters.

Putting in massive gem buy orders so I could turn around and buy boosters was the right thing to do when the price tanked; turned out the $10 I spent getting enough gems for 250 booster packs translated into $60 in sold cards. :stare:

Ragequit
Jun 1, 2006


Lipstick Apathy

Party Plane Jones posted:

Putting in massive gem buy orders so I could turn around and buy boosters was the right thing to do when the price tanked; turned out the $10 I spent getting enough gems for 250 booster packs translated into $60 in sold cards. :stare:

Holy moly that's a lot of clicking though. How long did it take you to list 750 cards?

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Downs Duck
Nov 19, 2005
"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free do to anything"

Party Plane Jones posted:

Putting in massive gem buy orders so I could turn around and buy boosters was the right thing to do when the price tanked; turned out the $10 I spent getting enough gems for 250 booster packs translated into $60 in sold cards. :stare:

I did the same, except I unpacked them and let them sit in my inventory. Not sure if I'm gonna craft badges or just sell them, prices have been steadily climbing on every card I've checked.

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