The Steam Winter Sale 2018 has started
The Steam Winter Sale 2018 is on; gamers from all over the world can browse thousands of discounted games on Steam and win digital items throughout the sale.
The sale runs until January 3, 2019. Many digital games offered on Steam are discounted throughout the sale and it is easy to add games to the ever growing pile of shame (games you bought but never really played).
Valve did add a winter event to the sale; you can open a door of the "extremely cozy cottage of surprises" each day to receive digital items such as emoticons, wallpapers, or so-called knick-knack items. Doors can be opened at any time even after the day they were unveiled by Valve.
Items can be sold on the market for a handful of cents and knick-knack items can be consumed to level up a badge.
You get up to three Winter Sale 2018 cards if you explore the queue of game suggestions. These can be combined into badges or sold on the market.
The usual Steam Winter Sales rules apply:
- Games may be offered for cheaper on other platforms, e.g. gog which holds a Winter Sale of its own right now. Also, games on gog are DRM free.
- You can buy any game at any time as it won't be offered cheaper during the sale.
- Virtual items that you gain throughout the sale may be sold on the market; you may make a couple of bucks this way to buy a game for free.
- Many DLC for games are discounted as well; sales are a great way to buy DLC, even all of them, through collections.
- If you are unsure about a game, add it to your wishlist on Steam and wait for another sale: there are plenty of sales throughout the year.
Here is a personal selection of games that are under €10 that you may want to check out:
- Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father 20th Anniversary Edition for €4.99 -- Remake of an excellent adventure game.
- Hotline Miami for €2.12 -- Adult game, lots of violence in it.
- Orcs Must Die Complete Pack for €3.24 -- Defend against onrushing hordes of monsters. Build traps to assist you.
- Portal 2 for €1.63 -- Classic puzzle game by Valve. Excellent, fun, especially if you play it with a friend.
- Tabletop Simulator for €9.99 -- If you like boardgames, this is the game for you. Play hundreds of boardgames with other enthusiasts online.
- The Talos Principle for €5.99 -- Great game that has received rave reviews since its release.
Closing Words
Steam Sales have lost lots of the excitement that surrounded them in recent years in my opinion. Sales are not that special anymore because there are so many throughout the year on Steam alone, and if you take other platforms into consideration, you barely have a month without a sale anymore.
Now You:Â Is sales fatigue a thing? Do you have game suggestions?
Before you buy games, switch to Linux, install steam from Package Manager and then buy lot of games from Steam​. This way it will be counted as Linux sale, encouraging game developers to port games to Linux.
Enable Steam Play Proton from settings for all games to play games you bought.
I’m glad to know my windows games purchases are being counted for Linux. I thought Valve said they were going to have some way to mark PC games you intended to play on Linux, like a box to click or something, but I haven’t seen it.
I already have Crysis on DVD, but because my optical drive is having a severe case of hiccups I decided to buy the same game from gog as well just in case it packs up altogether.
However, the gog version seems to have been doctored and the SP is much tougher than the original. The creepy graveyard mission which appears about halfway through the game is a nightmare come true and it’s almost impossible to kill the enemy who work in pairs to isolate and annihilate you. The DVD version was bad enough, but the gog flavor really puts you on the spot.
As for the Steam sale I was looking for a later version of Crysis, but couldn’t find any alas.
Thanks Martin. Bought a couple of your suggestions. One of them Talos that I’ve always had on my play list. Good inexpensive fun.