# Winter game sales
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/winter-game-sales/928679
**Category:** The Game Room
**Created:** [December 22, 2020, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/winter-game-sales/928679 "2020-12-22T20:36:39Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2020, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/winter-game-sales/928679/1 "2020-12-22T20:36:39Z")
Back when the steam winter sale was good, these threads used to go dozens of pages. In recent years… usually just a handful of posts. But I wanted to give people a venue to discuss games, ask for recommendations, etc.
Some of the winter distribution sales already started, but I wasn’t motivated to get this thread going until the steam sale started today even though it’s always underwhelming since the format change a few years back.
[Steam](http://steampowered.com/)
[Humble Store](https://www.humblebundle.com/store)
[Good Old Games](https://www.gog.com)
[Fanatical](https://www.fanatical.com/)
[uPlay](https://store.ubi.com/us/home/?lang=en_US)
[Origin](https://www.origin.com/usa/en-us/store/deals)
[GreenManGaming](https://www.greenmangaming.com/winter-sale/)
[IndieGala](https://www.indiegala.com/)
I will not link to epic game store and recommend not supporting them, but I will mention it here for completeness.
If you want to figure out where a game is cheapest, use [Is There Any Deal?](https://isthereanydeal.com/)
I also recommend [Augmented Steam](https://augmentedsteam.com/), a browser plugin that uses isthereanydeal to find pricing/rating/and various other useful information when browsing steam.
I would also like to point out, before you buy games, you might want to consider subscribing to [MS Gamepass](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/xbox-game-pass-for-pc/cfq7ttc0kgq8?activetab=pivot:gamesanddealstab) for $10/mo. It’s a netflix-like service that has some high quality games including some new games from day 1. I see people buying games for full price all the time for games that are on gamepass when gamepass would be a better deal. Starting next month, subscribers to MS Gamepass also get EA Play included, which includes most EA games that are more than 6 months old or so.
I also recommend browsing Fanatical. They have a lot of incredibly cheap bundles that have some gems in them, including some choose your own bundles where the games end up being less than $2 each.
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### Author:  [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2020, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/winter-game-sales/928679/2 "2020-12-22T20:55:47Z")
Taking a real hard look at **Disco Elysium** , currently 40% off on Steam ($23.99). I know I’ll buy it eventually, but I also know I’m probably not going to get around to playing it for a while, like not until maybe close to this same time next year, and it will probably be cheaper then.
Already purchased some DLC for **American Truck Simulator** that wasn’t even discounted, and also picked up **The Political Machine 2020** for 50% off ($7.49) just to fool around with, see how badly I can beat Trump.
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### Author:  [@wolfman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2020, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/winter-game-sales/928679/3 "2020-12-22T21:19:46Z")
One Utility that might be worth considering for some people is 3DMark. It’s on big sale on Steam I noticed for under $5.
It’s just a system benchmarking utility, but as the next gen starts to push graphics requirements to the next tier(a lot of discussions on "Can I Cyberpunk?) for example) It’s a decent was to get a number for a particular system’s graphics capabilities, to see what you can expect, just in case you have a CPU bottleneck you didn’t expect or similar.
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### Author:  [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2020, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/winter-game-sales/928679/4 "2020-12-22T23:25:50Z")
I will push a game here that I have now put 13 hours in and love.
[Immortals: Fenyx Rising](https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/immortals-fenyx-rising/home)
It was released two weeks ago and is down to $40. However, you also get a $10 coupon on epic games and it was $30.
Well worth it. Like Zelda: Breath of the Wild, my all time favorite game.
Note: I bought it there, but had to play it through the Uplay app. Many others have had the same issue. It won’t launch correctly unless you download the Uplay launcher. Then, no issues.
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### Author:  [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)
#### Post date: [December 23, 2020, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/winter-game-sales/928679/5 "2020-12-23T19:38:33Z")
> [@wolfman](#):
>
> One Utility that might be worth considering for some people is 3DMark. It’s on big sale on Steam I noticed for under $5
I was going to recommend the same. For under five bucks, it’s very helpful and the paid version allows you to skip the cinematic bits – which are admittedly cool but, if you’re tweaking things and need to run five tests _really_ slow things down. Plus the paid version includes the new Port Royal test for ray tracing performance.
> [@Mahaloth](#):
>
> I bought it there, but had to play it through the Uplay app. Many others have had the same issue. It won’t launch correctly unless you download the Uplay launcher.
I’m fairly confident that all UbiSoft games these days require you to use the Ubi Connect client, even if purchased through Steam, Epic or wherever. Ubi games on Steam actually require you to use the Steam client then pass through the Ubi client so only getting shuttled to the Ubi client directly is actually a blessing versus the alternative.
An invaluable tool for the Steam sale is [Steamdb’s sale search engine](https://steamdb.info/sales/). It is WAY more flexible than the search function on Steam and allows you to see historic low prices, set parameters to only search for games at X% off, only return games with certain user review ratings, and more.
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### Author:  [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2020, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/winter-game-sales/928679/6 "2020-12-25T19:39:34Z")
So far, I bought
Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom - Prince’s Edition (GMG - $10.62)
3DMark (GMG - $3.82)
Ancestors (Epic - $5.19 after $10 coupon)
Horizon Zero Dawn (CDKeys - $27.19)
Green Hell (CDKeys - $6.79)
Immortals: Fenyx Rising (Ubi - $30 after $10 coupon)
I think the first two were flash sales and aren’t up for that price any longer. A couple friends and I are debating Ghost Recon: Breakpoint at $5; a game none of us are really interested in alone but seem willing to enter into a suicide pact and hope the multiplayer holds up. And, at some point, I’ll probably trawl the bottom of my Steam wishlist and see what $3 titles I want to blow my card sales credit on.
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### Author:  [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2020, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/winter-game-sales/928679/7 "2020-12-29T03:19:18Z")
GMG has a WINTER20 coupon that’s only for regular priced items (20% off) but if there’s some new release you want, that might be better than other places have. Pretty sure you could use it on anything with a sub 20% discount to take it to 20% as well. Also flash sales are up.
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### Author:  [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2020, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/winter-game-sales/928679/8 "2020-12-29T21:55:22Z")
I don’t want to throw this thread off the rails but what is your beef with Epic?
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### Author:  [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2020, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/winter-game-sales/928679/9 "2020-12-29T22:24:49Z")
There’s a thread about it here, my participation starts around post 73:
> [@The Epic Game store and exclusivity](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-epic-game-store-and-exclusivity/832054/73):
>
> The only games I buy at full price are Elder Scrolls and Grand Theft Auto. All others can wait. $5 - $10 is what I pay for most PC games.
Essentially, instead of providing a good service that you would want to use, they’re instead trying to throw their money around to bribe game companies to only sell on their (bad) store/platform so you have no choice if you want those games. PC has always been a very open platform and I want to stamp out any attempts to make things exclusive and less accessible.
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### Author:  [@eschrodinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschrodinger)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2021, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/winter-game-sales/928679/10 "2021-01-05T04:44:26Z")
I saw someone playing 7 Days to Die Alpha 19 on YouTube, and since it was greatly on sale and cheap, I picked up a two pack. Not sure if my spouse will wind up playing or not, but after a steep learning curve, I’m starting to enjoy it.
It still stresses me out, though. Anyone else play?