
The event incentivized the playing (and buying) of real games, and the reward for doing so was something players wanted.
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Players could complete new, daily in-game achievements and tasks for coal, and later exchange that coal for a guaranteed free game. The day of the flash sale was gone, but that isn’t what killed the sales at large.Īnother argument targets the events built around the 2011 sales, particularly the Holiday Coal meta-game of the 2011-2012 Holiday Sale. You could easily buy each game you wanted on day one and ask for a refund if the title dropped any lower.

Now that players could buy and refund any game they’d played for less than two hours, the incentive to wait for a flash sale disappeared. The flash sales (and daily deals) died in 2015 when Steam introduced its refund system. Games that were offered on flash sales would sometimes be offered for the same price during a daily deal, but if not, that short, easily missable eight hour window would have been your last chance for the steeper discount. A flash sale would normally last for about eight hours and represent the lowest price a game would be offered at for the duration of the sale. Flash sales were short-lived deeper discounts on a limited number of titles. One of the most common arguments online is that the departure of well-known flash sales precipitated the downfall of later sales. Despite a pretty clear agreement that the sales aren’t what they were, though, there’s some significant disagreement regarding why. It’s not a new opinion that the sales of today have declined in quality from those of years past, and it’s hardly controversial to argue that the experience of a Steam Sale has dulled over the past few years. Still, the event made the sale more than a chance to buy cheap games. The Great Gift Pile had its issues, some of which I’ll get into later in this piece. Each day, alongside new deals, players could find and complete new achievements to earn holiday coal, a currency that could be traded in for a guaranteed game, or saved up and put toward a set of drawings held at the end of the event. The first sale I participated in was 2011’s Holiday Sale, which offered the deep discounts we’ve come to love, but also the engaging “Great Gift Pile” meta-event. Still, with the event ‘fixed’ and the sale fully up and running, it’s worth asking: Are Steam Sales fun anymore? Accompanying this year’s sale is the Steam Grand Prix event, which is… confusing at best, something Valve’s since admitted, and they’ve changed the rules and directions slightly since the initial launch.

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This year’s Steam Summer Sale started earlier this week, ushering in discounts on most titles across the PC gaming storefront. PC Gaming’s biggest sale is still its best, but it’s losing its charm.
