Steam Winter Sale 2016

[Rendakor]

Now live.


Stellaris is on sale, but how much depends on what version which has me a bit confused. The base game is 33% off, so $26, the Nova Edition is 60% off, $20, and the Galaxy Edition is 60% off, $28. The Nova edition seems to include the base game plus extras, but I figured I would ask before (maybe) buying in case it's some glorified demo.

[Trippy]

They fucked up the pricing for some reason and didn't discount the base game properly. I already own Stellaris and adding the Nova and Galaxy editions tells me I already own the game so the Nova and Galaxy editions do include the base game even though the store page doesn't make that clear anywhere.

[Sky]

More glorious Rocksmith tunes!

Now I just have to make sure my finger is healed before trying to play with a RSI...

[Baldrake]

OMG Civ VI 10% off!! 

[rk47]

Mankind Discounted 66% was right price.
Dead Rising 3 just because I want to see how bad it gets before the 4th game is out. And it's sub $10 price. Just right. Still a better game than Assassin Creed movie.
I'm keeping watch on others. Hopefully there's more but Mankind Discounted should be around 4-5 days of solid gameplay.

[Hawkbit]

lol Steam has been down for more than an hour at this point. Ouch.

[Merusk]

Fall of Cybertron is 80% off.  I remember hearing it was good which is why I dropped it on my wishlist.

[apocrypha]

Meh, nothing on my wishlist discounted low enough for me to go for. I know that Steam refunds are good, and I'm glad we have them, but I do miss the deep discounts we used to get before them :/

[Sky]

I dislike what Steam refunds has done to gaming, but that's another topic.

I've realized how little I give a shit about most of these games, and my wishlist is filled with things to remind me that even at $5-10 bucks I don't care.

[MrHat]

I dislike what Steam refunds has done to gaming, but that's another topic.

I've realized how little I give a shit about most of these games, and my wishlist is filled with things to remind me that even at $5-10 bucks I don't care.

Ya, if I have something on my wishlist that hits <$10 and I don't buy it I'll take it off my wishlist.

[Torinak]

They fucked up the pricing for some reason and didn't discount the base game properly. I already own Stellaris and adding the Nova and Galaxy editions tells me I already own the game so the Nova and Galaxy editions do include the base game even though the store page doesn't make that clear anywhere.

The Stellaris 60% discount was a mistake, apparently. It's only 33% off now. Meh, especially since it's a Paradox game--there'll be the "complete" edition in a while with most of the DLC, then the "ultimate" edition with a bit more DLC, and then the "we're serious, everything for real this time" edition that has all of the DLC.

Subnautica is on sale for half off ($9.99 now).

[Hawkbit]

I picked up Sethian, which will likely be my only purchase this go-round. Fascinating game so far; it's a simple interface in which you have to learn to communicate with an alien computer. Some of the language rules are based around English, Japanese (possibly Chinese), ASL and some new rules, too. I took parts of the language that I understand and concatenated them with an expected outcome. However, the actual output was not what I expected yet I understood what it was saying. It gave me a real 'fun' moment like programming does sometimes.

Intriguing, for the price of a latte. If the learning process in the movie Arrival was interesting, you might wish to check it out.

[Setanta]

I find that Steam's new store front keeps recommending/advertising games I don't want and that I have to scroll miles to see new releases and also items on sale.

This suits me just fine as I can't be assed looking and save money.

Love your work Steam - saving me from myself at Christmas.

[Trippy]

Yes their Web-based client UI has never been good and now it's even more cluttered visually. They did add the sidebar on the left so you no longer have to hunt through the billion sections on the main page* to find the top sellers and sales tables. You can also adjust your personalization preferences but it always seems to forget mine.

* Well not actually a billion but it feels like it with their psuedo-"infinite scrolling UI" they've implemented, which does mercifully end eventually. Eventually.

[Sky]

I've generally found the actual website more useful for buying stuff during the sale than their integrated gimped browsing experience.

Main things off the top of my head - tabbed browsing and remembering expanded lists. When I have a list of a thousand Rocksmith DLC open, have to click the item, click add to cart, then click back twice and the list has closed; scroll up to the DLC section again, open list, scroll back down to where I was, repeat ad nauseum...yeah I use the website for that stuff.

Also, to find out what new DLC came out on Tuesday for Rocksmith, it's scroll down past all the nonsense to Top Sellers section, click the Popular New Releases tab, at the bottom of that section click the All New Releases and then click through the pages until I find the Rocksmith stuff. So intuitive and relaxing.

[Trippy]

I've generally found the actual website more useful for buying stuff during the sale than their integrated gimped browsing experience.

Main things off the top of my head - tabbed browsing and remembering expanded lists. When I have a list of a thousand Rocksmith DLC open, have to click the item, click add to cart, then click back twice and the list has closed; scroll up to the DLC section again, open list, scroll back down to where I was, repeat ad nauseum...yeah I use the website for that stuff.

Also, to find out what new DLC came out on Tuesday for Rocksmith, it's scroll down past all the nonsense to Top Sellers section, click the Popular New Releases tab, at the bottom of that section click the All New Releases and then click through the pages until I find the Rocksmith stuff. So intuitive and relaxing.

The client UI does now allow you to sort DLC by release date so that helps in the case of Rocksmith. I.e go to the Rocksmith DLC page, sort by release date (in reverse order) and marvel at all the "remastered" songs that you already have the originals of that they are charging full price for now.

[tar]

I search for 'rocksmith' from the main store page then sort by release date, it's faster than going through the game page then dlc page.

[Signe]

Since the Final Fantasy games are on sale for 50% off, I picked up 9 for a tenner. 

[Strazos]

So far, I've only purchased DOOM, and a TRPG named Battle Brothers. Both were very cheap.

[Zetor]

I grabbed Dark Souls 3, FFX (never played it before, but I already hate blitzball ) and StarCrawlers because the world needs more TB scifi dungeon crawlers. No huge discounts on any of those, but I don't think they're going to get heavy discounts in the first place.

Also got some assorted point-and-click adventures that had some good reviews and were at a major discount (Shardlight, The Journey Down). I'm on the fence about Twilight Struggle...

[Lucas]

So let's see how I'm faring during this Xmas sales (I'm including GOG too):

Steam:

- Motorsport Manager
- Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition
- Splinter Cell : Chaos Theory
- Twilight Struggle

GOG:

- Guild of Dungeoneering
- KOTOR I & II
- Race Driver: GRID
- Shadow Warrior Classic Redux

Total spent: € 60 .  Not bad, I guess.

[Kail]

No money this year so my expenditures were almost all from gift cards.

On Gog:

• Firewatch was pretty great overall, not much to say there that hasn't already been said.
• Pillars of Eternity I'm having a surprising amount of fun with.  I don't know why I got it, since I was always terrible at D&D style CRPGs and found them frustrating as hell, but Pillars of Eternity is really fun for as little as I've played.  Maybe because it's not really based on the D&D ruleset?

On Steam, I was mostly just browsing cheap shit to fill out a gift card:

• Deadly Premonition.  Not really sure about this game, heard it was interesting so figured I'd give it a shot.
• See no Evil looks kind of like Bastion, but I didn't like Bastion, so I'm not sure why I picked this up.
• Legend of the Dark Witch, not sure why I bought this it looks terrible.
• Endless Legend: Shifters expansion, just need to pick up Tempest some day and I'll have the full set.  I like this game, I wonder why I don't play it more often.

[Setanta]

Bought Stellaris and some DLC for Attack on Titan.

I realised that most of the games on my wish list, while proven over time, are games I'll probably never play.

Best year ever for not spending money on Steam.

[Lucas]

If you want to purchase or gift one last game before the sale ends, and you like old-school football (soccer) games like Microprose Soccer, Kick-off or Sensible (although Kopanito is not top down), do yourself a favour and grab "Kopanito All-Stars Soccer":

http://store.steampowered.com/app/399820/

It's skill based, tough, with nice multiplayer options and, most importantly, FUN.

Beware though: it's one of those "yeah, you're getting old" games, as far as reflexes go  

Nice goal I scored a few minutes ago 

[satael]

I finally bought Elite:Dangerous (with season pass) since it had long been on my list and I hadn't picked up anything from the winter sale before that (and the thread being active on this board reminded me that I actually wanted to play it).

[eldaec]

Steam Link is 60% off till tomorrow, I'm very tempted to try it on the basis of it only costing £16.

The rather more dubious steam controller is also on 30% discount.

[Kageru]

If you don't have a heritage with an existing controller, and want to be able to play games which may make some assumptions about having a mouse nearby without that being the case, I don't think the steam controller is a bad solution.

I bought one.... well, two since it took me a long time to realise the first one was broken :/

[Viin]

I bought a steam link but ended up returning it after realizing that playing it over Wifi would be iffy. I can only play on my TV once in a blue moon anyways, so whatevs.

[eldaec]

I ended up ordering the link and controller package more out of curiosity than anything.

Then started hunting through the steam store of anything that would clearly be better on a TV/couch/controller and didn't find much. Started wishing there were as many board game implementations on steam as there are on Android and iOS.

[Viin]

The only reason I wanted one was for playing Rocket League or other driving games. Not sure anything else would be "better" on a big screen.

[Kageru]

Couch co-op has not really been the strong point of the PC ever, so it's probably reasonable to see things like steam link, steam machines and small PC's like the alienware one as at best an initial beachhead.

What games there are seem to be console ports (like castle crashers), small indies (love in a dangerous spacetime) and experiments with board / social games (keep talking and no one explodes)... though overcooked looked like fun. It looks like steam has a tag for "local co-op" which might give you some titles to look at?

On one review I watched rocket league was noted as one of the worst performing games over steam due to all the three dimensional motion and active backgrounds not playing well with link compression.

[Sky]

Not sure anything else would be "better" on a big screen.

Lies.

Minecraft is glorious on a 73" monitor.

[Rasix]

Yah, that's part of the reason I asked for one for Christmas. Now I just have to get Minecraft working through steamlink, which is probably just 5 minutes of me not being lazy and googling it.

The device itself is pretty cool for how inexpensive it is. I wish I could say the same for the controller. I feels cheap as hell, and I don't like using the mouse/pad thing as a right stick. Plus the buttons are really small and close together. I have fairly slim fingers so it's not a deal breaker, but I don't see how some people would even individually be able to hit an x/y or a/b. Terarria chose really strange keybinds for it.

For the sale I got Firewatch, Hitman and Oxenfree.  I don't expect them to last long, but I already have a huge backlog and Dragon's Dogma is proving to be quite the efficient infinite time waster.

[Rendakor]

I ended up buying Elite Dangerous/Horizons, Paper Sorcerer, and Invisible, Inc.

[HaemishM]

I ended the sale with X-Com 2 and Football Manager 2017. There were a lot of meh discounts on the stuff I would have wanted besides those.