Video Game Deals Catch-All

garion333 wrote:
merphle wrote:
mrwynd wrote:
merphle wrote:

Nier Replicant ver.1.22... is on a 20% preorder discount at GreenManGaming. Note that the discount doesn't show up until you're logged into a GMG account. It's only 20%, but it's the only deal in town for the game as far as I can tell, and as much as I avoid preordering games, this is one that I'm eager to play on day one - this Friday!

I'm hesitant to pre-order this specifically because the previous Nier Automata on Steam has so many complaints about bugs that went unpatched for years. I thoroughly enjoyed the game on PS4 but never picked up the PC version because of all the complaints.

Nier Automata released in March 2017 on Steam. I played through it in Dec 2017, and experienced zero bugs or other issues. I obviously can't speak for any problems other folks may have had, but from my perspective at least, I had a great time with it.

Folks modded the game to fix it. S-E dropped it on Steam and barely fixed any of the issues. I'm hoping that current era SE, who now has numerous games on PC, understands they can't do that anymore.

A number of Japanese companies began putting their games on pc and it felt a bit like "okay, fine, we'll try pc again, it didn't generate enough revenue a decade ago, so why would it do so now?" They dropped them, didn't support them and then later on got better at pc releases since they properly budgeted support for the release.

Out of curiosity (and I recognize we're going off-topic from deals, but it's not the first time...):

Has anyone here directly experienced bugs with the Steam release of Nier Automata significant enough to impair your enjoyment of the game? Just click the like button so we don't have to keep spamming this thread.

It's boggling my mind because the experience I had was virtually flawless (9 months after release, unmodded).

I asked the same thing in the Arkham Knight thread. I remember at release it was so bad they pulled it from Steam for a while. I looked it up to make sure I remembered correctly.

I finally finished Origins last summer and that was the only Batman game left, so I asked if I should play on PC (maybe it was free on Epic?) or PS5 (PS+ freebie a while back). And everyone here said no problems on PC. And I was like y'all sure?

Hand of Fate 2 on Epic Store for free.
Also Alien Isolation which has been free before. I will own it, but unless I suffer that special brain damage that suddenly enjoys anxiety and being afraid I will never install and play. But brains can be different so... enjoy!

If you're a fan of the Alien movie franchise you will not be disappointed with Alien Isolation. It nails everything. Such a great game, even if the ending is a little drawn out.

It's a wonderful game.

My only complaint is that it's a little too long for its own good. The novelty wears off, so the horror turns into tedium.

But for that first half? Absolute perfection. Truly does the Alien franchise justice.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2...

Pardon the wall of media but I just noticed that Brigador: Up Armored is at its historic low of $9 for a few more days.

It's a criminally overlooked game that was made with the kind of TLC one rarely sees. The package just feels so complete from top to bottom. The look, the feel, the sounds, the vibe. All the way down to the metric ton of codex lore lovingly assembled for a genre that has absolutely no expectation or call for it.

Absolutely killer package.

Spring a couple extra bucks for the Deluxe Edition that includes OST by Makeup & Vanity Set: 2 LPs, 2 EPs & an audiobook. 40+ tracks of hyper-fat synthwave beats.

Brigador was free in December on GOG, too. Many people may already have it.

Historical low for TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children on Steam this weekend. Pretty good SRPG by all accounts. Fire Emblem, XCOM, Disgaea, etc. battle style. Been on my list for a while.

Since people will probably just breeze by Hand of Fate 2 as a numbered sequel to a game you never heard about, let me pitch you:

It's a video game version of a dungeon crawl card game with 22 unique campaign adventure modifiers that force you to mix up your play style each run. As you move around the board you're managing four resources: life, food, money, and fame, and have some interesting choices to make around that management depending on the situation. Each card you flip over has a scenario you have to resolve (there's I think 100+ unique scenarios, maybe more?). On certain choices you face combat. Others pop you into a dice roll challenge where you have to roll 3 dice equal or greater to an objective. Even on "failure" there's unique consequences ranging from health penalties to getting thrown into a combat arena. The combat is lite but very open for mastery. A generous parry and riposte system combined with unique weapons/armour/shields/rings means combat is rarely stale. Once you've mastered combat (which doesn't take too long) you can seek out tough encounters at low health because it's not too difficult to have flawless runs. There's an entire other layer around card collecting by meeting certain card objectives to collect their tokens (which reward new encounter, equipment and other cards) and it's just a delightful collection of systems that doesn't necessarily break boundaries, but provides tens of hours of enjoyment.

Did I mention you get ALL THAT, for FREE!?!?!?

Tempted to pick up Creeper World 4 on sale for < $17

staygold wrote:

Since people will probably just breeze by Hand of Fate 2 as a numbered sequel to a game you never heard about

I enjoyed the first one for 20 or so hours. Looking forward to checking this out

staygold wrote:

dungeon crawl card game

I stopped reading right here. I might have continued after dungeon crawl, but card games are a non-starter for me. Thank you for leading with that. Not my type of game.

mrtomaytohead wrote:
staygold wrote:

dungeon crawl card game

I stopped reading right here. I might have continued after dungeon crawl, but card games are a non-starter for me. Thank you for leading with that. Not my type of game.

If it helps the game predates slay the spire and all the clones/insprited stuff that came after. All the cards determines is the side events/items you encounter on the map. It plays much more like a batman game inspiration combat wise. Which is probable not a selling point for some either...

mrtomaytohead wrote:

Brigador was free in December on GOG, too. Many people may already have it.

I’m glad you mentioned that, since I was thinking about grabbing it. I had given a steam key from a humble bundle away awhile ago and thought I didn’t have it. Turns out I had it on GOG anyway.

master0 wrote:
mrtomaytohead wrote:
staygold wrote:

dungeon crawl card game

I stopped reading right here. I might have continued after dungeon crawl, but card games are a non-starter for me. Thank you for leading with that. Not my type of game.

If it helps the game predates slay the spire and all the clones/insprited stuff that came after. All the cards determines is the side events/items you encounter on the map. It plays much more like a batman game inspiration combat wise. Which is probable not a selling point for some either...

Yeah, don't judge it based on that description, it's wholly different than deck builders.

mrtomaytohead wrote:
staygold wrote:

dungeon crawl card game

I stopped reading right here. I might have continued after dungeon crawl, but card games are a non-starter for me. Thank you for leading with that. Not my type of game.

As stated, there is no playing with cards. The cards serve as the vehicle for randomization, nothing more. Think of Dead Cells’ custom mode where you can select which items exist in the pool.

robc wrote:

Tempted to pick up Creeper World 4 on sale for < $17

Well damn, I did it again. I just went to buy Creeper World 4 and missed the sale. I thought it went through the weekend. Next time! It's unbelievable how many times my procrastination has made me miss sales, but it probably has saved me money

Quite a specific heads up... One for the UK folks who might be after Doom Eternal on PS4, £5 in Asda at the mo.

I'm not sure if this deserves its own thread, but this seems like at least a starting point: it looks like Humble Bundle has gone evil.

When they started, buying something from them was however much you wanted to spend, and then you could use sliders to determine how much of your purchase went to charities and how much went to Humble. My typical purchase was 90% to charities and 10% to Humble.

Well, that's now changed. There are no more sliders. Now the split has changed, and you can't override it; 15% at most to charity, and 85% to Humble.

Not so humble anymore, eh? They're still using the charities' names, but giving them almost nothing.

It's still 15% more to charity than literally every other storefront, so maybe don't toss the baby out with the bathwater?

I'm seeing a consistent 5% to charity, 30% (of course) to the Humble store, and 65% to the publishers.

Archangel wrote:

I'm seeing a consistent 5% to charity, 30% (of course) to the Humble store, and 65% to the publishers.

5% is default, you can opt to bump it up to 15%. Or at least that's what the news story I read about this said, but I'm not seeing where that switch is on the Humble page.

Malor wrote:

My typical purchase was 90% to charities and 10% to Humble.

Think about this for a hot second.

Are you surprised that publishers might not want to sell on a storefront that allows the user to decide on a whim that they don't want to give them any money?

Like how is that a sustainable business model? It's frankly amazing that it's been going on as long as it has.

Jonman wrote:

Like how is that a sustainable business model? It's frankly amazing that it's been going on as long as it has.

That was the point though. Developers were essentially donating the games. Its not like this on the Humble store (add any game I tried to the cart and they all say in red 'not eligible for charity contribution), but in these bundles that was the whole point.

Eh, as long as it's displayed I can't call it evil. And honestly, let's not pretend any of us were using the bundles are some great charitable contribution. We wanted games and could pat ourselves on the back as our backlogs grew.

polypusher wrote:
Jonman wrote:

Like how is that a sustainable business model? It's frankly amazing that it's been going on as long as it has.

That was the point though. Developers were essentially donating the games. Its not like this on the Humble store (add any game I tried to the cart and they all say in red 'not eligible for charity contribution), but in these bundles that was the whole point.

Nope. Developers make BANK off of Humble Bundles.

I found an old article on Gamasutra about it

Here is a really standard indie title’s sales. Important take away;

- Bulk Distributors (Humble Bundle) contributed to 11% of the total revenue

- Bulk Distributors earned 63% of total sales volumes

It wasn't a charitable donation, it was an essential and significant portion of many games' business model.

Jonman wrote:
polypusher wrote:
Jonman wrote:

Like how is that a sustainable business model? It's frankly amazing that it's been going on as long as it has.

That was the point though. Developers were essentially donating the games. Its not like this on the Humble store (add any game I tried to the cart and they all say in red 'not eligible for charity contribution), but in these bundles that was the whole point.

Nope. Developers make BANK off of Humble Bundles.

I found an old article on Gamasutra about it

Here is a really standard indie title’s sales. Important take away;

- Bulk Distributors (Humble Bundle) contributed to 11% of the total revenue

- Bulk Distributors earned 63% of total sales volumes

It wasn't a charitable donation, it was an essential and significant portion of many games' business model.

You can use stats to prove anything. 76% of people know that.

The Article wrote:

We’ll use Humble Bundle Indie # 11 which sold 494,153 units. Let’s say your game earns 25 cents per sale earning you $123,538.25

25 cents per sale. That bundle had indie hard hitters too. Guacamelee, Dust, Antichamber. Not a no-namer in the bunch and each sale on Steam would have been netting them $10-$20.

I take your point that it's not really a donation from the developers' perspective, but they're getting a sliver of the value of their game from sources like that.

polypusher wrote:

You can use stats to prove anything. 76% of people know that.

The Article wrote:

We’ll use Humble Bundle Indie # 11 which sold 494,153 units. Let’s say your game earns 25 cents per sale earning you $123,538.25

25 cents per sale. That bundle had indie hard hitters too. Guacamelee, Dust, Antichamber. Not a no-namer in the bunch and each sale on Steam would have been netting them $10-$20.

I take your point that it's not really a donation from the developers' perspective, but they're getting a sliver of the value of their game from sources like that.

Yes, but they're not putting that game in the bundle when it's still selling plenty of copies at $10-$20 on Steam. Once those sales dry up, Humble is the next set of verterbae in the long tail.

~10% of total revenue is not "a sliver of the value", that's a substantial portion of it.

Humble bundle started as a charity that sold games. Now it's a business that gives to charity. Nothing wrong with that. Once they started trying to become a more permanent fixture this was inevitable. There's no way they can operate the store they have with that model. Especially after a lot of other groups copied the model.

Honestly the hey day of steam/humble deals seem like it's over. Not sure why, but everything seems to be balanced out.

I was always 5-10% Humble, the rest to the publisher. That seemed fair for the service that the store was offering. 30% seems ridiculous.