Since they are pretty much doing a somewhat interesting sale every other week or so I figured this deserved its own thread to post crap about it.

They had the pre-order for the zeno clash indie game for 50% off yesterday and I got in on that with a little help from a friend, and now I also got The Maw (+ extra maps) and Dangerous High School Girls In Trouble (not it's not what it sounds like ). Was tempted by The Path bit decided against it.

Too bad Braid and And Yet It Moves aren't on steam yet, or I would have gotten them too. Took me all the willpower in the world to not buy the Abe's Oddyssee pack for a mere 3€. Great game that it may be, it's from 99' and only works on XP so you know...I really shouldn't.

(and yet it moves teaser: http://store.steampowered.com/app/900785/)

I changed the thread title a little so it'd encompass other good bargains like this:

http://www.shopto.net/page.php?page=det ... latform=PC

17 quid for Empire. That's hilariously low. Peltz, weren't you still looking for it?

I'm keeping an eye on the crazy Ubi sales too. I already own Assassin's Creed and FC2 so I don't really care about them being lowered in price, but will be interesting to see what the other games will be...

Yea, different Ubi game each week or something. Not sure I care... I've pretty much played every game I want to lately. Still plugging away in Empire: TW.

Well the second discount is Prince of Persia.

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway for 15 bucks today. Man. If I didn't have too many games I still need to play already I'd be tempted.

Yea, $15 isn't bad for that game. It was decent fun, though limited in replay value. And the story does't make a whole lot of sense unless you've played the rest of the games, I guess.

Endwar is probably the weekend deal.

Ubi's offer of the day on steam is FC2...but get this: 15 bucks for our American whores, TWENTYFIVE EUROS for us Eurotrash. That's like 30 or 35 bucks. Wtf?!

Man, steam euro prices are a complete ripoff. I should just set up a carroussel involving Satis gifting me games at the American prices and then me wiring him the euro equivalent over paypal or some such.

That's actually not such a bad idea, if I say so myself.


EDIT: also, on the increasingly appealing GOG (no DRM, low dollar prices): the incredible (and underappreciated) Beyond Good and Evil at 9.99$.

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/beyond_good_and_evil

y'know, that's tempting if it wasn't for the fact I'd probably get put in jail for not paying the IRS taxes. And international business law is a bit complicated to me. Besides, I'd have to pay VAT or whatever. In the end, without me going to jail, it probably isn't worth it.

That's a great price for fc2 though...well, the US price. It's totally worth $15... hell, it's worth $35. That's actually a really good game. I hope they come out with an expansion or something that adds a better campaign.

I havent seen any vat yet that turns 15 into 35.

I dunno...you think there's a market? If it's an electronic transfer, does VAT still have to be paid? I could possibly see that as a viable business... create a website for Europeans to purchase Steam games at US prices. Provide credit card and Steam name, get charged US price plus a service charge, get game via Steam within a guaranteed time frame. If there wasn't much business it wouldn't really matter... all you'd be paying in business expenses would be the web hosting, and that could be written off for tax purposes.

/me contemplates

There's definitely a market, only question is how you're gonna reach that market. Because as far as cross-atlantic gaming groups go, this is the only one I am really investing any time in (and I'm sure it's the same for you). And we're not big enough for you to run a real profit on vis-a-vis the work put in.

Well, that's a lie, if the discrepancy between the steam dollar and euro prices becomes as skewed as the FarCry 2 price for all games then you could be making nice but small profits just from us alone. But it doesn't look that bad yet, it's mostly just the retarded "one on one" conversion of dollar prices into euros. In Valve's book, 50 dollar = 50 euro, depending on where you live. Yeah...not really. According to Currency Converter, it's 66 bucks (!) atm. Mm. You might even be able to make a small profit off of those new games then. Say, a couple of bucks handling for you...still leaves a little over 10 in the customer's pocket.

It's probably not worth it though, not on a large scale. Valve could suspend the 'gifting' account, you'd need legal advice from a specialized lawyers first and the setup costs might be lost if the thing bombs - because there are quite a few online retail sites with much lower prices than steam. So people who just look around can get their (new) games there instead.

That being said, if you do have a paypal account I might ask you to do something small for me in the future (with full reimbursement obviously). We'll see.

I'd almost forget to post about the Ubi weekend deal: 10 bucks/euros for 4 games, including

Beyond Good and Evil
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic
IL Stumovik
FarCr

That's a fucking great deal for 10€

Now if I didn't already own 3 out of 4 of those games... (don't own Il Sturmovik)