Good bye 80--95% steam sales!
Nov. 21st, 2015 05:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owsf2000Well, I suppose you might see one now and then just to prove they still happen, but as Steam has announced for the upcoming Winter and holiday sales, Steam's Autumn and Holiday sales will ditch daily deals and flash sales.
Essentially what you're going to get are a single discount price for things that will last the duration of the entire sale. Devs and the like aren't nearly as likely to offer sweet discounts for an entire week compared to the 8hr or 24hr deals of the past. So basically expect two things this time around.
1. Far less attractive sales.
2. Expect to be able to check the store once and you're good to go back to your regular life, knowing it's not going to get any better than whatever it is you see.
Some people are saying Steam is doing this to avoid abuse with the refund policy. (buy game at 50% off. Oh shit, it's now 95% off! refund, rebuy! - that kinda thing) But seriously they aren't even trying to think of a way around that. (And why would they when they think they're going to earn a shitload more money by encouraging weaker, less attractive sales.)
Off the top of my head a simple modification to their policy can axe that abuse off at the kneecap. Let's assume the sale lasts a week. If a game is refunded during the sale, prevent repurchasing the game for a minimum of 1 week, probably 2. If you're just doing the refunding to get a cheaper price, then you're abusing the purpose of the refund policy. So if this hinders you, fucking good! If you refunded the game because you found it sucks ass and regret every spending a penny on it, then... odds are you're not going to be rebuying it at all are you?
Personally I just see this as the first step towards what I predicted back in the early days of the PS3/PSP/etc. That eventually digital sales will disappear or become so rare and so minor that people will flock to a 5% off. The main reason we see digital sales at all is because of the physical counterpart that ends up on sale. But with the physical goods these days becoming more bugridden, incomplete, or nothing-but-a-fucking-steam-installer, you can see physical goods as already being on the way out this generation.
Once they're completely gone, we'll even fewer sales and the price tags are going to be just as high as the physical media ever was - despite the fact that proponents of digital distribution were always about "oh we're going to see prices drop because of all the money publishers will save by not having to print the discs or manuals or ship them around the world, etc etc etc". Hint: That shit isn't happening, and digital games release as expensive if not more expensive than their physical counterparts. And the prices of both just continue to soar.
"Oh but games are more expensive to make these days!" Fuck that shit. The word is "budgeting". It's something every major game developer and publisher these days seem to know fuck all about as they blow literally millions on just marketing the game. (Because they know they need to brainwash you into liking the game since otherwise you know you'll hate it.)
Essentially what you're going to get are a single discount price for things that will last the duration of the entire sale. Devs and the like aren't nearly as likely to offer sweet discounts for an entire week compared to the 8hr or 24hr deals of the past. So basically expect two things this time around.
1. Far less attractive sales.
2. Expect to be able to check the store once and you're good to go back to your regular life, knowing it's not going to get any better than whatever it is you see.
Some people are saying Steam is doing this to avoid abuse with the refund policy. (buy game at 50% off. Oh shit, it's now 95% off! refund, rebuy! - that kinda thing) But seriously they aren't even trying to think of a way around that. (And why would they when they think they're going to earn a shitload more money by encouraging weaker, less attractive sales.)
Off the top of my head a simple modification to their policy can axe that abuse off at the kneecap. Let's assume the sale lasts a week. If a game is refunded during the sale, prevent repurchasing the game for a minimum of 1 week, probably 2. If you're just doing the refunding to get a cheaper price, then you're abusing the purpose of the refund policy. So if this hinders you, fucking good! If you refunded the game because you found it sucks ass and regret every spending a penny on it, then... odds are you're not going to be rebuying it at all are you?
Personally I just see this as the first step towards what I predicted back in the early days of the PS3/PSP/etc. That eventually digital sales will disappear or become so rare and so minor that people will flock to a 5% off. The main reason we see digital sales at all is because of the physical counterpart that ends up on sale. But with the physical goods these days becoming more bugridden, incomplete, or nothing-but-a-fucking-steam-installer, you can see physical goods as already being on the way out this generation.
Once they're completely gone, we'll even fewer sales and the price tags are going to be just as high as the physical media ever was - despite the fact that proponents of digital distribution were always about "oh we're going to see prices drop because of all the money publishers will save by not having to print the discs or manuals or ship them around the world, etc etc etc". Hint: That shit isn't happening, and digital games release as expensive if not more expensive than their physical counterparts. And the prices of both just continue to soar.
"Oh but games are more expensive to make these days!" Fuck that shit. The word is "budgeting". It's something every major game developer and publisher these days seem to know fuck all about as they blow literally millions on just marketing the game. (Because they know they need to brainwash you into liking the game since otherwise you know you'll hate it.)
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no subject
Date: 2015-11-21 07:22 pm (UTC)And, yeah, you've been predicting the death of Steam sales for years (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/577703.html?thread=539303#t539303) now (and that wasn't even close to being the first time). Hell, the very fucking day after you left that particular comment on my LJ was when I started seeing the first stirrings (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/579520.html) of such talk (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/592787.html) showing up in the gaming "news." So, yeah, it is, sadly, getting ever closer to the day when you'll be proven right.
Anyway, as for me, I never really gave much of a shit about the flash sales during the holidays or whatever, to start with, unless I just happened to be checking the site at that particular time (i.e. I never sat there and refreshed Steam a trillion times like apparently so many other people do [or used to do, I guess]). However, speaking in general, those huge 50-75%-plus off sales are pretty much the only reason I even still bother to buy any video games at all anymore, these days. If they'd really rather have $0 from me instead of $5-$10 or whatever, then that's fine, I'm perfectly okay with giving them $0.00. The day that they stop offering the sales for good is, quite simply, the day that I stop buying video games for good. Period. Full stop. End of line. Enough said.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-29 12:35 am (UTC)Very little goes above 75% off, and most of the stuff that even approaches that level of discount are old games, games with poor/mixed reviews, games owned by Valve themselves (which we ignore as it's like them saying "look look! see, still getting awesome deals with the new format! So what if these are all our OLD games!"), and games that have lots and lots of DLC - of which all or most of the DLC is typically not on sale or included.)
Sure, there's going to be some exceptions, but overall... much more blah. I will probably be picking up a couple of game editor progs on Monday... but even that's iffy. Final verdict? Valve's getting a lot less cash out of me this year.