The Steam Winter Sale is now live, prepare your wallet

Steam Sale is a dissappointment generally. There are so less discounts on games that i'm interested.

I REALLY wanted a discount on RimWorld :(
Game is so expensive right now and publisher is so greedy not even giving a 10 or 20%.

Same for Factorio.

You missed the lower prices on both by about 3 or 4 months.

Rimworld was $30(US) before release and is now $35.
Factorio was $20(US) a few months ago, then announced an increase about a month prior to becoming $30.
Both companies have long explained that they do not plan to go on sale. (and many complaint threads have been in each games respective forums every few months.)

The only way I know how to get a discount on either is to sign up for a month of "Humble Monthly" to get 10% back on either or both... But, the cost of Humble Monthly is twice as much as what you would save; so it is only worthwhile if you want the titles the month you sign up.

That being said, IMHO, both games are worth the price even if there is no discount. They are both half the cost of a so-called AAA title. Both games are also from small indie developers that have shown that they plan to continue supporting the title as well... A lot better than huge corporations that fail to care anything at all about their customers after the game is bought.

Finally, despite what the developers have said, both will go on sale eventually. However not until the people buying the game goes into a significant decline; but with the popularity of both (each with over 1 million copies sold) it may be a long wait. (Its a simple rule of marketing... when people are no longer buying what you are selling, lower the price.)

Nope. What I liked I would always buy afterwards. Depending on how much I liked it, I might even buy it on smaller discount, get special editions, DLCs, etc. And I would make sure to promote good games as well.

Oh, I get that approach. I do it a lot with music (although it's not always exactly piracy since it's often posted by the artists themselves). I can't imagine buying an album without listening to it first. At least you have Steam's no-questions-asked refund policy under 2 hours if you want to sample games before judging whether the price is fair.

I would definitely recommend Pathfinder Kingmaker to any RPG fans, most problems have been fixed, and it's a massively addicting game.

That's interesting to hear. I heard only about the weird difficulty balance/progression. Has that been fixed and what else has?

Steam Sale is a dissappointment generally. There are so less discounts on games that i'm interested.

Do you mean too small discounts or too few games discounted?

Of the 48 (relased) games on my wish list, only 5 don't have a discount, and it wouldn't surprise me if the developers/publishers of those are gone.


Last edited by Eike on 21 December 2018 at 8:51 am UTC

For those that have been contemplating getting a Steam Controller, they're 50% off in this sale. I've not seen them that discountered before!

I'm finally getting Helium Rain. I haven't played a space trading type game since Freelancers! I had hoped they would bring Elite Dangerous to Linux at some point, but it never happened...

Happy gaming everybody ^_^

Steam Sale is a dissappointment generally. There are so less discounts on games that i'm interested.

Do you mean too small discounts or too few games discounted?

Of the 48 (relased) games on my wish list, only 5 don't have a discount, and it wouldn't surprise me if the developers/publishers of those are gone.

Small discount rates mostly.

I'm sure Bethesda and Rockstar are still alive.

Aww no. I just checked my Steam wishlist, and there are a bunch of games at an acceptable level of discount. Now, it is great to grab them on discount rather than pay more... BUT... I still have a massive stockpile of existing bought games that I haven't touched yet. I like owning NOW but I'm also thinking about the practicalities, e.g. The fact that I could maybe buy at a later date at an even more substantial discount.

Also, it is quite annoying to potentially go through pages and pages of titles, hunting out that one beacon which is so tempting that you can't resist. Fortunately many of my wishlist titles that really appeal to me are hovering at 20% discount level, which doesn't break my discipline.

One small indie title that I tried the free demo and liked is Frost which is sitting at 40% discount. Thinking that I'll probably grab that. Thumbs up to free demos.

Also might grab I Hate Running Backwards which is at a tasty 75% discount.

I'm finally getting Helium Rain. I haven't played a space trading type game since Freelancers! I had hoped they would bring Elite Dangerous to Linux at some point, but it never happened...

Consider buying X4: Foundations when the Linux port is finished. Seems to be an amazing game.

Yeah, it does look really good. I've got it wishlisted, and just waiting for the Linux release.

It's from a German developer too, so worth supporting in my book


Last edited by FredO on 21 December 2018 at 10:57 am UTC

people are ruining a good thing here by getting greedy.

Honestly, I might as well go back to piracy.

Double standards?

Nope. What I liked I would always buy afterwards. Depending on how much I liked it, I might even buy it on smaller discount, get special editions, DLCs, etc. And I would make sure to promote good games as well.

But cheaper games meant I would risk getting more stuff, although I might end up not liking it. That meant I would get to try out more things, while industry gets more of my money overall, seems like a sweet deal for everyone. But now I see games that are over three years old cost 10+ euros on a Steam's biggest sale. Who does that benefit exactly? Whoever really wanted that game has bought it already, you're not generating any new sales with that strategy. Withholding art from people is wrong, developers should care to get their money, but also that their art is available to audiences.

Games are NOT art. At best, the contain some art, alongside other things. For example music in games is art. But games per se, are NOT art.

This is just a bullshit excuse we tell ourselves just so we can justify the time we waste playing them. We want to feel like we are experiencing art while all we are doing is playing with virtual toys.

Video games are just entertainment, and there is nothing wrong with that. Stop deluding yourselves.

Of course games are art. Stop deluding yourself.


people are ruining a good thing here by getting greedy.

Honestly, I might as well go back to piracy.

Double standards?

Nope. What I liked I would always buy afterwards. Depending on how much I liked it, I might even buy it on smaller discount, get special editions, DLCs, etc. And I would make sure to promote good games as well.

But cheaper games meant I would risk getting more stuff, although I might end up not liking it. That meant I would get to try out more things, while industry gets more of my money overall, seems like a sweet deal for everyone. But now I see games that are over three years old cost 10+ euros on a Steam's biggest sale. Who does that benefit exactly? Whoever really wanted that game has bought it already, you're not generating any new sales with that strategy. Withholding art from people is wrong, developers should care to get their money, but also that their art is available to audiences.

Games are NOT art. At best, the contain some art, alongside other things. For example music in games is art. But games per se, are NOT art.

This is just a bullshit excuse we tell ourselves just so we can justify the time we waste playing them. We want to feel like we are experiencing art while all we are doing is playing with virtual toys.

Video games are just entertainment, and there is nothing wrong with that. Stop deluding yourselves.

I disagree, video games are art as long as the components of the game are combined with the purpose of realizing a vision. Disqualifying all games from being art, will in my opinion also disqualify a lot of films, and a lot of music from being art.

I'm finally getting Helium Rain. I haven't played a space trading type game since Freelancers! I had hoped they would bring Elite Dangerous to Linux at some point, but it never happened...

I've been keeping an eye on ED in the Proton DB. It's moved up from Borked to Bronze, with a few Gold reports, so maybe soon...

I disagree, video games are art as long as the components of the game are combined with the purpose of realizing a vision. Disqualifying all games from being art, will in my opinion also disqualify a lot of films, and a lot of music from being art.

Don't get me started. All I'll say is that the idea that only certain man-made things qualify as Art is a very recent one in the scale of human history.


Last edited by Dunc on 21 December 2018 at 12:33 pm UTC

All I'll say is that the idea that only certain man-made things qualify as Art is a very recent one in the scale of human history.

Is Linux art?

I've seen quite a few gameplays of that game on youtube and they seemed incredibly boring. The graphics were not very varied, there was too much number-crunching, menus and inventory management and walls of text and too few exploring and questing. I would love to be convinced that it is indeed good, however.

It takes a little for the game to open up, but there's a ton of content. My first playthrough took over 100 hours and I still missed like 40% of the game. There will be a lot of menus as it's a P&P RPG system with a barony management system bolted on, which is par for the course for this type of game. If you're a fan of the classics, like Baldur's Gate or Planescape: Torment, this game blows PoE and Torment: Tides of Numeria out of the water.

That's interesting to hear. I heard only about the weird difficulty balance/progression. Has that been fixed and what else has?

Some facets of the difficulty have been fixed, although I still wouldn't recommend trying to play the entire game on Unfair difficulty unless you're familiar with min-maxing in the Pathfinder system. The biggest bug that's been fixed is the save corruption bug. Every time the developer releases a patch they write a post saying exactly what they fixed, so you can check the news page on steam for an overview. One annoying bug that remains is that a certain creature type, the mites, are missing textures on the linux version. This reminds me a lot of the bug in PoE where there are no cape textures. It's not a massive problem if you make ample use of the tab key in the one area where you find a lot of mites (Old Sycamore).

I have 7 games at 50% or better, out of a 193 items wishlist .
Then 27 items between 49 and 30%.

So far, i've (re)bought Fantasy Strike, and this time i think i like it more than months ago. I even won my very first online match : i clicked to check the options, and won. I guess my challenger was really bad then...

I've also rererererefunded Shaolin vs Wutang. Too much issues and bad perf via Proton. I tried several times since its release, but now i give up until a native build, if...

I don't really have time, nor money actually, to buy too many games. I've bought Total Warhammer 2 and some DLC on Fanatical last months already, huge time consumption. I only buy DLC for this game when they are around 10€, so i think for everything (TWH1+2+ all DLC but 3) over the years, i paid about 80€. It's not a lot per hours of gameplay...

I'm finally getting Helium Rain. I haven't played a space trading type game since Freelancers! I had hoped they would bring Elite Dangerous to Linux at some point, but it never happened...

Consider buying X4: Foundations when the Linux port is finished. Seems to be an amazing game.

Yeah, it does look really good. I've got it wishlisted, and just waiting for the Linux release.

It's from a German developer too, so worth supporting in my book

A few points:

• While it's great X4 is coming and ED and SC can be made to work on Wine/Proton now, absolutely still buy Helium Rain. It's a terrific game on its own, has a great style, and is deep. The Dev is super Linux friendly. I think he said our community was 11% or more of their purchases at one point.


• Looking forward to X4 here as well. If they patch it up for us, looks like it has the potential to be a space sim to satisfy for years to come (especially given how mod friendly it is)


• And, yes, ED and SC are working better and better on Wine, although I don't have strong desires oddly to play either based on my limited exposures (ED is somewhat shallow, and I've found prior flight dynamics on SC very unsatisfying)

Last edited by iiari on 21 December 2018 at 2:49 pm UTC

Games are NOT art. At best, the contain some art, alongside other things. For example music in games is art. But games per se, are NOT art.

This is just a bullshit excuse we tell ourselves just so we can justify the time we waste playing them. We want to feel like we are experiencing art while all we are doing is playing with virtual toys.

Video games are just entertainment, and there is nothing wrong with that. Stop deluding yourselves.

But all the arts are made for entertainment, or you don't consider films an art?

Games are NOT art. At best, the contain some art, alongside other things. For example music in games is art. But games per se, are NOT art.

This is just a bullshit excuse we tell ourselves just so we can justify the time we waste playing them. We want to feel like we are experiencing art while all we are doing is playing with virtual toys.

Video games are just entertainment, and there is nothing wrong with that. Stop deluding yourselves.

But all the arts are made for entertainment, or you don't consider films an art?

No. You got it all wrong, as did the previous posters.

Art is NOT about entertainment. Art is about expression, and the transfer of ideas and feelings.

Thus, not every film is art... For example porn is not "art". Porn is just there so you can get an easy and fast release of sexual pleasure. There is no artistic expression, no feelings or thoughts transfered. Just raw porn.

A great philosophical theatrical play is Art. A clown making balloons on the street for little kids, not art. One is there to transfer thoughts and feelings, the other is there just to waste some time and entertain the brats while their parents can drink their coffee with their friends in peace. LOL.

A lot of games qualify for that definition of art. A simple minesweeper clone doesn't qualify, but games like Psychonauts definitely do.

If you're a fan of the classics, like Baldur's Gate or Planescape: Torment, this game blows PoE and Torment: Tides of Numeria out of the water.

I have an unpopular opinion I know, but what would you expect if I actually liked PoE better than BG?

Ironic and perhaps paradoxical is the more invested you are in a field the more you gravitate to recognizing art within it.

How is that ironic? It seems pretty intuitive to me that experts in a field can better appreciate the subtleties of it and the meanings beneath the surface.

(Strange discussion to have in a Steam sale thread, come to think of it.)

How is that ironic? It seems pretty intuitive to me that experts in a field can better appreciate the subtleties of it and the meanings beneath the surface.

Because awards tend not to make any distinction between voter backgrounds. What exactly is "Best Video Game" for example. Best how, play? Linux support?

I fail to see how awards are relevant to the subject of my quote, but that would depend on the awards in question. Steam awards are obviously nothing more than a popularity contest.