It's hot outside, must be time for another Steam Sale

Steam Summer Sale 2015

It's happening again...

The Steam Summer Sale is on (till the 21st) and this year's gimmick is a low budget browser-based mouse masher game.  The outcome of said game determines whether or not your "team" unlocks deals on "exclusive" games like: Pixel Heroes, Eden and Gods will Be watching...

What, never heard of them?  Yeah, me neither.  Worse, unlike previous steam sales where you could at least vote on what you'd like to see go on sale, this time you may end up with a deal on Euro Truck simulator for $3 and a worn out mouse.  At least with previous sales you had a 1 in 3 chance of getting what you wanted.

It seems each year the Steam sales get less and less appealing.  Unless you're into indie titles or 4 year old games, the pickings are actually pretty slim and so are the deals.  Looking to save a few bucks on 2011's Portal 2?  It's on sale for $4.99.  You could get the whole Hitman collection for 8 bucks if you don't mind the newest game in the collection being 3 years old.

Of course there are newer titles like Borderlands: The Pre Sequel if you think that $30 is a fairer price than $60. 

The question you have to ask is: if you can deeply discount a game that much, was it really worth anything in the first place?  Perhaps that's the reason why nobody's having any sales on GTA V or Arkham Knight Pre-orders.  They need to milk it for all it's worth before it ends up in the Steam Bargain bin for $5.  In the meantime nobody gets much of a deal on anything anyone really wants.

It wasn't that long ago that the latest and greatest showed up in Steam sales and while the deals weren't as good as the more "vintage" selections you could get a lot more than a couple of bucks off.  In fact, I can remember when a Pre-order was actually cheaper than the release price.  Now it costs the same or more and all you get is some useless DLC and the privilege of suffering launch day blues.

Maybe the problem with Steam sales has less to do with Steam and more to do with what's being sold.  Still, if you're looking for that hidden gem that nobody knows about, Steam's the most likely place to find it. 

Maybe that's why I'm playing so many Free-to-Play titles lately...