As much as I’m trying to control/conquer my game backlog, I find that for most games there exists a certain price at which it’s worth having even if I recognize I may never get to it. So while I try and stare Steam’s sales in the face and firmly declare in my best Arya voice “Not today,” they usually end up getting me anyway, at least a little bit.
Offer me certain games I’ve had my eye on for $5, maybe even $10, and the price of admission is suddenly outweighed by the POSSIBILITY that, on some rainy day in the future, that exact game will be the right scratch for a very specific itch. An imaginary cost threshold whereupon I am willing to gamble the cash against the possibility that I will never end up playing the game. At $50, I’d feel guilty as hell only playing a couple of hours. At $5? I can stomach that.
And so, try as I might, sales like the Steam seasonals remain the constant bane to my backlog efforts.
if it’s more than 15€ I don’t buy it XD
I get the same way with games that are ALREADY in my library and GOG sales
“That was a great game back in the day, I’ve still got the cd/dvd/discs around somewhere…. but will they work with the newest os…”
and by the time you look through the list the bank ends up at least $50 down anyway.
Whether you end up playing them again is a different question altogether.
Been there, done that.
I actually just bought the Krynn trilogy on GOG just for nostalgia’s sake cause I’m SURE I’ll never replay them again. But at 3 euros for the three games that I played hundreds of hours when I was a kid… no way to resist.
Cheers
Fully customizable EGA character sprites in 16 glorious colors ! How can one resist?
I was half expecting a spear labelled COVID getting lobbed outta nowhere to break his shield instead.
This is pretty much how Valve makes their money now. Finding that price point.
I don’t care how many people say the “sales aren’t as good as they used to be,” if a game is good, it deserves consideration – a sale only makes it more attractive.
I agree. Some games going free to play will pull me in and let me decide if I want to spend money on it later. . . And I usually do because that first hit was free, , ,
As a general rule I’ll try to put stuff on my wishlist during the year and only buy off that during a sale.
I say rule. It’s more guidelines…
my additional rule: wishlist item must be reduced below $10 to make purchase, these items sit on wishlist for that very reason, to be there for sale time (typically items on my list are >$60 items, eg ones I consider overpriced)
This year, I’m going to avoid even logging into the steam store. I can’t be tempted if I don’t see the sales right….right?
“You cannot dodge what you cannot see…” (some old man)
“If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball” – Patches
Fool should have worn the entire set:
-Shield of spare time
-Helmet of Backlog
-Breastplate of other spending
-Leggings of recent purchase
-Greaves of other hobbies
-And the boots of Store page evasion.
Only then does one have a 50% chance to survive a steam sale!
the only true defense is the Cursed Sword of Angry Non-Gamer Wife
I thought that was a Ring Item?
Well played, got a big chuckle out of me.
What about the Girdle of I have most of the games I’m interested in from a past sale already?
Oh, how I miss the ‘too many games, not enough time’ quandary. These days, I find it hard to find a single game that genuinely interests me enough to buy, mostly because a chronic lack of free time makes it hard to keep on top of gaming news, announcements, reviews, hype, etc., so my awareness of what’s available is narrow at best, but also because my free time is so precious that I find it hard to commit to anything out of fear of wasting it – the end result is that I wind up replaying old games to 100… Read more »
Luckily, I already own most of the games on sale in the summer sale and the remaining games aren’t interesting to me.
Yeaaaaaaaaah when a game you really want to play but know you don’t have the time for suddenly becomes available for less than the cost of a single movie ticket, it becomes very hard to resist….*weeps at Steam backlog*
That threshold, for me, its if a game is discounted above 65%. I just cant resist.
Fortunatelly, this time around, only 4 games on my wishlist were so.
This MF Spittin’
Ah, the Dark Souls experience well summarized. But it is worth it.
City building sims got me this year. Picked up Cities: Skylines, Kingdoms & Castles, and the full Surviving Mars package.
Have fun with them! Some of my favourite relaxation games there.
I wishlist stuff that looks interesting but now will only buy if I plan on playing within a month or two. The sales come around so often that there’s always another chance to get the discount (with a few exceptions) and with each passing sale/year, it’s more likely that the discount will grow even steeper. There have been games I know I want to play but don’t have time for at the moment that I’ve waited 2+ years to buy, saving an additional $10 to $30 dollars per title in the process. But right now time is also at a… Read more »
Same. When I see 66% or 80% or even 90% down on games I want or like I get real “oh that sounds great” and then I buy it and still won’t play it, like what the hell, brain? D:
I’m always complaining there are no new games during summer.
I had a friend the other day who saw my steam account, and said, “How on earth do you have over 200 games?”… 90% of that is humble bundle and steam sales.
“My god, it just goes through the shield…”
i got 1 game and i has already put almost 100 hours into it so my sale was a good sale now just for the 98 others in my wishlist plus the dlc for them and dlc for ones i already has
Arma 3 got me
This is precisely why my Steam library is so freaking huge. Last time I looked, the count stood – including DLC, because Steam lists that separately for some reason – at nearly 900 titles. And I know it’s grown since…
I think it’s good to have a healthy backlog. Sometimes, games don’t pan out like you think they do, in which case, I just move onto another game in the backlog.
I used to think like that too. Now my backlog is so long that it will easily last for the next five years… See you in Steam’s sales 2025!
Except the one game I might vaguely want to buy has 24 DLC so even at a bargain price, I still can’t pull the trigger.
I guess I’ve just gotten to the point where I have to be extremely interested in a game for me to buy it at any price, and the games that capture my attention these days are rarely even similar to the games that used to possess me in previous years. Ironically this stopped being a problem for me right around the time steam was really taking off. Though back then it was called the bargain bin at gamestop.
Have you looked at that new shipbreaker game? It’s fairly fun…. also Titanfall 2 is on sale for like $10, as is The Foresf, Arma and DLCs are on sale, Destiny 2…. I need to stop looking at it XD
Yeah, I have a wishlist that gets drained on these sales from time to time. Summer sale only got $45 out of me.
At some point the backlog grows enough that you accept that you’re collecting games rather than buying games to play.
At some point, I realizes that I two gaming related hobbies. One is playing games. The other is collecting games. It’s like magic: the gathering, only cheaper.
Unless a game has 50% discount or larger, I don’t even look at it in my wishlist… which means, that in this sale, only a couple of DLCs have made it to my cart. Less than 10 Bucks.
so, summer sale came to total 5 hitpoints dmg until I casted ultimate shield of “already in library”
Truly honorable stand Tim. We both know you’re gonna lose though… This is a big reason why we all have a steam backlog.
Please, if there is a God, let ethan come back.
?
Fuck you and your totally accurate depiction of me on every Steam sale
And then you split your money between flat-screen and Vr.
Also, the holiday sale would probably be a dragon or a Lich warlock ala Warcraft…