Worried About Summer Sale

The indies that don't get a great deal of attention tend to drop in price pretty fast. It's great for us, but kinda tragic for the sleeper hits that nobody seems to know about. That said, some of the big budget titles do drop at a crazy rate. We'll see I suppose!

"Expecting 75% or more off a $60 game that is relatively new is rather silly, yet I see many here who seem to think that is reasonable to hope for."

Not my expectation at all. I can't name specifics but I know the sales weren't as good as 2015's.

That depends on your definition of "relatively new" - personally, I tend to think of unqualified "new" as a game still in its six month to year old new release phase, and "relatively new" (being a patient gamer) being games a year or two old - possibly even three, since it's a subjective.

Hitman and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided are less than a year old and have already been discounted to 75% off / $15 on Steam. By my use of the term, Fallout 4 is still relatively new, and has also dropped to 75% off (not on Steam, on GamersGate).

Generally speaking, I expect the Steam Summer Sale to be more about a return to historic lows we've seen in the time between sales. That may disappoint people, but that's also potentially the best deal for people who have discounted Steam credit (from cards, trading, gift cards being on sale on eBay or Fry's, etc.). Some other predictions:

Witcher 3 won't drop below its low price on GOG (50% off/$19.99 for the base game), given CD Projeckt RED owns GOG and wouldn't want to show-up their own just-ended summer sale.

Civilization VI hasn't hit 50% off, so it may be a headliner in terms of historic low prices (seems due for a new lowest price, so I expect it will get a lukewarm reception as a headliner).

Kerbal Space Program might not hit its historic low - not all games hit their best price on the Summer Sale. It's been at 50% and 66%, and I could see it going for either price during the sale.

Other random guesses (generally the meeting but not beating past lows): Darkest Dungeon - 50%. Nier Automata - 15% off (hasn't been discounted on Steam at all yet). Hyper Light Drifter - 50% (a previous low price on Steam). Furi - 50% (it's been that a number of places recently). Life is Strange (full season) - 75% off.

Of course, I could be wrong about each and every prediction, in which case I'll probably be pleasantly surprised and have to decide if I am going to pry open my Steam wallet or wait for a game to show up on Humble (typically a month later, while the game's still in my backlog).

If you want Dark Souls 2, it might be worth buying into the current Humble Monthly Bundle given that's the one guaranteed game you get this upcoming month (and can get it immediately if you pay prior to the billing date). It's not like you have to keep subscribed, and at least you know you're getting DS2 for $12, plus the other mystery games at the start of July.

Wouldn't it make more sense to just buy the current Humble Monthly, keep DS2 and sell the rest of the games on group buys or somewhere else?
You'll most likelly get at least half the money back so DS2 will cost you less than $10 in the end.

Good point. It might take them a while to consider this, because they usually like to observe buying trends ahead of any changes.

As for flash sales, I'm pretty sure they're legally obligated to not do those during the big sales any more (could be wrong). Valve got slapped with a bunch of legal stuff all at once about currency, product assurance, sales and such. One of them definitely related to the huge sales, and I think the flash-sales during those periods were considered anti-consumer or something, so were forced to apply discounts globally rather than cycle them. If I'm not mistaken, they can only feature titles for center-stage attention and not shuffle the actual discounts (not sure if the game owners can do that manually through the duration of the sale though?). That happened about the same time they stopped doing the more interesting big sale events that were admittedly a bit tricky (like the sales where you could unlock extras like TF2 hats and such by completing achievements in the games on sale, only during the big event),

They're able to do flash sales outside of the big discount periods apparently, so maybe I'm misremembering part of it. It was a big deal back when it happened, but people seem to have totally forgotten about the legal stuff they got slapped with, and just think Valve are 'too lazy' to make a big thing out of it.

Flash sales certainly won't come back unless Valve find a way to legally exempt them as a reason to request a refund.
Because otherwise it would cost them money (transaction fees & administative costs) with a lot of people getting the game early on in the sale, then refunding and re-buying for a lower price when a flash sale happens.

+1

What GTA situation?
Any link maybe?

Yes, the prices will remain the same throughout the sale unlike years ago, when a game that you voted for would get a bigger discount for a limited period of time, usually 24 hours.

At GOG you can get unique retro games; the upcoming Steam sale may disappoint you (like last year's dull sale) and you may wanna switch to another platform. Or not?

maybe in 20 years