🚀 go-pugleaf

On Mon, 23 Nov 2015 19:19:20 +0300, "Andrew Rybenkov"
<aryb...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>http://www.pcgamer.com/steams-autumn-and-winter-sales-will-ditch-daily-deals-and-flash-sales/
>
>It seems Gabe have earned all money he wanted.

Seems like just a change honestly, no better / no worse:

"But there's an obvious upside, too. No flash sales means no
obsessively refreshing the Steam front page to see what's hot.
Consistent pricing means you can browse at your leisure, grab what you
want, and then go do something else with your time, confident that
you're not going to miss out on a better price in 16 hours"

On Mon, 23 Nov 2015 19:32:02 +0300, Rin Stowleigh <rstow...@nevrhadgmail.com> wrote:

> Seems like just a change honestly, no better / no worse:
>

Considering it was a cornerstone of Steam Sales, uh-hu.

Read comments to the article, people explain why it is a crappy move.

-- 
Andrew Rybenkov

On Tue, 24 Nov 2015 00:18:12 +0300, Zaghadka <zagh...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 23 Nov 2015 19:19:20 +0300, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg, Andrew
> Rybenkov wrote:
>
>>
>> http://www.pcgamer.com/steams-autumn-and-winter-sales-will-ditch-daily-deals-and-flash-sales/
>>
>> It seems Gabe have earned all money he wanted.
>
> Meh. Games will still be on sale, just not on "obsessively click the
> refresh button" sale. I'll wait to see what the longer term sales look
> like. I'm guessing, pretty good.
>

Flash sales were a major device to lure people (me, for example)
to buy games they did not plan to buy.
Obviously there will not be crazy "80-90% off" anymore.
Steam/Valve/Gabe became rich and boring.


-- 
Andrew Rybenkov

On Tue, 24 Nov 2015 14:56:39 +0300, "Andrew Rybenkov"
<aryb...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Tue, 24 Nov 2015 00:18:12 +0300, Zaghadka <zagh...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 23 Nov 2015 19:19:20 +0300, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg, Andrew
>> Rybenkov wrote:

>>> http://www.pcgamer.com/steams-autumn-and-winter-sales-will-ditch-daily-deals-and-flash-sales/
>>> It seems Gabe have earned all money he wanted.

>> Meh. Games will still be on sale, just not on "obsessively click the
>> refresh button" sale. I'll wait to see what the longer term sales look
>> like. I'm guessing, pretty good.

>Flash sales were a major device to lure people (me, for example)
>to buy games they did not plan to buy.
>Obviously there will not be crazy "80-90% off" anymore.
>Steam/Valve/Gabe became rich and boring.

Gotta agree; this pretty much kills my interest in the seasonal sales
now. I almost never bought a game at the "duration sale" price; if I
didn't see it at the "flash-sale" super-low price, it just wasn't a
consideration. I bought a lot of games at flash-sale prices though...

Of course, there have been a number of articles that show that these
flash-sales really aren't that beneficial to the developers /
publishers. Yes, they get a lot of sales but the lower price means
they didn't make as much money as they would have had they kept it at
the "duration sale" price. 

The flash-sale prices are mainly to draw attention to either the
retailer (e.g., Steam) or the product. But seeing as Steam is already
huge and every PC gamer worth his salt goes there already, there's
little advantage to Valve to maintain the sales. Big-name games don't
really need a sales-frenzy to draw in customers; they'll buy the
latest Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed regardless. Meanwhile,  the
ones who would benefit most from the "advertising" that is Flash Sales
- small Indie developers - are the ones who really can't afford it in
the first place, since it cannibalizes the full-price sales that would
keep their business afloat. 

The only ones for whom these sales are advantageous are the customers,
so it is no surprise that Steam is killing them.

Having said all that, these days I buy most of my games from GOG
anyway. Their "modern games" selection - while still significantly
behind Steam's - is becoming ever more competitive and their old-games
selection is unsurpassed. Plus, not being the "big dog" in the digital
retail space, it is still to their advantage to offer flash sales in
order to siphon customers away from Steam... like me. 


So I guess this is a plus for me: Steam and developers make more
money, and I won't have to bother visiting Steam every day during the
seasonal sales anymore because I'm not going to buy any of their games
anyway ;-)

On Tue, 24 Nov 2015 09:27:42 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallsh...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Tue, 24 Nov 2015 14:56:39 +0300, "Andrew Rybenkov"
><aryb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 24 Nov 2015 00:18:12 +0300, Zaghadka <zagh...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, 23 Nov 2015 19:19:20 +0300, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg, Andrew
>>> Rybenkov wrote:
>
>>>> http://www.pcgamer.com/steams-autumn-and-winter-sales-will-ditch-daily-deals-and-flash-sales/
>>>> It seems Gabe have earned all money he wanted.
>
>>> Meh. Games will still be on sale, just not on "obsessively click the
>>> refresh button" sale. I'll wait to see what the longer term sales look
>>> like. I'm guessing, pretty good.
>
>>Flash sales were a major device to lure people (me, for example)
>>to buy games they did not plan to buy.
>>Obviously there will not be crazy "80-90% off" anymore.
>>Steam/Valve/Gabe became rich and boring.
>
>Gotta agree; this pretty much kills my interest in the seasonal sales
>now. I almost never bought a game at the "duration sale" price; if I
>didn't see it at the "flash-sale" super-low price, it just wasn't a
>consideration. I bought a lot of games at flash-sale prices though...
>
>Of course, there have been a number of articles that show that these
>flash-sales really aren't that beneficial to the developers /
>publishers. Yes, they get a lot of sales but the lower price means
>they didn't make as much money as they would have had they kept it at
>the "duration sale" price. 
>
>The flash-sale prices are mainly to draw attention to either the
>retailer (e.g., Steam) or the product. But seeing as Steam is already
>huge and every PC gamer worth his salt goes there already, there's
>little advantage to Valve to maintain the sales. Big-name games don't
>really need a sales-frenzy to draw in customers; they'll buy the
>latest Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed regardless. Meanwhile,  the
>ones who would benefit most from the "advertising" that is Flash Sales
>- small Indie developers - are the ones who really can't afford it in
>the first place, since it cannibalizes the full-price sales that would
>keep their business afloat. 
>
>The only ones for whom these sales are advantageous are the customers,
>so it is no surprise that Steam is killing them.
>
>Having said all that, these days I buy most of my games from GOG
>anyway. Their "modern games" selection - while still significantly
>behind Steam's - is becoming ever more competitive and their old-games
>selection is unsurpassed. Plus, not being the "big dog" in the digital
>retail space, it is still to their advantage to offer flash sales in
>order to siphon customers away from Steam... like me. 
>
>
>So I guess this is a plus for me: Steam and developers make more
>money, and I won't have to bother visiting Steam every day during the
>seasonal sales anymore because I'm not going to buy any of their games
>anyway ;-)

The value to the developer in flash sales is in marketing, not the
revenue from the sale itself.  It's not about whether they would
realize more direct revenue by selling more copies at a lower price
point, it's whether the marketing opportunity of having your offering
listed in a very prominent, frenzied environment with a high turnover
/ transaction rate results in side benefits that ultimate benefits
your company (since "sales" get the attention of the consumer,
sometimes selling a product so cheap it's almost giving it away has
additional advantages that are worth the marketing "cost" of the loss
incurred on lower price point).

Whether or not a flash sale really works for a developer or not really
depends on a lot of things, but at the end of it all it's a marketing
opportunity.  When dealing in goods that require physical inventory,
sometimes it's good to unload surplus but of course that doesn't apply
with digital downloads.

Ultimately it will not mean Steam or developers make more or less
money, since the volume of downloads moved and the price paid for game
vary on a game-to-game basis.

What it does mean is a change in habits for some.  Those who like the
flash sales will be upset that someone moved their cheese.  Those who
found them to be kind of an annoying distraction won't care one way or
the other.  I'm in the latter group.

Personally I like to identify titles I might be interested in when
they are released on Steam (of course they aren't discounted very
heavily at that point), then add them to my wishlist.  Devs can see
how many people have wishlisted their game but are not going to buy it
at that price point, so it encourages them to put it on sale.  Then
just leave it on the wishlist until it hits a price point that I'm
willing to pay.  It can be a long wait in some cases, I wishlisted
Wasteland2 a long time ago but I've never seen it come low enough for
a buy, so it stays on the list until it does.

I never run out of stuff to play and I spend very little overall
because I'm not creating a huge backlog of useless nickel and dime
games I'll never play.

Zaghadka  <zagh...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Meh. Games will still be on sale, just not on "obsessively click the
>refresh button" sale. I'll wait to see what the longer term sales look
>like. I'm guessing, pretty good.

Well, you only had to refresh once every 8 hours.  You also had an 8
hour window to do that in so, so you didn't have obsessively refresh
when what went on sale switched either.

But I'm guessing they're doing this because the trick isn't working
anymore.  Back when they started doing this presumably there were more
people buying games at the sale-long price, as they didn't know it might
get cheaper later in the sale.  Ideally all the people who are willing
to buy the game at sale-long price would pay that price for the game,
leaving only the people wouldn't buy the game unless it was deeply
discounted picking it up at the lower price.  My guess is that Valve's
reasearch is telling them that pretty much everyone knows to wait now.

It'll be interesting to see what replaces these sales, because in
addition to being a form of price descrimination, it was also a form
of marketing.  During these seasonal Steam sales pretty much every game
goes on sale, but only a fraction of them make it onto the front page.
They can toss up a list of a dozen or so games up there and change it
every day, just like before, but what's going to drive vistors to check
the list each day?  They'll probably have some sort of game or contest,
but will that be enough?

Also those deep discount sales had another marketing benefit.  They cause
a lot people to buy games that never would have otherwise.  Even if this
doesn't directly make up for the people who would've paid more for the
game, it can when the people who would've never have bought the game
tell their friends about it.  That's the theory behind Sony's "Instant
Game Collection" and Microsoft's "Games for Gold", the developers and
publishers usually get nothing in return, but end benefiting when friends
of the subscribers buy the game.

We'll have to see how it goes.  I'm not sure it'll actually make much
of a difference to me.  The amount of money I've been spending on these
sales has been on a slow decline anyways.  I've bought most of the
"back catalog" that I'm interested in, and it seems the trend already
was for smaller discounts of newer games.

					Ross Ridge

-- 
 l/  //	  Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo]  rri...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
-()-/()/  http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~rridge/ 
 db  //	  

On Mon, 23 Nov 2015 19:19:20 +0300, Andrew Rybenkov <aryb...@gmail.com> wrote:

> It seems Gabe have earned all money he wanted

yeah, embarrassing sale.

Good I caught last great sales back in 2012,
so I know how it _was_

-- 
Andrew Rybenkov

Am 25.11.15 um 19:22 schrieb Andrew Rybenkov:
> On Mon, 23 Nov 2015 19:19:20 +0300, Andrew Rybenkov
> <aryb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> It seems Gabe have earned all money he wanted
>
> yeah, embarrassing sale.
>
> Good I caught last great sales back in 2012,
> so I know how it _was_
>
Yes steam sales are mostly shovelware sales nowadays.

On Wed, 25 Nov 2015 21:43:10 +0300, Werner Punz <we...@gmx.at> wrote:

> Yes steam sales are mostly shovelware sales nowadays.

I do not see anything to buy right now,
and considering the shop will remain the same till 1st Dec and
2 weeks of Christmas sale, Steam efficiently detached me for 3 weeks.
Good job, wiseguys.


-- 
Andrew Rybenkov

Am 26.11.15 um 19:12 schrieb Andrew Rybenkov:
> On Wed, 25 Nov 2015 21:43:10 +0300, Werner Punz <we...@gmx.at> wrote:
>
>> Yes steam sales are mostly shovelware sales nowadays.
>
> I do not see anything to buy right now,
> and considering the shop will remain the same till 1st Dec and
> 2 weeks of Christmas sale, Steam efficiently detached me for 3 weeks.
> Good job, wiseguys.
>
>
I bought one visual novel in the 2-5 euros price range, but just more 
out of curiosity than real interest.

I just wanted to see where all the no puzzle desicion making kill your 
own intelligence stuff started which nowadays floods the adventure genre.

On Fri, 27 Nov 2015 13:04:00 +0300, Werner Punz <we...@gmx.at> wrote:

> Am 26.11.15 um 19:12 schrieb Andrew Rybenkov:
>> On Wed, 25 Nov 2015 21:43:10 +0300, Werner Punz <we...@gmx.at> wrote:
>>
>>> Yes steam sales are mostly shovelware sales nowadays.
>>
>> I do not see anything to buy right now,
>> and considering the shop will remain the same till 1st Dec and
>> 2 weeks of Christmas sale, Steam efficiently detached me for 3 weeks.
>> Good job, wiseguys.
>>
>>
> I bought one visual novel in the 2-5 euros price range, but just more
> out of curiosity than real interest.
>
> I just wanted to see where all the no puzzle desicion making kill your
> own intelligence stuff started which nowadays floods the adventure genre.
>
>
>


I made 2 exceptions at once:

1. I bought a Early Access game
2. I bought a non-rebated game

Shortly, I bought Underrail.

Still on fence about The Fall of the Dungeon Guardians

-- 
Andrew Rybenkov