60°

Do Steam Sales and Indie Bundles Devalue Games?

1Up:

There are certain guarantees in life. For me, one of them is that anytime a Humble Indie Bundle or a big Steam sale pops up, I'm going to spend some money. At this point it's become a reflex; I may not have time to play whatever it is I'm going to buy, but when you can get quality games for so cheap I find it hard to say no. These events may only come a few times a year, though at any given time you can head over to Steam (or GamersGate, Impulse, et al) and find any number of games heavily discounted. Roughly two dozen games are on sale on Steam right this very second, including Arcania: Gothic 4 for $4.99 (75% off), the Cities in Motion Collection for $13.99 (65% off), and Sniper Elite for $2.50 (75% off). This is great news for gamers, right? Games can be picked up for a fraction of their regular prices, developers make some money, and everyone is surely better off. Or are they?

NYC_Gamer4807d ago (Edited 4807d ago )

Nope,the sales actually make gamers buy bundles in bulk...studios wouldn't agree to allow their game to be in the pack if they weren't making solid profit.

MostJadedGamer4807d ago

I only buy retail games. If a publisher or developer don't care enough about their product to put it on a disk then it it is not worth playing as far as I am concerned.

Also why would you buy games in bulk. That is just dumb. The best way to get the most out of your games is to buy one game at a time so you can totally focus on that game.

sticky doja4807d ago

Who cares about disks anymore. They just take up space or are used for coasters. Steam lets you play your games on any PC. Did your PC fry in the lightning storm? Well your entire gaming library is just a download away once you install steam on your new PC.

And I would buy games in bulk because it makes economic sense to do so. Sure I could buy GTA, GTA 2, GTA 3, GTAVC, GTASA, GTA 4 and episodes all one at a time at a retail store (if you can even find over half of those games anymore) and pay upwards of $100. Or I could buy them all in a Steam sale bundle for $8 total. Hmmmm... what to do.

dirthurts4807d ago

Nope. In my eyes, the increase the value. Games I wouldn't normally buy, I'll pick up if the price is right.

sticky doja4807d ago

No they don't. If it weren't for steam sales I would never buy most of the games I have on my PC. Many games are still being sold years after their release with the money going directly into the developers pockets and not some second hand shop like Gamestop. I personally would never have played or bought 99% of all indie PC games had it not been for steam sales.

MostJadedGamer4807d ago

I gave up on PC games a very long time agao. I stick only to consoles, and buy almost exclusively from Gamestop.

sticky doja4807d ago

We are going in opposite direction you and I. I used to game exclusively on consoles from NES on up to current gen. I still have my PS3 and 360 but gave away my Wii to my nephew. I bought a gaming PC a couple of years back that was to good of a deal to pass up and have since been focusing most of my gaming time on PC. I just bought a new 7850 GPU and play in my recliner on my 52" 1080p plasma with a wireless mouse and keyboard or a 360 remote connected to my PC playing games with graphics that blow anything my PS3 or 360 can do out of the water. All at a cool 60fps.

kevnb4807d ago (Edited 4807d ago )

gross. I can live with consoles, but buying from gamestop makes me sad.

aquamala4807d ago (Edited 4807d ago )

If you gave up pc gaming a long time ago you probably never even used Steam, then why bother commenting on this article?

kevnb4807d ago

what it does is give me something better than the piratebay can.

250°

89 million Steam account details allegedly leaked, but no one seems to know how

A LinkedIn post from Underdark AI made the discovery, stating that datasets are being sold for over $5,000 on a known black market forum.

Cockney31d ago

Biggest hack in gaming history if true

Christopher31d ago

No personal details, mostly account names, no passwords. Likely would need other account leaks to hope that someone reuses a password with a similar account name on another already leaked service. While a lot of users, the data is useless. Kind of notably by the $5k request for the data.

FinalFantasyFanatic29d ago

Plus, if you have 2FA enabled, then you were at zero risk anyway, from what I've read, Steam isn't even recommending password changes as it's apparently unnecessary.

VariantAEC24d ago

@Christopher
Where are you getting that from?
The linked article above says, "The seller claims this is a “fresh” leak and says it includes usernames, passwords, two-factor SMS logs, message contents, metadata, delivery status, and other sensitive details." Which sure sounds like they might have a lot of other information. If this leak is legitimate I better stop hearing people falsely say PSN is the worst secured digital storefront (even though that hasn't been true for a very long time with far larger data breaches since 2011 all over the world including the Equifax breach which was several times larger).

VariantAEC24d ago

@FinalFantasyFanatic
That seems true only if you use Steam Guard. If you opted for T2A via SMS the article suggests it's time to make the switch to Steam Guard and of course change your password.

Christopher24d ago (Edited 24d ago )

From the credit URL: https://x.com/MellowOnline1...

The article doesn't do a good job of going into the updated detail, they just mention part of it.

Just because the seller claims something, doesn't make it true. If it truly contained that data, it would be worth way more than just $5k. SMS systems don't rely on getting passwords for accounts they're sending an SMS to, just the username, phone number, and timestamp info.

+ Show (1) more replyLast reply 24d ago
Profchaos29d ago (Edited 29d ago )

You don't remember the psn hack I take it

Cockney29d ago

I do remember it being 77 million, thats why I made my comment

BlueDaBaDee29d ago

Update:
"Valve has now confirmed that “this was NOT a breach of Steam systems” and users do not need to change their passwords as a result. However, it continues to recommend that you set up the Steam Mobile authenticator for extra security."

https://store.steampowered....

Fishy Fingers29d ago

Shame. I liked the idea someone paid 5 grand just for my silly steam name.

DivineHand12529d ago

The government needs a taskforce with serious fundung that can opporate across borders to go after cyber criminals.

It is getting out of hand and it is the regular citizens of the world that suffer the consequences of these hacks and breaches.

My fear is that if left unchecked, state sponsored hackers from corrupt or governents under sections may use this as a method of raising revenue at the expense of everyone else.

Fishy Fingers29d ago

Bro teeing up a Mission Impossible movie.

ZeekQuattro29d ago

Not in this administration. If anything hes been dissolving existing task forces meant to protect consumers.

Amplitude29d ago (Edited 29d ago )

Why? They’d just use the funding to funnel hundred of millions of dollars into fake NGOs that then funnel it into democrat pockets while doing zero cyber criminal defence work.

Then if anybody tried to defund them it’d be a whole thing with the mainstream media claiming that there will be endless cyber attacks. NGOs would then fund protest groups to attack anybody that supports defunding the government’s cyber attack defence branch and then it would turn out it was also being used to stabilize or destabilize governments in other countries and overthrow elections to benefit America. Which is fine until they start using it on us again.

Let’s just not. Private companies who know what they’re doing (Valve) can deal with it

RIP USAID. God bless

Profchaos29d ago (Edited 29d ago )

It's not a may use this not we know state sponsored attacks do this already.

It's a global problem you couldn't have one government playing world police it would require joint collaboration with foreign governments and the problem is many laws have not kept pace with advancement of technology.

even then it's hard to say with certainty if an attack was a state sponsored attacks or a cybercriminal group operating outside of governments

+ Show (1) more replyLast reply 29d ago
pwnmaster300029d ago

remember when certain groups were saying PC gamers don’t want other subscriptions because it was not safe and steam was the spot lol.

Shiore2u29d ago ShowReplies(6)
badz14929d ago

it's time to riot, right, pc gamers??

pwnmaster300029d ago

Be careful, PC gamers are the most touchy out of the gamers lol

staticall29d ago

@badz149
@pwnmaster3000
Have you guys actually read what was «leaked»? It was SMS messages from 3rd party provider (not from Steam itself) with one-time 2FA codes (that are active for 15 minutes). No Steam account details, access to an account or any of that jazz.

Let me quote official Steam response:
«The leak consisted of older text messages that included one-time codes that were only valid for 15-minute time frames and the phone numbers they were sent to. The leaked data did not associate the phone numbers with a Steam account, password information, payment information or other personal data. Old text messages cannot be used to breach the security of your Steam account, and whenever a code is used to change your Steam email or password using SMS, you will receive a confirmation via email and/or Steam secure messages.»
Source: https://store.steampowered....

The only bad thing about this is the phone numbers. But while that sucks, attacker doesn't know which Steam account this phone number belongs to. IMO, the only thing people should be rioting about is how unprotected the SMS are and the 3rd party service that was used by Steam. I'm all for punishing people who screwed up and/or lacked the security. But this is not it.

FinalFantasyFanatic29d ago

Why riot? They have nothing of value, can't even steal an account with the details they have, they would have to attempt a brute force attack, you can already do that with a Steam user's account name (or any account on any site) if you really wanted to spend the time and processing power to do it.

Show all comments (34)
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