So another Christmas and another Steam holiday sale have now gone by, and if you’re a new-comer to all those discounted games then I’m sure you were drooling at the mouth not knowing what to buy next. But if you’re a veteran, it can seem like there is less and less to buy each time. Following on from Phil’s article last month on his Steam woes, I’ll be discussing what the 1001-Up.com team picked up this holiday.
For those gamers who have been living under a rock for the past few years, Steam runs an annual holiday sale over Christmas and into the new year. Some of the discounts are mind-boggling and it’s very easy to part with a lot of money; but as the sales go by, you seem to own all the titles you could ever want (and will never play). This is good in a way because after you see the same games like Saints Row 4, Farcry 3 and BioShock Infinite on Steam’s ‘featured’ page for the sixth day in a row, it forces you to dig deeper into their catalogue and possibly pick up something you wouldn’t have otherwise looked at or noticed.
The latest holiday sale ended on 02 January 2014. The whole 1001-Up.com team has bought many games from Steam (I believe that if we combined our libraries we could take over the world) but this year has been slim-pickings for us all. There wasn’t very much that caught our attention and it seemed that the same titles kept being recycled every few days. One thing which annoyed me was when Injustice: Gods Among Us won the Community Vote and went down to £18.99, but then a day later it was advertised in the regular sale for – yep, you guessed it – £18.99, rendering the previous day’s votes totally pointless.
Ha ha ha, your votes meant nothing!
Here are the purchases we may during the 2013 holiday sale.
Craig:
Disappointingly, I only bought one game this year. I grabbed Torchlight II because everybody else who has it is really good at it and I feel a little left behind.
Kim:
Again, only one purchase this year for Kim and it’s the same as mine. We both bought Torchlight II at the same time so we could all play together and she is already a master at it (I may have to get some lessons off her).
Phil:
This man is a veteran of the Steam sale and has probably bought something in every sale there has been since time begun. He knows his stuff and owns a lot of games. This year though he has taken a reserved approach and only picked five titles: Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, Max Payne 3 and Metro: Last Light.
Unfortunately, this is the case for many people.
So there you have it: not much went on in the way of purchases over Christmas. I hope by the time the summer comes around Steam puts a much wider variety of games on the homepage; it would also be good to see indie developers get a bit more of the spotlight instead of another round of Skyrim, Hitman or Batman. I hope you all had a good sale and that you didn’t spend too much money because – let’s face it – you have a summer sale to start saving up for.
