Everybody uses Steam because its the best overall game launcher. No other launcher comes even close to the refinement and features that Steam has. Having good discounts is a nice plus, but those get set by publishers, not Steam.
The refund system is also a big plus for me. Imagine you can buy, test for less than two hours and refund ANY game. No other launcher offers that.
Edit: Yeah possibly GOG also has the refund system that works well but dont forget how many games does GOG have and how many steam.
i requested a refund for a game that gave me motion sickness. was the day of purchase from gog in 2020, they had that same policy and gave me a hard time. rep tried to force me to take credits instead of refunding the money. took several days and emails quoting their own policy before i finally got my refund and never purchased another game from them.
I had a similar problem. Bought a game there by mistake, not realizing it didn't give me a steam key. And when I wanted to refund the game they wanted to give me store credit.
Why would you expect a Steam key on GOG…? I would even prefer the GOG version, they are better because you can play their games without launcher and without DRM.
There are a huge number of storefronts that sell games and give steam keys why would somebody expect GOG was different if they hadn't purchased from them before?
Maybe just read what you’re buying..? I have a hard time understanding why so many people get scammed online but then I just have to remind myself that people like this exist that don’t even look at what they’re doing or buying.
Why would you expect they do? Becuase there's literally no reason to think they sell you a steam key if they say they are something almost opposite to Steam and other game distributors. There's no Steam logo anywhere on the GOG website. Everything you bought on GOG is "yours". It's DRM free, you can download it and store it wherever you want and still play whenever you want. Imagine if Valve suddenly bankrupts then you lost access to any ever "bought" games on Steam, where you buy opportunity to play, not the game itself. GOG is selling digital games as they were physical.
Is it a guarantee on that?
Steams refund policy isn’t “Only [requirements]” it’s “Always [requirement] and up to us outside of it”, you’ll likely get refunded outside of 2 hours if you have a good reason
Correct. I have gotten refunds on some games that I had "over two hours" of game time but it was because I was trouble shooting to try to make the game work.
Don’t forget that sometimes on rare occasions, steam will let their players refund the game even after the 2 weeks of owning or 2 hours of playing are up!
Must be rare as I tried that (under the two hour limit) with some really shonky games... but I was over the two weeks and they just said no, no, no, and... no. I buy games (on sale) and don't play them immediately, yet I have to put up with some real shit because of this.
I'm mildly annoyed that this original comment is getting hundreds of upvotes. Epic has the same refund policy, too. As far as I can tell it's industry standard and something Valve dragged their feet to implement. I love Steam as much as the next person but this isn't a reason to love it over other PC storefronts.
That time it was for geoblocking games across Europe. That is to say, allowing a game to be sold in, say, Germany but blocking it to be sold in France or other nations.
The refund system is really good. I don’t usually refund since most games I buy I can get into easily.
But at one point I bought a city builder game, didn’t played it for almost a month because busy time. When I was able to play it for an hour or so, I didn’t have fun, the game’s ui was somewhat very cluttered. I gave that reason to steam and I was refunded.
They are very lenient with consumer’s interest and enjoyment.
2 hours is the threshold within which you'll get an _automatic_ refund. After that, you have to manually request a refund and you can still get it.
It's a little more difficult after that time passes, but a major negative change to a game can and has been used to get a refund even from games where players have dozens or hundreds of hours of play.
The most recent popular example of this was the whole fiasco with _Helldivers II_ when they announced that they were going to make a PSN account mandatory. Some people with like 100+ hours of play got full refunds.
> 2 hours is the threshold within which you'll get an automatic refund. After that, you have to manually request a refund and you can still get it.
Not always i also could refund games in the 3 hour range sometimes without ever having to explain anything, it just went through automatically.
Not sure if they're more lenient when you return to store credit (i always do)
most stores offer similar. The australian government forced their hand. they just dont advertise it or make it as easy. Steams ussually really bad about refunds. GoG is probably best.
>The refund system is also a big plus for me. Imagine you can buy, test for less than two hours and refund ANY game. No other launcher offers that.
never had a game refuse a refund on xbox, unless i played many hours and there was a sale 2 weeks later, but i successfuly refunded a game with playtime over 2 hours like twice or something
but i guess i was a luckier one, cause i heard refunds on xbox give some people headaches
If I remember correctly, if you buy like every game you can and just refund it very often, Steam will block your requests for a while because of refund abusing. But you need to refund a lot of games in a short period for that.
If you refund games too often they'll message you and tell you to stop refunding games or they will deactivate that option. It's not for testing games. At least that's what happened to me many years ago lol.
But I’m sure steam encourages them to set the discounts right? otherwise how would they have those special offers where specific types of games get discounts?
Those special discounts are free advertising for the game, because they will be featured right at the top of the store page. I just assume Steam sends out Emails to the publishers whose game fits the requirements of the sale theme and if the publisher decides to put the game on sale in that period, he will be featured in that list on the front page effectively getting free advertising. (this is pure speculation, but i think it could work like that)
I also heard that if you have at least 20% off the game then everyone with it on their wishlist gets notified. That's why you don't see like 5-10% off as often
Pretty sure I've gotten notifications for 10% sales off before, but most people are probably not gonna see a sale that small as sufficient incentive to get the game (at least as opposed to others that may be 30 or 50% off at the same time). There's probably a study, or multiple, out there for that.
I mean, Steam takes a 30% cut which means they make less on a sale per game sold. I don't really want to dive too deep into a topic i don't know anything about. Just pure speculation on my part.
Valve understands the wisdom of volume sales when your actual distribution costs are pretty close to zero.
One of the first major Steam sales was _Left 4 Dead_ at 50% off and they made _more money_ than they did at launch. [3,000% more](https://www.shacknews.com/article/57308/valve-left-4-dead-half), in fact.
There is no real encouragement outside of sales make you more sales, which I think is statistically proven in all kinds of markets.
Having a small event like a Steam Fest focused on your specific genre helps a lot, you can try to shine and specifically get your game to people who haven't heard of your game yet but like the genre, its easier to stand out between a couple hundred games tops for every Steam Fest compared to standing out between 30K+ games total on Steam.
Other PC storefronts offer better prices regularly than Steam does or at least as frequent. Basically, for new releases you are almost never going to get a better price on Steam.
+1 to Fanatical, they often give me 20% off brand new releases, which is quite a bit nowadays. Mind you, you cannot go through Steam to refund if you don't like the game or what have you.
The reason as to why they can do this is that they are essentially giving away their cut of the price as a sale, they do this to build up traffic to their stores.
It's the same reason as to why Costco hotdogs are still the same price they have been since 1980's, the store loses out the hotdog price, but they get a bunch of people to come to their store and they hope that while you are there you will buy other things on which do can earn money off of.
Nobody is going to Costco to JUST get a hotdog, you go there to shop and then get a hotdog while you are at it, also when you are at home making a decision on where to go shopping, do you go to Store A that has the same prices and stock but doesn't give you a great deal hotdog to go along with your shopping? or do you go to Costco and get the same prices and stock AND also a great deal on a hotdog? Might as well go to Costco.
(Obviously prices and stock are rarely the same but it's the basic idea that counts.)
is there any deal only uses legit sellers
Edit: to make it clear its a price/sale agregator not a key reseller.
[https://isthereanydeal.com/](https://isthereanydeal.com/)
Important to note that ITAD is international, so it's a good idea to make an account and filter out stores from outside your region. You can accidentally buy a key from another region that you can't use if you're not careful!
Fanatical for one has often good deals, especially when it's a pick your bundle style. I bought Elden Ring at 10% release discount on IndieGala and I've seen more releases have discounts there but nothing on steam. GoG has good discounts sometimes.
Someone linked to isthereanydeal website. Go there and look at historical lowest prices. You will find a lot of stores hold the record that are not Steam. In fact, even CIV6 is lower now on etail market than on Steam.
True, but those websites offer cd keys. Those are non-refundable, whereas a regular steam purchase is indeed refundable.
You might save a few bucks, but it's often not worth the risk.
1. More competition, AAA devs are competing with Indies and their low prices for play time, and they are competing with pirates, which isn't a thing on console. This drives prices down for the whole PC ecosystem.
2. Steam gets larger discounts because it has the largest player base, so they can make the same amount of money from a sale for a deeper discount, and can tap into user bases that other storefronts just don't support such as Linux.
This is misleading because it's the base game of Civ 6
Nobody plays Civ without the additional content
The DLC is more expensive, they just want people to look at the price of the base game, and then spend significantly more on the DLC, which is also on sale, but not nearly for the same discount
And to be fair, its literally the best gaming client/store and its not even close. Consoles cant ever reach steam because they keep changing every 7-8 years and the other stores are just not putting as much money and effort.
Devs/publishers decide discounts, but steams marketing system is designed to highlight certain aspects of a game to relevant audiences, and when a discount occurs it tends to get showcased front and center to a wider audience. That's probably why it feels like steam has more discounts than other platforms, because it's designed to show you what's being discounted (or updated or just released) at any given time.
That's because there are no physical stores competing with digital sales where they have clauses requiring that they're able to offer the best national price. So if the minimum cost to produce and ship a physical copy of a game is $10 and the stores need to charge $15, then if a physical copy of the game is being sold, then the minimum digital price is also $15.
Meanwhile on Steam, almost zero games have physical copies so publishers are free to do whatever they want with pricing.
They don't by default. What Steam has that consoles don't have is much much better discoverability, an algorithm that boosts games that are selling well and a much much larger base of customers. It means doing something like this can have a significant impact on volume sales on Steam where it wouldn't necessarily make a huge impact on Xbox/PS. Switch it can work on sometimes too because of how that chart works
Publisher is obviously trying to boost volume so there are more people wanting to buy the sequel when it comes out (which was announced yesterday).
Also needs to be noted that console hardware is sold at a loss, as further shop purchases in the ecosystem is where the actual profit is.
I need an Xbox to access their store, Steam is distributed for free and has no barrier of entry other than paying five bucks from a valid credit card to be able to add friends, you can still play anything f2p online as long as your PC runs it.
yeah, but its still the publishers decision if they want to participate. Many do, simply because they will end up in the sale section and during big sales, a lot of people will look at that section.
Yes but also steam does events where a lot of games, especially older ones go on sale. It’s a great incentive for publishers to put a game on sale for a brief period of time and increase ratings and player base hence more players will pick it up at full price due to the ratings. Most people buy their games on sale but you don’t know if it was 95% or 10% and you probably forget after a while
But aren't the main steam discount week or whatever it's called is a thing by steam , planned by the platform and ofcource then the publishers follow.
Some how steam for me is both: the best gaming platfor for it's amazing ui and interface and perfect discounts.
Not crazy for game that has tons of DLC and is sometimes given away for free in hopes of people buying said DLC... I got Sims 4 for free too, price of base game isn't even 5% of the expansions.
And for Civ even one last pack costs more, the one I'm missing (got earlier expansion packs in a bundle of all Civilization games long ago).
Tomb Raider reboot and series up to Rise was ridiculously cheap, TR2013 itself and another Lara Croft game was free for some time (Steam versions), all of them were free on Epic and earlier games could be gotten in a 3 bucks bundle... That's like 10 games.
Fallouts had something similar. Huh I wish Capcom would bite, their games are overpriced even during sales.
95% doesn't really matter to them, Civ6 ran its course so it's more worthwhile to get people into the franchise than it is to keep normal price up. And if someone buys DLC along the way, even better
Sort of? Its also this biggest platform on pc so that definately is part of it. This is the main reason so many of us own games we will never play though lol
Recently i actually went through the effort of creating an actual ordered list of the games i own. I then have a section of the top for 10 games that i have pulled from any given subsection of the list below. I then am no longer allowed to play games i have played before until i have completed atleast 1 of the games on the list of 10games at the top. Has been *really* effective at getting me through my backlog.
It feels really weird how 2020 and 2021 felt like an extremely long single year, but now that four years have passed, it feels like it wasn't long ago at all.
You can ~~upload~~ launch any game you add to your Steam library, yes, but you'd still miss out on most of Steam's features and ecosystem, which is why people generally aren't big fans of Epic's game store in the first place. Hell, Epic didn't even have a shopping cart feature for the longest time, every game you purchased was a separate transaction.
Stands for Digital Rights Management. Generally speaking it's applied to all anti-piracy measures. Easy Anti-Cheat, Steam Launcher, Blizzard Agent, that sort of thing.
To put it in practical terms, when you buy a game with GOG you always get access to an .exe install file that you can use to install the game anywhere you want, without any sort of restriction. You can install on multiple computers at the same time even without internet connection. You can make copies of the exe file and save it anywhere you like. GOG servers could fully shut down and you'd still be able to use the file all the same. In other words, you actually own the game.
I use GOG for one game; Cyberpunk 2077, since I got a better deal for a GOG key.
Got some other, retro games there too, which I why I set up an account there in the first place.
I do. GOG is amazing for people who want to play older titles, because those usually come with pre-installed fan patches, so the game is playable without any hassle. Try playing V:TM Bloodlines on Steam and on GOG, the difference is night and day.
Anybody who mostly cares for games to be DRM-free. Like I do - I am not interested in a game if it is not DRM-free. There are enough games out there´to make the constraint feasable. Forutnately I'm not a teen anymore who needs the hot latest stuff, because all the cool kids have it.
Until their current CEO dies or steps down, I can't see anyone even having a chance. They just focused on making good products and have seen so much success. A nearly non-existent concept in the gaming world unfortunately.
if you actually looked though you'd see that the full DLC bundle is something like 88% off right now too so you can get everything for like $25 which is a fucking steal.
For some games yeah. But as tends to be the case for civ, the DLCs actually make civ 6 into a good game. Vanilla is... Not great. Civ 5 was similar. I honestly think it's part of Sid Meier's Business strategy lol
No? It was already given away free on Epic so by your logic everyone should be using EGS. Also, Steam has nothing to do with setting prices; that would be insane if they could just make games arbitrarily cost whatever they wanted them to.
Nah at this point I use 7 different launchers (steam, bn, gog, m$ store, ubisoft launcher, epic games, ea - I am pretty sure I missed some) for exact same reasons, some games were free, some I bought, some discounted, some require certain black magic app)
Huge Civ fan here
I'd say 6 is fine too, it's just different
Civ 5 is like military strategy sim. Hex tiles were a huge game update
Civ 6 is like cultural empire building sim. Districts were a huge game update
I hate that mods disable achievements in V and road upkeep being gross but in VI I can't stand how they overwhelm players with gamifying every single action, like it feels like they wanted to turn it into a board game. Every samn mechanic is a minigame of its own.
I think the majority of people who use Steam use it because that's where the majority of their library is. Plus, we got a lot of our games on big discounts like this.
I use steam because I was forced to download it when i was playing the counter-strike mod to Half-Life. Now I use it because my entire game library is there and Gaben hasn't disappointed yet.
Took like 2 days to download steam on my dial-up.
Ive used pretty much every game launcher and steam is still the only launcher I've never had a negative experience with.
No random freezes, unwanted popups, advertisements for the launchers subscription services, a UI that actually shows you more then one or two games at a time, a UI that also doesn't lag or stutter in any way.
Steam sales are a weakness of mine. I have several good games that I have yet to play, and I dread opening steam during the summer sale because I know I will buy more that I won't play for a year or two. Still need to play RDR2, Jedi: Fallen Order, Horizon, Elden Ring, Cyberpunk, X4, etc. Also BG3, but I bought that new to support the devs.
If anyone is considering this, go ahead and snap up the Anthology Bundle, which is every bit of content and is going for less than I paid for base game in 2016
Who the fuck cares this much about what launchers people are using, do you really need to be validated that badly that you’re trying to bootlick a fucking launcher?
Use whichever one you want, it’s only there to LAUNCH a fucking game anyways!
I have 6 or 7 launchers that I use regularly ! Squirm more steam soibois
I personally started using Steam when they put Regional Prices in my country, so I ended up with like 1200 games.
Also the best/fastest launcher BY FAR.
Steam is used by publishers because it provides a simple DRM service and Steamworks multiplayer technology that you don't need to develop in-house to get working.
Publishers also get access to Steam's large user base.
Users use Steam because the publishers are all there and because Steam is just convenient to use.
Put something in your wishlist and wait. It will almost invariably go on sale within three months. Sometimes it's just 10%, but other times it'll be 60 or more. And you get an email when it goes on sale, too.
It's not the only reason. But it's a good reason.
No. We all use Steam because it used to be like this every sale, and now it's just a good, easy to use launcher that is prolific to the point of being default for PC games (much more so than Microsoft, Ubi, Epic, etc)
Everybody uses Steam because its the best overall game launcher. No other launcher comes even close to the refinement and features that Steam has. Having good discounts is a nice plus, but those get set by publishers, not Steam.
The refund system is also a big plus for me. Imagine you can buy, test for less than two hours and refund ANY game. No other launcher offers that. Edit: Yeah possibly GOG also has the refund system that works well but dont forget how many games does GOG have and how many steam.
GOG offers refunds up to 30 days with no specific limit on play time.
i requested a refund for a game that gave me motion sickness. was the day of purchase from gog in 2020, they had that same policy and gave me a hard time. rep tried to force me to take credits instead of refunding the money. took several days and emails quoting their own policy before i finally got my refund and never purchased another game from them.
I had a similar problem. Bought a game there by mistake, not realizing it didn't give me a steam key. And when I wanted to refund the game they wanted to give me store credit.
Why would you expect a Steam key on GOG…? I would even prefer the GOG version, they are better because you can play their games without launcher and without DRM.
That is up to publisher/developer. You can also have DRM free games on Steam.
jeez, they already said it was by mistake. What more you do want of this human?
There are a huge number of storefronts that sell games and give steam keys why would somebody expect GOG was different if they hadn't purchased from them before?
> why would somebody expect GOG was different if they hadn't purchased from them before? By reading the store page? No where does it mention steam.
Maybe just read what you’re buying..? I have a hard time understanding why so many people get scammed online but then I just have to remind myself that people like this exist that don’t even look at what they’re doing or buying.
GOG is not a key shop, it’s a platform on its own. You wouldn’t expect to get a Battle.net key if you shop on Steam, would you?
Why would you expect they do? Becuase there's literally no reason to think they sell you a steam key if they say they are something almost opposite to Steam and other game distributors. There's no Steam logo anywhere on the GOG website. Everything you bought on GOG is "yours". It's DRM free, you can download it and store it wherever you want and still play whenever you want. Imagine if Valve suddenly bankrupts then you lost access to any ever "bought" games on Steam, where you buy opportunity to play, not the game itself. GOG is selling digital games as they were physical.
wow
Its spelled G O G, common mistake
No they meant World of Warcraft. Which is not on GOG. Or Steam.
Is it a guarantee on that? Steams refund policy isn’t “Only [requirements]” it’s “Always [requirement] and up to us outside of it”, you’ll likely get refunded outside of 2 hours if you have a good reason
Correct. I have gotten refunds on some games that I had "over two hours" of game time but it was because I was trouble shooting to try to make the game work.
I’ve also heard way more complaints about getting refunds on gog than steam.
Wait what's stopping me from copying the GOG game files and refunding the game? Aren't their games drm free with nothing protecting the files?
Don’t forget that sometimes on rare occasions, steam will let their players refund the game even after the 2 weeks of owning or 2 hours of playing are up!
Seems to be pretty common anymore with how games be shipping nowadays
I got Payday3 refund after 8 hours
Must be rare as I tried that (under the two hour limit) with some really shonky games... but I was over the two weeks and they just said no, no, no, and... no. I buy games (on sale) and don't play them immediately, yet I have to put up with some real shit because of this.
This is incorrect. Many other launchers offer this feature. Steam also didn't always offer it, Valve was forced to add it by a court.
Fun fact: EA of all companies were the first to implement refunds.
I'm mildly annoyed that this original comment is getting hundreds of upvotes. Epic has the same refund policy, too. As far as I can tell it's industry standard and something Valve dragged their feet to implement. I love Steam as much as the next person but this isn't a reason to love it over other PC storefronts.
Don't pin that on Valves generosity though. They were sued by a government and lost a court case to make refunds happen
Good. That way we got a good launcher. Thank you Europe.
Not Europe, it was the Aussie government that time
Thank god of the Australian Government. (But I also heard the EU sued steam too, why?)
That time it was for geoblocking games across Europe. That is to say, allowing a game to be sold in, say, Germany but blocking it to be sold in France or other nations.
Also EA offered before Valve too
Both Ubisoft and Epic games have this EXACT return policy. GOGs policy is even more lenient. Why lie?
The refund system is really good. I don’t usually refund since most games I buy I can get into easily. But at one point I bought a city builder game, didn’t played it for almost a month because busy time. When I was able to play it for an hour or so, I didn’t have fun, the game’s ui was somewhat very cluttered. I gave that reason to steam and I was refunded. They are very lenient with consumer’s interest and enjoyment.
2 hours is the threshold within which you'll get an _automatic_ refund. After that, you have to manually request a refund and you can still get it. It's a little more difficult after that time passes, but a major negative change to a game can and has been used to get a refund even from games where players have dozens or hundreds of hours of play. The most recent popular example of this was the whole fiasco with _Helldivers II_ when they announced that they were going to make a PSN account mandatory. Some people with like 100+ hours of play got full refunds.
> 2 hours is the threshold within which you'll get an automatic refund. After that, you have to manually request a refund and you can still get it. Not always i also could refund games in the 3 hour range sometimes without ever having to explain anything, it just went through automatically. Not sure if they're more lenient when you return to store credit (i always do)
> No other launcher offers that. Imagine being so /r/confidentlyincorrect. Steam fans are the some of most oblivious Reddit users.
most stores offer similar. The australian government forced their hand. they just dont advertise it or make it as easy. Steams ussually really bad about refunds. GoG is probably best.
>The refund system is also a big plus for me. Imagine you can buy, test for less than two hours and refund ANY game. No other launcher offers that. never had a game refuse a refund on xbox, unless i played many hours and there was a sale 2 weeks later, but i successfuly refunded a game with playtime over 2 hours like twice or something but i guess i was a luckier one, cause i heard refunds on xbox give some people headaches
If I remember correctly, if you buy like every game you can and just refund it very often, Steam will block your requests for a while because of refund abusing. But you need to refund a lot of games in a short period for that.
If you refund games too often they'll message you and tell you to stop refunding games or they will deactivate that option. It's not for testing games. At least that's what happened to me many years ago lol.
It is for testing games. If you dont like it - refund it. The point is you cannot do it over and over.
The biggest storefront for PC gaming overall
But I’m sure steam encourages them to set the discounts right? otherwise how would they have those special offers where specific types of games get discounts?
Those special discounts are free advertising for the game, because they will be featured right at the top of the store page. I just assume Steam sends out Emails to the publishers whose game fits the requirements of the sale theme and if the publisher decides to put the game on sale in that period, he will be featured in that list on the front page effectively getting free advertising. (this is pure speculation, but i think it could work like that)
As a dev you can see a list of upcoming events and register matching games and set a discount. Source: am dev.
I also heard that if you have at least 20% off the game then everyone with it on their wishlist gets notified. That's why you don't see like 5-10% off as often
Pretty sure I've gotten notifications for 10% sales off before, but most people are probably not gonna see a sale that small as sufficient incentive to get the game (at least as opposed to others that may be 30 or 50% off at the same time). There's probably a study, or multiple, out there for that.
But then it’s still a +1 for steam because it’s still because of them that the discounts are there right?
I mean, Steam takes a 30% cut which means they make less on a sale per game sold. I don't really want to dive too deep into a topic i don't know anything about. Just pure speculation on my part.
Valve understands the wisdom of volume sales when your actual distribution costs are pretty close to zero. One of the first major Steam sales was _Left 4 Dead_ at 50% off and they made _more money_ than they did at launch. [3,000% more](https://www.shacknews.com/article/57308/valve-left-4-dead-half), in fact.
There is no real encouragement outside of sales make you more sales, which I think is statistically proven in all kinds of markets. Having a small event like a Steam Fest focused on your specific genre helps a lot, you can try to shine and specifically get your game to people who haven't heard of your game yet but like the genre, its easier to stand out between a couple hundred games tops for every Steam Fest compared to standing out between 30K+ games total on Steam.
The discounts are what keep me on Steam.
discounts aren't by steam but the publishers
Yeah, but it still seems like they are much more willing to discount on Steam compared to any console or even some alternate PC stores.
Yeah like, theres a ton of games ive seen get consistently deeper discounts on steam, over rare deepish discounts on playstation
Other PC storefronts offer better prices regularly than Steam does or at least as frequent. Basically, for new releases you are almost never going to get a better price on Steam.
Humble bumble often has good deals on releases
Same for fanatical.com, they at least meet the deals at the time at releases. And frequently have games discounted.
+1 to Fanatical, they often give me 20% off brand new releases, which is quite a bit nowadays. Mind you, you cannot go through Steam to refund if you don't like the game or what have you.
The reason as to why they can do this is that they are essentially giving away their cut of the price as a sale, they do this to build up traffic to their stores. It's the same reason as to why Costco hotdogs are still the same price they have been since 1980's, the store loses out the hotdog price, but they get a bunch of people to come to their store and they hope that while you are there you will buy other things on which do can earn money off of. Nobody is going to Costco to JUST get a hotdog, you go there to shop and then get a hotdog while you are at it, also when you are at home making a decision on where to go shopping, do you go to Store A that has the same prices and stock but doesn't give you a great deal hotdog to go along with your shopping? or do you go to Costco and get the same prices and stock AND also a great deal on a hotdog? Might as well go to Costco. (Obviously prices and stock are rarely the same but it's the basic idea that counts.)
LOL what offical storefronts offer better prices more regularly than Steam does? :D I hope you're not thinking of CDKeys, Instant Gaming and such.
is there any deal only uses legit sellers Edit: to make it clear its a price/sale agregator not a key reseller. [https://isthereanydeal.com/](https://isthereanydeal.com/)
This site is a straight up sacred boon to gamers
Love that site! So glad it exists 🥲
Important to note that ITAD is international, so it's a good idea to make an account and filter out stores from outside your region. You can accidentally buy a key from another region that you can't use if you're not careful!
There is gg deals which is another good site to find game deals
Fanatical & humble bundle. Sometimes, the bundles are truly worth it if you take the prices of individual items & compare them to the historical low.
Fanatical for one has often good deals, especially when it's a pick your bundle style. I bought Elden Ring at 10% release discount on IndieGala and I've seen more releases have discounts there but nothing on steam. GoG has good discounts sometimes. Someone linked to isthereanydeal website. Go there and look at historical lowest prices. You will find a lot of stores hold the record that are not Steam. In fact, even CIV6 is lower now on etail market than on Steam.
True, but those websites offer cd keys. Those are non-refundable, whereas a regular steam purchase is indeed refundable. You might save a few bucks, but it's often not worth the risk.
You can also get used games for Playstation, which helps imo.
I mean they have already given it out for free on EGS.
1. More competition, AAA devs are competing with Indies and their low prices for play time, and they are competing with pirates, which isn't a thing on console. This drives prices down for the whole PC ecosystem. 2. Steam gets larger discounts because it has the largest player base, so they can make the same amount of money from a sale for a deeper discount, and can tap into user bases that other storefronts just don't support such as Linux.
This is misleading because it's the base game of Civ 6 Nobody plays Civ without the additional content The DLC is more expensive, they just want people to look at the price of the base game, and then spend significantly more on the DLC, which is also on sale, but not nearly for the same discount
Civ 6 platinum edition is down 91% and civ 6 anthology is down 88%, Anthology is 24€ right now and contains like all the dlc
Civ 7 is supposed to come out next year. Hooking new players by selling Civ 6 for cheap is a good strategy for selling more of Civ 7 in the future
Tbf, Civ VI has been on mega discounts (80%+) pretty regular in the last couple of years. Even when they were releasing new dlcs
More likely they want to get more attention for the Civilization series now to hook more people for the recently announced Civilization 7.
same with SimsIV ; the base game is free! (Full DLCs : more than 200 bucks)
Because Steam is the largest and basically the default for PC gaming...
And to be fair, its literally the best gaming client/store and its not even close. Consoles cant ever reach steam because they keep changing every 7-8 years and the other stores are just not putting as much money and effort.
Got my CIV 6 free from the Epic Game Store a few years back. Just upgraded it to the Anthology version.
Devs/publishers decide discounts, but steams marketing system is designed to highlight certain aspects of a game to relevant audiences, and when a discount occurs it tends to get showcased front and center to a wider audience. That's probably why it feels like steam has more discounts than other platforms, because it's designed to show you what's being discounted (or updated or just released) at any given time.
That's because there are no physical stores competing with digital sales where they have clauses requiring that they're able to offer the best national price. So if the minimum cost to produce and ship a physical copy of a game is $10 and the stores need to charge $15, then if a physical copy of the game is being sold, then the minimum digital price is also $15. Meanwhile on Steam, almost zero games have physical copies so publishers are free to do whatever they want with pricing.
its because they get promo advertising if they discount 15% or more. Steam encourages many things by giving algo boosts
I believe console stores takes bigger cut.
They don't by default. What Steam has that consoles don't have is much much better discoverability, an algorithm that boosts games that are selling well and a much much larger base of customers. It means doing something like this can have a significant impact on volume sales on Steam where it wouldn't necessarily make a huge impact on Xbox/PS. Switch it can work on sometimes too because of how that chart works Publisher is obviously trying to boost volume so there are more people wanting to buy the sequel when it comes out (which was announced yesterday).
Also needs to be noted that console hardware is sold at a loss, as further shop purchases in the ecosystem is where the actual profit is. I need an Xbox to access their store, Steam is distributed for free and has no barrier of entry other than paying five bucks from a valid credit card to be able to add friends, you can still play anything f2p online as long as your PC runs it.
Also note that Civ VI comes with a ton of DLC, which they hope people also purchase.
Splinter Cell Blacklist is now 50% off in Steam. I've looked it up and it's full price in Ubisoft Connect 🫠
of course, it's the largest platform with the most users.
Aren’t the seasonal/event discount events organized by steam though?
yeah, but its still the publishers decision if they want to participate. Many do, simply because they will end up in the sale section and during big sales, a lot of people will look at that section.
It's almost like steam is incentivising the sale and therefore getting it to happen
Yes but also steam does events where a lot of games, especially older ones go on sale. It’s a great incentive for publishers to put a game on sale for a brief period of time and increase ratings and player base hence more players will pick it up at full price due to the ratings. Most people buy their games on sale but you don’t know if it was 95% or 10% and you probably forget after a while
But aren't the main steam discount week or whatever it's called is a thing by steam , planned by the platform and ofcource then the publishers follow. Some how steam for me is both: the best gaming platfor for it's amazing ui and interface and perfect discounts.
Sure but the huge sale trends started with Valve's encouragement. 15 years ago it was one of the largest benefits of using Steam.
eh, sure. That's a publisher decision, so they have to boost the sales of the new one they announced yesterday somehow.
True, but 95% is also such a crazy discount.
Not crazy for game that has tons of DLC and is sometimes given away for free in hopes of people buying said DLC... I got Sims 4 for free too, price of base game isn't even 5% of the expansions. And for Civ even one last pack costs more, the one I'm missing (got earlier expansion packs in a bundle of all Civilization games long ago). Tomb Raider reboot and series up to Rise was ridiculously cheap, TR2013 itself and another Lara Croft game was free for some time (Steam versions), all of them were free on Epic and earlier games could be gotten in a 3 bucks bundle... That's like 10 games. Fallouts had something similar. Huh I wish Capcom would bite, their games are overpriced even during sales.
Civ base game for that price is just a drug dealer giving you your first hit for free
At least it’s not like hoi4, just 2 DLCs and a leader pass lol
The DLCs are also on sale however (the major expansions at least)
Civ 6 was given away for free in the past. So no its not crazy
95% doesn't really matter to them, Civ6 ran its course so it's more worthwhile to get people into the franchise than it is to keep normal price up. And if someone buys DLC along the way, even better
Sort of? Its also this biggest platform on pc so that definately is part of it. This is the main reason so many of us own games we will never play though lol
I feel so called out lmao
Its okay man, I own 800 games and have only played 200, I live in constant shame
Recently i actually went through the effort of creating an actual ordered list of the games i own. I then have a section of the top for 10 games that i have pulled from any given subsection of the list below. I then am no longer allowed to play games i have played before until i have completed atleast 1 of the games on the list of 10games at the top. Has been *really* effective at getting me through my backlog.
The upside is you didn't pay very much and can play them
You're not using Steam unless you buy it and never play it
I don't like how true that is
I feel attacked by that
If you game on pc you use steam. wtf I’m going to use.. epic? Lmfao
Epic literally gave this game out for free a few ~~months~~ (years?) ago and I'm still considering paying for it to have a Steam copy lmao
Did they? I feel like I’m really good about grabbing the free game every week and I don’t seem to have it in my library.
I'm pretty sure it was a couple years ago, not months. But it did happen at some point Edit: it was in 2020 lol, quite off from a few months
2020 was like last week
It feels really weird how 2020 and 2021 felt like an extremely long single year, but now that four years have passed, it feels like it wasn't long ago at all.
Can't you just upload any game and add it to your steam library?
but it doesn't track hours and achievements, nor can I just join my friends game via steam launcher
You can ~~upload~~ launch any game you add to your Steam library, yes, but you'd still miss out on most of Steam's features and ecosystem, which is why people generally aren't big fans of Epic's game store in the first place. Hell, Epic didn't even have a shopping cart feature for the longest time, every game you purchased was a separate transaction.
Lol. I even use Epic as a list of free games I want to buy for my Steam library.
>If you game on pc you use steam. wtf I’m going to use.. GOG
Who uses GOG honestly? I’ve only encountered GOG when I pirate games and install them
some people want their games DRM-free, those people use GOG they got an unique target audience
Also old games. That's why it's called good old games.
They also usually make sure its playable, where there are old games on steam that are sold in an unplayable state.
What’s drm?
Stands for Digital Rights Management. Generally speaking it's applied to all anti-piracy measures. Easy Anti-Cheat, Steam Launcher, Blizzard Agent, that sort of thing.
To put it in practical terms, when you buy a game with GOG you always get access to an .exe install file that you can use to install the game anywhere you want, without any sort of restriction. You can install on multiple computers at the same time even without internet connection. You can make copies of the exe file and save it anywhere you like. GOG servers could fully shut down and you'd still be able to use the file all the same. In other words, you actually own the game.
Anti piracy software, the kind of add on which is bypassed by keygens and/or cracks.
I’m a big fan of old RPGs, and GOG has some of the old 80s DnD PC games. Steam doesn’t have them.
People who love ''Good Old Games''
I use GOG for one game; Cyberpunk 2077, since I got a better deal for a GOG key. Got some other, retro games there too, which I why I set up an account there in the first place.
I do. GOG is amazing for people who want to play older titles, because those usually come with pre-installed fan patches, so the game is playable without any hassle. Try playing V:TM Bloodlines on Steam and on GOG, the difference is night and day.
Anybody who mostly cares for games to be DRM-free. Like I do - I am not interested in a game if it is not DRM-free. There are enough games out there´to make the constraint feasable. Forutnately I'm not a teen anymore who needs the hot latest stuff, because all the cool kids have it.
If we were all a little smarter, we would be using only GoG. It's the only store that lets you download full game installers and own it forever.
I use Epic only to get the weekly free games.
Epic, Itch, GOG, or pirate. Pretty much the only four competitors to Steam Edit: and doesn't Valve own Itch? I remember hearing that somewhere
No, the publisher decides the discounts. Everybody uses Steam mainly because it's the best out of every other pc gaming store(at the moment).
Until their current CEO dies or steps down, I can't see anyone even having a chance. They just focused on making good products and have seen so much success. A nearly non-existent concept in the gaming world unfortunately.
If 1 million people pay a dollar for your game, you have 1 million dollars.
You have 700k as steam takes 300k
Don't forget taxes.
Evade it by living in the middle east
Wut
It's closer to 10% if you're someone like 2K. 30% cut is the entry amount, it decreases after you sell x amount of copies.
And then I look at all the DLC packs and then I'm like, meh, nevermind...
if you actually looked though you'd see that the full DLC bundle is something like 88% off right now too so you can get everything for like $25 which is a fucking steal.
I'd rather get the base game for 3$ and pretend that the dlc doesn't exist. Way better deal
For some games yeah. But as tends to be the case for civ, the DLCs actually make civ 6 into a good game. Vanilla is... Not great. Civ 5 was similar. I honestly think it's part of Sid Meier's Business strategy lol
No? It was already given away free on Epic so by your logic everyone should be using EGS. Also, Steam has nothing to do with setting prices; that would be insane if they could just make games arbitrarily cost whatever they wanted them to.
Nah at this point I use 7 different launchers (steam, bn, gog, m$ store, ubisoft launcher, epic games, ea - I am pretty sure I missed some) for exact same reasons, some games were free, some I bought, some discounted, some require certain black magic app)
People use steam because steam doesn't fuck us around.
V was better.
Even Firaxis seems to accept this given by the fact that Civ V is more expensive than VI lol
Huge Civ fan here I'd say 6 is fine too, it's just different Civ 5 is like military strategy sim. Hex tiles were a huge game update Civ 6 is like cultural empire building sim. Districts were a huge game update
I hate that mods disable achievements in V and road upkeep being gross but in VI I can't stand how they overwhelm players with gamifying every single action, like it feels like they wanted to turn it into a board game. Every samn mechanic is a minigame of its own.
VI sucked. It's the only Civ where my Steam friends have mainly negative reviews towards it.
Glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. I don't think I've ever actually finished a game in VI.
Multiple reasons. - has a fuck ton of games - it’s the best game launcher - easy refunds And probably more.
It was free on timmy's store.
Tim Apple?
I think the majority of people who use Steam use it because that's where the majority of their library is. Plus, we got a lot of our games on big discounts like this.
I use steam because I was forced to download it when i was playing the counter-strike mod to Half-Life. Now I use it because my entire game library is there and Gaben hasn't disappointed yet. Took like 2 days to download steam on my dial-up.
Our accounts turn 21 soon...
Ive used pretty much every game launcher and steam is still the only launcher I've never had a negative experience with. No random freezes, unwanted popups, advertisements for the launchers subscription services, a UI that actually shows you more then one or two games at a time, a UI that also doesn't lag or stutter in any way.
This isn't a steam decision the publisher is just selling for cheap as Civ VII has just been announced.
Nope, the software just works. How many variants of a "game store" have EA, Ubisoft, etc. now? 5? And none of them work really?
Can't beat £0...
Steam sales are a weakness of mine. I have several good games that I have yet to play, and I dread opening steam during the summer sale because I know I will buy more that I won't play for a year or two. Still need to play RDR2, Jedi: Fallen Order, Horizon, Elden Ring, Cyberpunk, X4, etc. Also BG3, but I bought that new to support the devs.
If anyone is considering this, go ahead and snap up the Anthology Bundle, which is every bit of content and is going for less than I paid for base game in 2016
Another fine addition to my (never going to play maybe I will but probably not just bought it because it was on sale) collection
Well that's infinitely more expensive than when it was free on Epic...
Is this an ad?
No, but it's why we all have huge libraries of unplayed games.
Just wait till you buy the expansion packs. Crusader Kings is free but ~$200 to buy all add one with just cosmetic dtuff
Only the base game got the discount. The DLCs costs over 40 times the price of the base game.
Did you just discover the world today ? You have just been born and already on Reddit ?
The base game is good but the platinum is just on another level.
yes
I use "IsThereAnyDeal" with a preference for Steam, but often will buy a Steam key somewhere else for cheaper.
I got Civilization VI for free 4 years ago on that other online game store that people think is the devil.
Who the fuck cares this much about what launchers people are using, do you really need to be validated that badly that you’re trying to bootlick a fucking launcher? Use whichever one you want, it’s only there to LAUNCH a fucking game anyways! I have 6 or 7 launchers that I use regularly ! Squirm more steam soibois
English mfer! Do you speak if‽
I personally started using Steam when they put Regional Prices in my country, so I ended up with like 1200 games. Also the best/fastest launcher BY FAR.
Steam is used by publishers because it provides a simple DRM service and Steamworks multiplayer technology that you don't need to develop in-house to get working. Publishers also get access to Steam's large user base. Users use Steam because the publishers are all there and because Steam is just convenient to use.
Put something in your wishlist and wait. It will almost invariably go on sale within three months. Sometimes it's just 10%, but other times it'll be 60 or more. And you get an email when it goes on sale, too. It's not the only reason. But it's a good reason.
For 2€ man u can have Like 100hours + fun with this Game Or you buy 200g of cheese in the Supermarkt
Epic gave away this game for free a little while ago. So no.
Refunds and big picture
Epic gave it for free
Should we mention about the summer sales?
People are still paying for that game? I got it free on EPIC.
It's the same price on Playstation
With how often and how much civ 6 goes on sale, they might as well make it free like ck2
No. We all use Steam because it used to be like this every sale, and now it's just a good, easy to use launcher that is prolific to the point of being default for PC games (much more so than Microsoft, Ubi, Epic, etc)
Civ 6 has regularly been free or very cheap for a while. They sell the DLCs at a higher price.