If you have coal, don’t craft it now - it appears they’ve run out of games to give out, so you’d just get coupons. They might rectify this situation, otherwise it’s better just to keep the coal for the drawing.
I think they are in case you forgot something. For example, if my friends start telling me “OMG, Farming Simluator 2011 is the most amazing game I have ever played! How did you not pick it up in the sale?!” Well, with the coupon I’m more inclined to buy it. (Yes, I have 50% off the Farming Simulator game. Jealous?)
I picked up the Trine pack, the Counter-Strike Source pack, and the Hoard pack. The thing is, I’m still trying to conquer the world in Civ 5, so I haven’t had time to try any of the new stuff out yet.
All told I think I’m up to about $37 spent, but I’ll play Civ 5 alone for hundreds of hours, so it’s really quite a bargain.
So the gift games weren’t allocated randomly on the fly - they apparently made a limited number of contractual agreements with the various publishers about it. And they had a fixed number of copies of games to give away.
And they probably correctly projected the number they’d need to satisfy their user base given the history of their sales.
Except people found a way to exploit it. People buy up hundreds of Humble Bundle games for a cent along with their steam keys - I’ve seen people try to sell these or trade them and that’s disgusting enough - ripping off a charity. But they used these codes to create an army of fake (but full featured due to the inclusion of indie bundle keys, which count as paid games) to do all of the various freebie achievements and the ones for the games in the indie bundles. So hundreds (?) of these people farmed out lots of account, and exhausted the supply of gift games early. So anything done from today onward can’t win anything but valve games.
Awesome people.
This is such a shame. There are so many good games in the various Humble Bundles and the funds go to good causes (however you want to divvy up your good causes) and then assholes go and screw things up like this. I can’t decide these days if I’m naive or moral.
Man, I couldn’t even work up the interest to buy dragon age 2 for $6 on amazon. It looks so dumb. I can’t believe they turned a great, interesting, proper PC game into a fucking ridiculous over the top button mashing console game. Wait, no, I can. Assholes.
Encore day. Kinda lame.
Saints Row 3 $33.50
LA Noire $12.50
COD: MW3 $45
Assassin’s Creed franchise 25-75%
Magicka 25%
Skyrim $40
Bastion $5
Total War Franchise 75%
Orcs Must Die $3.75
Dead Island $20
Deus Ex $17
Portal $2.50 Portal 2 $7.50
Serious Sam Franchise 50-90%
Batman Arkham City $25
Terraria $2.50
Half of these bullshit 25-33% deals never deserved to be on the main page as a daily deal in the first place, let alone as an encore too. I don’t know if they hand pick the encore day or they use some sort of formula. The presence of high cost, low discount, popular games suggest total revenue is what determines it, but there’s no way Bastion or Magicka is a top grosser, so I guess they just decided to put bullshit back up.
I ended up spending about $110 this sale period, but I got almost 40 games for that price (I don’t think I ever spent more than $4.99 on a game and usually paid less than that). Not a bad deal all in all. Of course I doubt I will play all of them anytime soon, but meh.
On a slight bright side, the Amazon promotional coupons go live today if you had made any purchases from their games downloads recently. I have five $5 coupons and, since Amazon is trying to match Steam on some pricing, that means I can get Deus Ex for $12, Dead Island for $15, etc.
I bought (between Steam & Amazon):
Assassin’s Creed: Director’s Cut
Borderlands: GOTY
Bastion
Beat Hazard
Binding of Isaac
Bulletstorm
Civilization V
Cryostasis
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Dragon Age 2
Fallout: New Vegas (with DLC)
Homefront
LA Noire
Metro 2033
Payday: The Heist
Red Faction: Armageddon
Red Faction: Guerrilla
Stalker: Clear Sky
Terraria (for the kid)
Total War: Shogun 2
Universe Sandbox
Huh. That’s more than I thought once I list it all out 
On the bright side, the most I spent on any one game was $12.50 for LA Noire and most of those were $1-$5 games. A few were bought using the $5 coupons Amazon was giving away when you made a purchase.
I bought:
Chantelise
Psychonauts
Delve Deeper + DLC
Dungeons of Dredmore DLC
Singularity
Orcs Must Die!
Neverwinter Nights 2: Platinum
Avadon
E.Y.E.
Wings of Prey
Hard Reset
Jamestown DLC
X3 Terran War + Albion
Sequence
Assassin’s Creed
Assassin’s Creed II
Space Pirates and Zombies
Fallout: NV DLC
Bulletstorm
Rock of Ages
Cities in Motion + DLC
Renegade Ops
Saints Row: The Third
I might pull the trigger on LA Noire and some smaller stuff later today.
I picked up:
Sherlock Holmes Collection
Mount and Blade Warband
Swords and Soldiers
Stalker CoP and SoC
Fate of the World 2.49
Batman: AA GOTY
Rainbow Six Collection
Fate of the World: Tipping Point
Empire and Napoleon Total War GOTY
Binding of Isaac
Puzzle Agent
Puzzle Agent 2
Universe Sandbox
Magicka
LA Noire
Orcs Must Die and DLC
Poker Night at the Inventory
For a grand total of 88.27, which is better than I thought. I was going a little purchase crazy for a while. Now if I can stop playing Dredmor, Isaac, and Fate of the World and get on to Batman and LA Noire…
Given SenorBeef’s lack of enthusiasm, is there anything on today’s list that MUST HAVE at an insane discount? I tend to lag the gaming world by nine to twelve months so prices reflect that (e.g. Skyrim will surely be discounted beyond today’s deal by the time I get around to it). Anything great?
Sort of an aside, what are the “Prima Strategy Guides” that pop up for several games. They’re relatively expensive, and I can’t imagine what information they could possibly contain that isn’t freely and easily available with a simple Google search (I’m a casual gamer and find it beyond easy to find walkthroughs, weapons guides, etc.). Do they have content beyond Gamespot/YouTube/IGN/etc.?
Off that list, I’d go with (but already own) Bastion, Terraria, the Portal franchise and probably LA Noire. I haven’t played LAN yet but a lot of people were excited when it went on sale. A lot of people seem to enjoy Orcs Must Die as well but I’ve never played it as it’s not my style.
I mostly picked up a bunch of DLC; it’s been the GOG holiday sale I splurged on this year for something like 40+ dollars.
I bought Portal 2, Bastion, and Binding of Isaac as daily deals. And I won 2 games from the contest. Steam is pretty cool.
I just bought Realm of the Diggle Gods DLC for Dungeons of Dredmor and the complete Fallout 3 for a total of $8.23. I intentionally talked myself out of impulse buys, since Fallout 3 alone will swallow me up into it.
I’m glad I bought it. I went into it realizing it wasn’t Dragon Age: Origins though. Once you come to terms with what it’s not, it’s not too hard to enjoy what it is and for $6 it’s already given me my money’s worth.
In don’t see how you can call it a button mashing game though. You hit space bar, give all your your characters orders, hit space bar, see results, repeat just like DA:O, Balders Gate franchise, Icewind Dale franchise etc. etc.
You do get the tactics thing where you can tell your companions what you want them to do which does it’s job as designed but apart from the minor skirmishes, it really pays to plan all your moves instead.
It’s not a super title by any means and it is dumbed down compared to it’s predecessor but it is enjoyable and it’s main claim to infamy is what it’s not instead of what it actually is. If it were called Lizard Age instead it would have been judged on it’s own merits but then all the lore and world facts wouldn’t make as much sense.
I’m glad I didn’t pay $50 for it though.
I meant to say the combat was simplified enough so that it could become a button mashing game on console. It’s still better on PC of course, but it’s a shadow of what Dragon Age was, and the only reason for changing it is to make it dumber and more YEAH BROSKI!!! friendly for consoles.
Batman Arkham City was 50% off. That is a cant miss deal.