Steam Extends Holiday Games Sale

By Catherine Cai
published

Though Holiday 2012 has come and gone and most of the world has returned to work, Valve's decided that Christmas isn't over yet for Steam users.

The Steam Holiday Sale, originally running from December 20 to January 5has been extended to January 7. The last day of Steam sales, a date of sales reprisals, has been tweaked into "The Encore Weekend", meaning that the most popular sales during the Holiday Sale will be reprised.

It's possible that Valve may be extending the sales for reasons outside of holiday spirit, however. Keeping in mind that this is pure speculation on the author's part, the Holiday Sale may not have generated the desired numbers that Valve's achieved in the past years. This year, Amazon, GamersGate, Green Man Gaming, along with other digital download outlets, hosted similar end-of-the-year sales that outmatched Steam's in terms of time and discount percentage. The old jokes about Steam sales performing atrocities to a PC gamer's wallet just didn't ring quite as true this year. Have Steam sales finally met their match? 

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Catherine Cai
43 Comments Comment from the forums
  • sorrento
    Steam promos aren't good as before... so that could be the cause.
    Reply
  • gilgamex101
    I wasn't too enthralled with the game selection, it wasn't as alluring as previous years for sure
    Reply
  • spasmolytic46
    After that major change up of the steam TOS that made me agree to binding arbitration or lose my games I quit buying games from steam. That was a move into EA or Ubisoft territory and they still haven't made up for it.
    Reply
  • spasmolytic46
    Also no Mention of G.O.G., really?
    Reply
  • skaz
    Steam deals were horrible this season. I refuse to believe they were unaware of the other guy's deals. A quick visit to any other website would reveal that steam's prices were simply not as good.

    It's all part of the game in my opinion. Steam wins either way, as their platform (DRM) is the main one being used, and one of the few, if only, being praised by gamers. So either way, they are still making out pretty good, it seems.
    Reply
  • Gundam288
    gilgamex101I wasn't too enthralled with the game selection, it wasn't as alluring as previous years for sureI would say it was MUCH better than 2011's sale (there wasn't really anything IMHO in 2011), but 2010 was when they REALLY cleaned house and my wallet.

    This year they had some good sales if you caught the timed ones right, like Torchlight 2 being on sale for $9.99 (50% off) and a few others.
    Reply
  • fuzzion
    I bought Painkiller(Riddle me later) and dead island. It was worth the price seeing it cost less than a bong.
    Reply
  • casualcolors
    It's nice to see GMG, Amazon and Gamersgate get the attention they deserve this holiday season. GMG and Amazon in particular have been complimenting sales that often times were already better than comparable Steam sales (ie. games on Steam being sold for 66% off were being sold on Amazon and Greenman Gaming for 75% off) but on top of that GMG and Amazon had other vouchers and coupons to further increase your savings, that could be stacked with those 75% off sales bringing many titles down to under 4 dollars.

    I did far more shopping on Amazon and GMG this year than on Steam, and I feel like that is a trend that will probably continue. Adding salt to the wounds is the fact that most of the games Amazon and GMG sell are in fact Steam keys. Valve really screwed the pooch this year.
    Reply
  • neiroatopelcc
    ArticleThe old jokes about Steam sales performing atrocities to a PC gamer's wallet just didn't ring quite as true this year.
    I'm not entirely in agreement with this part miss! Despite owning hundreds of games already, I still saw myself spending 50€ more than I should have this time around. And I know friends have done the same.
    A friend of mien is now at 956 owned items. I'm 9 items behind.
    Reply
  • ddpruitt
    The answer is simple. I bought a lot of games from steam last year, but a few of those sales have gone to amazon because they had better prices and a bigger selection than last year.

    Either way it's great to be a PC gamer, sucks for console gamers paying 4 or 4 times as much for the same games ;)
    Reply