Weekend digital PC deals: Bulletstorm, You Don't Know Jack
Bulletstorm, You Don't Know Jack, Serious Sam HD, Crysis 2, and more fine PC games are on sale at digital distributors this weekend.
Steam
- Arsenal of Democracy: A Hearts of Iron Game - $4.49 (70% off)
- Hearts of Iron 2 Complete - $4.49 (70% off)
- Hearts of Iron III - $5.99 (70% off)
- Hearts of Iron III: Semper Fi - $5.99 (70% off)
- Serious Sam HD: Double Pack - $7.49 (75% off)
- Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter - $3.74 (75% off)
- Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter - $4.99 (75% off)
- You Don't Know Jack - $9.99 (50% off)
You Don't Know Jack
Direct2Drive
- Battlefield: Bad Company 2 - $9.97 (50% off)
- Bulletstorm - $29.97 (50% off)
- Crysis 2 - $41.97 (30% off)
- Medal of Honor - $14.97 (50% off)
- Mass Effect 2 - $9.97 (50% off)
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl - $4.98 (75% off)
Bulletstorm
Electronic Arts
Buy two of more games from this selection of 92, and you'll get 50% off your whole order. You've got your Dead Spaces in there, your Mass Effects, your Battlefields, your Dragon Ages, your Sims, your Crysesesesi, and loads of others.Dead Space 2
Impulse
50% off all Gothic games (minus the first one), plus these deals:- Blood Bowl Legendary Edition - $19.99 (50% off)
- Sid Meier's Civilization IV: The Complete Edition - $19.99 (50% off)
- Supreme Commander Gold - $9.99 (50% off)
Civ IV's expansion Warlords
Green Man Gaming
- Total War: Shogun 2 (Steamworks) - $39.98 (19% off)
Total War: Shogun 2
GamersGate
- 1C Complete Pack bundle - $49.99 (50% off)
- 1C RPG Pack bundle - $23.99 (70% off)
- 1C Space Strategy Pack bundle - $14.99 (70% off)
- 1C Strategy Pack - $23.99 (70% off)
- Cryostasis + Necrovision bundle - $4.50 (70% off)
- King's Bounty Platinum bundle - $10.49 (70% off)
- Pathologic - $2.99 (70% off)
- UFO Trilogy bundle - $6.00 (70% off)
Pathologic
Good Old Games
- Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura - $4.19 (30% off)
- Betrayal at Krondor Pack - $4.19 (30% off)
- Return to Krondor - $4.19 (30% off)
- Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption - $4.19 (30% off)
Arcanum
Get Games
- Blue Toad Murder Files - $3.74 (75% off)
- Machinarium - $3.74 (75% off)
- The Oddboxx - $7.49 (50% off)
Machinarium
Beamdog
- Trapped Dead - $9.99 (50% off)
Trapped Dead
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Alice O'Connor posted a new article, Weekend digital PC deals: Bulletstorm, You Don't Know Jack.
Bulletstorm, You Don't Know Jack, Serious Sam HD, Crysis 2, and more fine PC games are on sale at digital distributors this weekend.-
Wish Steam price matched, lots of stuff on there I'd buy if it was that price on Steam. I know that's dumb and I probably deserve to be mocked for it, but I'm just spoiled by Steam now. I don't want to have to remember other services or passwords or end up with games downloaded from multiple places that I have to track down if I want to reinstall them.
God I sound like an lazy cranky old man, "Too much trouble to remember things and do stuff! I'll just go without it!"-
I know it sounds weird, but I feel the exact same way. Part of digital distribution is about convenience. And guess what? It's just more convenient to have everything in one spot, especially one that's proven, stable, secure and trusted.
If Steam did price matching, how do you think this would effect these other services?-
It never ceases to amaze me how consumers actively seek out monopolies. Always saying "Oh, they wouldn't abuse their position" to wave away naysayers. Well guess what? Valve is a company. Companies exist to turn a profit. As big of a profit as they possibly can. They're no more trustworthy than any other company.
This isn't a hit against Valve though, the same applies to every other digital distributor out there. They're all in it to make money. Which is exactly why you DON'T want one to have control over ALL of your games. There are enough horror stories out there of Valve locking accounts and players losing their entire game catalogs.
Don't take short-term conveience at the expense of long-term choice. Even if you love a company, you don't want them to be the only player in their market. It takes away the incentive to improve, and it takes away the resistence to screw with customers.-
This is true, and I've been critical of Steam in the past, but there's an additional aspect here - Steam has the best survival potential of the bunch. If you buy from a DD service that uses DRM and they go under, you're screwed. If you buy from a place that doesn't use DRM but you lose your backup, or never did one, you're screwed. Best case scenario - Steam stays around forever and all your games are safely there.
Mussolini was a fascist dictator, but he made the trains run on time. Steam is a closed off walled garden, but the view is really nice so no one minds.
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TL;DR Steam would crush the others if they started price matching and the retail market for most items and services is self correcting over the long term.
Long version:
I think if Steam started price matching it would probably put the others out of business pretty fast, or at least crush their profit margins so badly that they wouldn't be able to afford quality support and then as issues came up and took too long to fix their reps would go down and the end result would be the same.
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find out that a lot of the publishers make Steam agree to not price match. I know in the world of retail that when Wal-Mart started price matching some big name manufacturers tried to make them agree to a clause that they wouldn't (to prevent Wal-Mart from taking over) but it was too late, Wal-Mart already controlled so much of the retail space that the companies lost too much money when they stopped selling to Wal-Mart for refusing the contract,
As for the other folks doom and gloom scenarios, I agree that generally competition is good for the market but I also believe the market is mostly self-correcting. If Steam became the sole digital distributor it would be because they were the best at pricing, convenience, and service. If they then stopped offering good service or good prices or made things less convenient competitors would re-appear. This has happened many times in many industries and retail markets.-
The idea that if Steam drove everyone else out of business then turned evil, that everyone would leave for some new alternative isn't very realistic.
From everything anyone who runs a download service of any kind says, building something like Steam is expensive. In time, effort and money. If it became just a Steam market, it would take a new company putting in a boatload of money and tons of developers and a lot of time to build a new service. It's not like these just get setup overnight.
That's one of the big problems with monopolies. Once established, it becomes nearly impossible for a new company to break into the space as the monopolist has so much control, has such a mature and established system that becoming competitive is cost prohibitive. Not to mention at any time, the monopolist can just price you out of the market.
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