Steam Summer Sale 2012 Gift-All

shoptroll wrote:

Just took a look at the Steam announcements feed from 2011 and 2010. Both years the sale started the last week of June, so there's a much higher chance (based on previous observations) that the sale starts this week.

Clocky knows what he's doing. This thread went live with a purpose.

garion333 wrote:
shoptroll wrote:

Just took a look at the Steam announcements feed from 2011 and 2010. Both years the sale started the last week of June, so there's a much higher chance (based on previous observations) that the sale starts this week.

Clocky knows what he's doing. This thread went live with a purpose.

Granted it's not like he's Nostradumus or something. Around here you could start a Summer Sale thread on January 1 and pretty much guarantee it will still be active when the sale actually hits.

garion333 wrote:

Clocky knows what he's doing. This thread went live with a purpose.

And I'm holding the reins! Bwah-ha-ha!

imbiginjapan wrote:

Granted it's not like he's Nostradumus or something. Around here you could start a Summer Sale thread on January 1 and pretty much guarantee it will still be active when the sale actually hits.

I knew you'd say that. I am indeed Nostradumbus.

Hah, I love how they won't say the name of the band who made Safety Dance.

garion333 wrote:
shoptroll wrote:

Just took a look at the Steam announcements feed from 2011 and 2010. Both years the sale started the last week of June, so there's a much higher chance (based on previous observations) that the sale starts this week.

Clocky knows what he's doing. This thread went live with a purpose.

Yes, but there was some mention of a 6/12 date which I think is unlikely based on the past history.

I actually didn't buy anything during the winter sale (as I was working on things bought during the last summer sale). I will probably pick up a couple of things during this sale, but not much. I have a bunch of big meaty RPGs on my pile still, so I'm avoiding those, and most of the other games I'm interested in are things I'd rather play on 360. I do plan to pick up World of Goo, and maybe Frozen Synapse. Other than that, I'll be keeping an eye in shorter indie games mostly.

Garden Ninja wrote:

I actually didn't buy anything during the winter sale (as I was working on things bought during the last summer sale). I will probably pick up a couple of things during this sale, but not much. I have a bunch of big meaty RPGs on my pile still, so I'm avoiding those, and most of the other games I'm interested in are things I'd rather play on 360. I do plan to pick up World of Goo, and maybe Frozen Synapse. Other than that, I'll be keeping an eye in shorter indie games mostly.

Yah, Steam sales are a lot more fun when your pile is very small, as mine was for the last Winter sale and now for this one (just four games). I just feel better about spending money on video games when I know there is a very good chance I will play it in the next few months.

Also the only game I have bought since the winter sale is Mass Effect 3, so yeah....havent had much new stuff in awhile

Kamakazi010654 wrote:

Yah, Steam sales are a lot more fun when your pile is very small, as mine was for the last Winter sale and now for this one (just four games).

Exactly. That's where I was at the last summer sale. I had knocked my pile down to like 6 games, and had just built a new gaming PC, so I went a bit crazy. I'm still working through those games, so there is less pull to get new ones. I'll probably give some games away as gifts, but unless it looks like something I want to play right away, I probably won't get much for myself.

AUs_TBirD wrote:
tanstaafl wrote:

Quite probably unrelated, but it looks like the long-awaited "Meet the Pyro" is being released on Wednesday
http://www.teamfortress.com/pyromania/

Probably not unrelated at all. Likely some big TF2 (or 2.5?) thing will open the sale, it looks like.

oMonarca wrote:

Pardon me if I'm filthily skimming this thread, but perchance did this conversation produce dragons engaged in sexual intercourse with automobiles, in a fashion such as the one prevalent yesteryear?

I believe we're halfway there already.

IMAGE(http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k301/aus_tbird/gasp.jpg)

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/3VeKK.png)

shoptroll wrote:

Just took a look at the Steam announcements feed from 2011 and 2010. Both years the sale started the last week of June, so there's a much higher chance (based on previous observations) that the sale starts this week.

Prior to the last few Steam sales we've seen game patches containing achievements relevant to the upcoming sale. So far there hasn't been any of that happening. I can't see Valve stressing their servers by holding patches up until the sale day just for the sake of secrecy, so I expect they've either ditched the whole "gamification" of the sale or that we've got another week or two to wait.

Elycion wrote:

Prior to the last few Steam sales we've seen game patches containing achievements relevant to the upcoming sale. So far there hasn't been any of that happening. I can't see Valve stressing their servers by holding patches up until the sale day just for the sake of secrecy, so I expect they've either ditched the whole "gamification" of the sale or that we've got another week or two to wait.

The other side to that is it means getting a whole bunch of developers involved. If the trend were to continue, it would be a few times times (up to three?) a year that a developer would need to dust off the old code, which would need to be steamworks to be featured, and then design, add and test something fitting for a days worth of sales.

I can appreciate that not every developer would want to do that all the time, plus I think they've probably exhausted older titles that can get another bump like that.

Kamakazi010654 wrote:

I don't know, there is just such a massive spike in traffic for that 10 minutes every day when it changes. It might alleviate it a bit if they had a blog or something where they dropped the deals right at noon, that would be just text and maybe wouldn't crash anything.

That like first hour or so of the sale when things are really messed up, I don't know if they have to just run a ton of scripts or something to change the prices but it takes far too long to make that initial change over of all games.

But that's also when games are accidentally 75% off that were only supposed to be 50%, and other fun mistakes that have happened in sales. If you don't jump on them immediately you miss out when they get corrected.

Or the times when a couple of games have ran out of keys for the 24 hours. So if you didn't buy it in the first few hours, you missed the sale price.

1-1:30 eastern is prime time for buying stuff, if you can.

Scratched wrote:

I'd like to think there's someone on this site who "knows computers". Is there anything valve can do to stop their web servers melting for the 10 minutes around when they change the deals? It seems like the best they could do is change how they announce the deals, using other media.

Well they could buy enough servers to handle the load but since the load is only that high for 30 minutes a day for 30 days a year that's a lot of wasted servers the other 99% of the year. It's a trade off they kind of have to make.

Unless they're using some kind of pay per usage cloud service which I doubt they are doing.

Stele wrote:

But that's also when games are accidentally 75% off that were only supposed to be 50%, and other fun mistakes that have happened in sales. If you don't jump on them immediately you miss out when they get corrected. :D

Haven't their also been occurrences of the opposite?

A - "Cool, that game I was waiting on is 50% off, I guess that's as low as it's going to go soon" .... (buys game)
Valve admin - "Whoops, that daily deal was supposed to be better" (drops price further)
A - (cries because they could have saved $1.50 more)

Maybe? But I think it's usually been more discounted switched to less in most every case. I seem to remember SPAZ being that way? And I know one of the DoW2 games was like that. Retribution maybe? And a couple of others. I could go back and look through receipts or sales web sites... but that's a lot of work.

And anyway why are you buying something for less than 66 or 75% off?

When some games end up 80-90% off in these daily deals, 66% off is the minimum you should consider buying. Unless your pile is just completely empty.

An empty pile...are you new here?

Dammit, I can feel it already. I start out all high and mighty thinking, ah yeah, this will be a breeze to get through. Then the excitement slowly builds. The anticipation... it's like the jaws music just starts playing and getting louder and louder... I can feel my wallet quivering in fear, scrambling to hide itself in my shoe, screaming for protection from the beastly steam sale and it's dreaded "savings". It's like seeing those magical numbers 75% and falling weak to their power. Oh god I'm doomed! Dooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooomed!

IMAGE(http://file.walagata.com/w/the-salamander/doooomed.jpg)

shoptroll wrote:

Yes, but there was some mention of a 6/12 date.

This is what I've been hearing.

soonerjudd wrote:
shoptroll wrote:

Yes, but there was some mention of a 6/12 date.

This is what I've been hearing.

So, it started 2 weeks ago and we all totally missed it?

The sale's already over, where have you been?!

I got Skyrim and Max Payne 3 for $5! Also Diablo 3 somehow! I don't even know!

merphle wrote:
soonerjudd wrote:
shoptroll wrote:

Yes, but there was some mention of a 6/12 date.

This is what I've been hearing.

So, it started 2 weeks ago and we all totally missed it?

Summer Sale in December!

Deadmonkeys wrote:
merphle wrote:
soonerjudd wrote:
shoptroll wrote:

Yes, but there was some mention of a 6/12 date.

This is what I've been hearing.

So, it started 2 weeks ago and we all totally missed it?

Summer Sale in December!

So it was 12/06, I see.

I was really hoping to get a good deal on ME3, oh wait.... dang.

It's possible Valve may be backing off on the sale idea... I think they're saturating the market pretty hard, and they may drive down game prices permanently if they keep up the aggressive sales tactics. This doesn't bother ME any, of course, but maybe they're starting to think that this is a short-term tactic that's damaging their overall business.

I haven't bothered to actually _research_ trends or anything, but does anyone else think the last couple of sales have had a number of repeats? Particularly in the last big sale I found many of the big discounted items I wanted had already been discounted (and purchased by me), so I was less geared up each day.

Maybe I'm just getting old(er) and (more) cynical.

The only thing I'm considering is Skyrim @15$~ . My pile is still huge even though I'm fairly selective but I don't let that bother me too much.

Burnt Toast wrote:

I haven't bothered to actually _research_ trends or anything, but does anyone else think the last couple of sales have had a number of repeats? Particularly in the last big sale I found many of the big discounted items I wanted had already been discounted (and purchased by me), so I was less geared up each day.

Maybe I'm just getting old(er) and (more) cynical.

To some extent, it's the natural evolution. During the first Christmas sale, people bought lots of old stuff cheap, just because they could. Well, when the next sale came along, they couldn't buy that old stuff again. Eventually, you reach a point where you're basically just buying the last year or two's releases.

In preparation of the summer sale giveawayfest anyone want "Cthulu Saves the World" or "Breath of Death VII"?

Malor wrote:

It's possible Valve may be backing off on the sale idea... I think they're saturating the market pretty hard, and they may drive down game prices permanently if they keep up the aggressive sales tactics. This doesn't bother ME any, of course, but maybe they're starting to think that this is a short-term tactic that's damaging their overall business.

A good point, also Valve may not have much of a hand in it. They can ask developers and publishers if they want to run a sale on what they're selling through steam, but they don't have to accept, so without that big mass acceptance there's no big mass sale.

I wouldn't mind more frequent, smaller focused sales, which could mean some things get more attention. I guess the question is how many extra purchases are made and visits to the site on a big event, compared to a "X week" event.

Scratched wrote:

I wouldn't mind more frequent, smaller focused sales, which could mean some things get more attention.

Daily and Weekend Deals aren't good enough?