GOG: Heavy (Steam) discounts are bad for gamers.

But the game 75% off!
This only happens once a week. I better hop on that deal now!

I still wish games were mostly physical retail.
also, im surprise he doesnt mention people intentionally wait for sales now.

Can't beat a free Fallout 1.

It just happens that I'm 50 cents shy of being able to buy MoM 3 lol.

Maybe if it was cheaper >:-(

And then GOG went out of business.

GOG - "Heavy discounts are bad for gamers! By the way, did we mention you can get Fallout for 100% off right now?"

.>

actually...it makes sense...

in steam the games are too expensive EXCEPT when they are on a heavy sale... in GOG they dont make huge sales, but the game its always cheaper..

sounds legit

"Heavy discounts are bad for gamers," Rambourg explained. "If a gamer buys a game he or she doesn't want just because it's on sale, they're being trained to make bad purchases, and they're also learning that games aren't valuable. We all know gamers who spend more every month on games than they want to, just because there were too many games that were discounted too deeply. That's not good for anyone."

All perspective (beyond the obvious bias this person would have, of course), lol. I look at it as "I can actually try some of the games out I've always been on the fence about." Yep, that Valve, so evil. Seriously though, there are a lot of genres I'm not crazy about, but if the sale is deep enough I'll buy any game if it looks even remotely fun. No one just buys games because they are on sale with out a modicum of interest in it. It's really just the consumer using cost-efficiency (price vs fun).

Also, I don't know how demographics play out for PC games found on steam and GOG, but I do know there are a lot of us who are poor students that can't afford a lot, all games seem valuable (monetary wise) to us.

I can see how this is true but without sales I wouldn't be able to buy many of my giveaways and my own personal games so you have to take everything with a bit of salt.

I'm willing to bet that profits earned for a game are way higher during a sales period than not, especially if it's a small, unknown indie game.

There is some truth to what they are saying. Consider games in the indie bundles, what did you think they were worth before and after it was part of the bundle.

I know at least personally that I dont consider the game to be worth nearly as much afterwards.

I agree that someone can be trained to purchase something that isn't good. We've seen that with the world market for many things such as films. However, that being said, you can also purchase things that are cheap, or on sale, that are good. It is up to the buyer's discretion if they choose to not look at the information ect. As for games, I find that the price does influence what I buy. Personally the $2.49CAD games are nice, some of them aren't that great but you can snag some awesome games as long as you look, do research and play demos.

Buying cheap doesn't mean you're buying bad.

I like that... he kinda gets it, but at the same time is super condescending to gamers. Not all learning is Pavlovian in nature, and I think at least pretending consumers/customers of YOUR product can think beyond 'I buy games that are cheap, therefor all games should be cheaper.' or 'If I bought game A at 90% off @$5, and enjoyed it X, and game B costs $60, so I should enjoy it Y, or it is terrible, or the company is bad, or it was a ripoff.'

Fighting piracy and fighting DRM aren't mutually exclusive goals, and I think both are battles I'd choose, so I like his sentiment overall.

Funny how he thinks 75% off is bad. Counter Strike Source is one of Steam's oldest games and it continues to outsell every other game when placed $5. I think that's been healthy for a game to sell very well even after 8 years of release. Good games will always sell while shit games will forever be bad. Sales never changed my opinion of what's worth my dollar. Only thing changed is me becoming a cheap gamer.

Obviously, the discounts themselves aren't bad ( on GOG, half their games go down to $2.50, and the other half go down to $5.00 during sales), and they do benefit a lot of gamers.
I'm sure a lot of people have bought games they were on the fence about.
Or they bought games they couldn't afford at when they came out.
Or they don't want to pay for a $50 or $60 digital download when the only incentives are TF2 HATZ (not that I would do that, never).
Sales are one of the best things about Steam, and I doubt the people at GOG are trying to take competition away from Valve, seeing as they don't really have the same audiences.

But the problem is people who just buy, buy, buy games. 

I'm sure many of us have done it, buying games and saying to yourself "oh this looks neat, its cheap so I'll play it sometime."
Or, like me, "Oh cool Humble Bundle/Indie Royale/Indie Gala/etc, its cheap I'll buy it."
But then you buy the games and never play them, or play one of the ~5 games you buy.
Sales aren't so bad, but they kinda are when people have 500 Steam games and they've only played 50 of them.

Oh god, even worse, is the fact that people wait until sales to buy games. Oh wait I do that too. But it still isn't a great thing. 

I think the problem with this, and I could be wrong, is that developers may see this as "GAMERS AREN'T BUYING OUR GAMES.
MUST BE PIRACY" or "THEY THINK OUR GAMES ARE TOO EXPENSIVE? YOU PEOPLE ARE TOO ENTITLED" and then they move to consoles.
Which is bad, because I need to pirate my ga- I mean I like to play games on my PC, and I would rather buy them on there instead of on my 3shitxty.
I agree and disagree with his argument, but I'm not sure how to word it, so there you go.

In other words, Valve isn't hurting the industry, you people who buy hundreds of cheap games and don't play them are. Obviously, that isn't true, but it is something to think about. I say before you buy the next game you see 75% off, you need to sit down and thi- OH SHIT! MAGIC THE GATHERING 66% OFF? BRB PURCHASING THAT! I DON'T EVEN LIKE CARD GAMES BUT WHATEVER!

Edit: Also I broke the page. neat. cool run on sentences and wall of text. Trying to fix it.

This sounds like it was written towards an older demographic, and not taking in mind that alot of gamers are in the range of 22-30 and still dont have a proper job or are studying atm, sometimes some games are simply unreachable for a big audience for the simple fact of costing 60USD. This of course doesnt mean that after a discount the people (on that demographic, 22 and above) will undervalue the game for its earlier price (which is a problem i see often with indie games and their bundles), in fact everytime you see a forum thread about a new game, most say "i'll give it a shot if the game ever goes on a discount", its rare to see someone say "that price is unfair".

Botton line is i disagree, i think the only people who get "hurt" by this, is the people who buy games for their price instead of their quality (hence the demographic thingy i mentioned), for example i bought Terraria back in the day when it was around 5USD, if i haven't done it by then, i would have probably buy it either way even if it was worth 30USD full retail price. (Hell i ended up spending around that money considering i bought a full 4 pack).

Quality before quantity.

Still, great read, havent seen a good argumented article about games in a long time.

not really. I only buy games I want.

Sales are bad lol? What about countris where payment for work isnt tht high compered to others? So Im a student and can only get a job with a miniml wage wich is bout 200 eur and paying for games bout 40 eur is rely carzy thats like 1/5 your total salary...

Somebody must tell GOG.com about bundles

Fuck GoG.

GOG doesn't know 'bout my Steam icons collection.

Maybe if we didn't get screwd by regional pricing it would be cheap

I have over 300 games on Steam.

The only ones I don't ever intend to play were games that were bundled with other games I wanted.

Wow, interesting stuff. Won't affect me because if it's not on steam, I'm not interested ^^