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[vagel7]

Europa Universalis IV is going for 10 euros in the Humble store. Should I pick it up or wait for a better deal that maybe includes an expansion or so?

[Nistenf]

I haven't played it, but I'd wait. Paradox games get on sale quite often.

[nenjin]

I haven't played it, but I'd wait. Paradox games get on sale quite often.

$10 is pretty low though. Being one of their "flagship" products, I wouldn't wager on too deeper of a cut.

Then again, summer sale IS right around the corner.

[Mephisto]

If you own Waking Mars or Proteus, you should have a 20% off coupon for Stranded. Looks like a point-and-click.

[Sinistar]

With only 6 and half hours to go, Race the Sun is 66% off.

It's a really neat game. While both design and gameplay look minimalistic, I would go a bit further and rather call them refined - there's something extremely pleasing in it's clean graphics and the gameplay, while simple, is also simply good. Steer your solar-powered craft left and right, jump occasionally, collect power-ups and - race the sun! It's a good, no-nonsense highscore reflex racer with some really neat ideas like randomly generated map staying the same for only 24 hours, changing the world on-the-fligh via "gateways", online scoreboard, Steam Workshop integration and the whole Sun mechanic is just neat. Oh, and music is nice too.

Really, if 8,99€ is too much for you, for 3,05€ is a must have.
GET IT.

[forsaken1111]

Skip Stranded. It takes 30 minutes to complete and has zero interactivity. Literally. All you do is walk to certain locations. You can't DO anything.

[Anvilfolk]

With only 6 and half hours to go, Race the Sun is 66% off.

It's a really neat game. While both design and gameplay look minimalistic, I would go a bit further and rather call them refined - there's something extremely pleasing in it's clean graphics and the gameplay, while simple, is also simply good. Steer your solar-powered craft left and right, jump occasionally, collect power-ups and - race the sun! It's a good, no-nonsense highscore reflex racer with some really neat ideas like randomly generated map staying the same for only 24 hours, changing the world on-the-fligh via "gateways", online scoreboard, Steam Workshop integration and the whole Sun mechanic is just neat. Oh, and music is nice too.

Really, if 8,99€ is too much for you, for 3,05€ is a must have.
GET IT.

Race the Sun is now on Humble Bundle, along with Guns of Icarus if you beat the average and Strike Vector if you pay more than $10

[forsaken1111]

In any case, I would hold off on purchasing anything big right now. I have a very strong feeling that the summer sale will be up soon, so I'm saving my wallet's honor for proper and repeated violation during the sale.

Last year's dates were mid July I believe.

Think they'll do anything fun?

Edit: Yeah last year it was July 11-22 so I'm expecting something around then this time. Probably they'll shuffle it a bit.

Sauce

[Darkmere]

Oh god, steam summer sale. I haven't played half what I bought during the holiday sale. Someone send help.

[nenjin]

I really wish we could trade purchased titles to other Steam users. I have at least 5 games I'd love to give to someone else, because I have zero intention of ever trying to play them again.

[Sinistar]

Race the Sun is now on Humble Bundle, along with Guns of Icarus if you beat the average and Strike Vector if you pay more than $10

* buys both RtS and GoIO few hours before Humble Bundle get's on *

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU...


Though tbh, I bought collectors 4-pack edition of GoIO and both together was just about 10€ so it's not such a big deal...

Still, Strike Vector ;__;...

One day...

[hemmingjay]

I really wish we could trade purchased titles to other Steam users. I have at least 5 175 games I'd love to give to someone else, because I have zero intention of ever trying to play them again.

[Teneb]

I really wish we could trade purchased titles to other Steam users. I have at least 5 175 games I'd love to give to someone else, because I have zero intention of ever trying to play them again.

There is the steam family sharing, which, although having weird restrictions (you can't play a game from the shared library if the owner is playing. Even if it's a different game), is the closest it gets. It requires someone you trust, though, because apparently if someone gets VAC-banned using your library, you get banned too.

[Glloyd]

I really wish we could trade purchased titles to other Steam users. I have at least 5 175 games I'd love to give to someone else, because I have zero intention of ever trying to play them again.

That is the dream. Quite frankly, the ability to give/sell your old games was one of the reasons I stuck with consoles so long, and is now the big reason that I steer clear of Steam as much as I can.

This is what really bugs me about DRM. I have a very close friend who I've had since childhood. Ever since we were kids, we would plan our videogame purchases so that we never bought the same game as the other. When we were done with it, we'd just swap. That doesn't even take into account all the local co-op games we co-bought (we grew up in the country, so no internet to play online co-op) to play together. Hell, I still have all of his SNES games that he gave me after he sold his SNES 15 years ago or whatnot. We continued that practice up until just recently, mainly because we've both more or less switched to PC. Now, when we get together to game or whatnot (still live in the country, still have poor internet) it's a lot harder to swap games we enjoy. I can't just say "Oh hey, I was playing this really cool game called [name] and just beat it. Here, I'll send the file over." Or, "Here, I'll give it to you next time I see you." No, he has to go out and buy the game too, play it, then never play it again. So, if I WANT to send him a game I've downloaded, it's typically an awesome DRM free game like NEOScavenger (I'm not taking away a sale, because he wouldn't buy the game anyways, the cheap bugger, and vice-versa) or (theoretically of course) a game acquired through "dubious means", which is never a nice thing, because I like supporting smaller devs. [/anecdote]

Frankly, my view on this is a bit biased because I worked in a used videogame/cd/movie store for a couple years, and I haven't bought a new game for consoles in years. But still. Killing the ability to swap games with your friends/let your friends borrow a game/sell games you'll never play again has probably been my least favourite part of the move to digital distribution. Screw your bottom line, I just want to be able to borrow my friend's games again just like I would a book. [/rant]

ninjaedit:

There is the steam family sharing, which, although having weird restrictions (you can't play a game from the shared library if the owner is playing. Even if it's a different game), is the closest it gets. It requires someone you trust, though, because apparently if someone gets VAC-banned using your library, you get banned too.

I did not know about that. That's pretty interesting, I'll have to look into it.

[Sappho]

I have mixed feelings about trading/reselling games. I used to be all for it, but after marathon watching a lot of Extra Credits (such a good series) I'm starting to understand how genuinely tough it actually is on developers and publishers and how hard it is to make any profit (or even break even) when only a small fraction of players actually buy the game, and the rest get it used from GameStop or whatever (sending zero profit to the ones who made the game in the first place). There are things they can do to help fix this (and Extra Credits has suggested some great ones), but I'm no longer 100% "hell with them, I wouldn't have bought it new anyway" and I really try to buy all the games I play now in a way that the developers get at least some profit from it. (This is a separate issue from DRM/piracy, which I have more complicated views on that I won't get into here.)

Basically, although I totally understand what you're saying about the joy of sharing games and saving money by trading with friends, I can absolutely see the developer's (and even Steam's) point of view in this. If it's possible for one person to buy a game, then trade it around to their friends when they're done with it, it will no longer be profitable to sell short games. People would finish them quickly and pass them on. They'd make far fewer sales and many games or studios, especially indie ones, might fail. The most profitable games would be ones where everyone *has* to buy their own copy. So you'd see more games with tacked-on multiplayer, or ridiculously padded game length so players can't finish it quickly then pass it on. I don't want any of that.

That's not to say there shouldn't be any method whatsoever of redeeming games you don't want. Really, all games should be offering free demos, so you can try it before you decide to spend money on it. It's shameful how few games do that. Everyone could try mass-emailing developers and saying we won't buy their games unless they put out demos, but that doesn't sound likely to happen. So I would suggest that Steam build in demos to their platform.

Steam already takes metrics on everything, such as how long you play each game. I bet it would be easy for them to implement a "trial" mode where the developer could set a number of minutes players can test the game out before they have to pay for it. Nothing required on the dev side of things, just say "10 minutes" and Steam lets you download and play the game without paying for 10 minutes. After that, the game closes and you must buy it if you want to continue. Or even a simple return policy where if you have played a game less than 5-10 minutes, you can "return" it to Steam and have it removed from your library and get your money back. And I really think that it should be possible to take games you've unlocked but never actually installed or played and move them to your inventory so they can be traded with other players.