I'm also on a budgetary diet too, but that has more to do with me spending money at SMASH! and on Amazon.co.uk than the Steam Summer Sale. Actually, I spent only a little more than ten dollars on this sale. In the Christmas sale I probably spent around twenty dollars, and between that and the summer sale I spent around fifteen on Portal 2 and Morrowind when those were on sale.
I'd like to play Skyrim someday too, but I know that Bethesda will eventually roll out a GOTY edition for that and it'll probably be more worthwhile than the game as it has been since release... oh, and because I haven't played Morrowind yet. But all things in their time, I guess.

EvangelionFan wrote:So, how did you folks survive the Steam Summer Sale?
I already mentioned getting Mirror's Edge, but I also picked up Limbo which I played over the weekend and Half-Life which I plan to start next week.

As much as joke about the sale.... I'm broke as fuck. I bought Fable 1 for $2.50 to get the achievement, traded a friend a CSGO beta for Arma 2 CO, and bought a Summer Key and Juggernaut Announcer Pack for DOTER 2.

Hey, speaking of which, I've still got an accidentally bought unused giftable copy of Frozen Synapse for anyone who wants to gift-trade. $10 normal value, $5 on the Steam sale.

Too bad there's no medium of exchange, now I have to rely on a double coincidence of wants! </economics>

EvangelionFan wrote:So, how did you folks survive the Steam Summer Sale?

Quite well, actually! I picked up combo packs for both the bioshock and deus ex series (decent enough FPS/adventure substitutes for Fallout:NV now that I'm pretty much done with that) as well as binding of issac + expantion, all for just over $50. That should keep me busy a good long while!

EvangelionFan wrote:So, how did you folks survive the Steam Summer Sale?

I'd gotten most of what I wanted during the winter sale back in December. I Honestly think I spent more getting a gift for some of my friends than I did on myself.

All I got this go around were Total War: Fall of the Samurai, a couple of Shogun 2 DLC packs, and the Penny Arcade games. Judging by how much I've been able to play games the last few months, I couldn't justify getting much more than that.

EvangelionFan wrote:So, how did you folks survive the Steam Summer Sale?

Got Ys Origins and Oath in Felghana, can't complain
Also bought Isaac and Hitman Blood Money as Gifts.

EvangelionFan wrote:So, how did you folks survive the Steam Summer Sale?

I bought almost nothing, and most of it was just a game or two for friends.

That's only because I was slaughtered in the other sales though.

I only bought one game for my friend.

I think I fared pretty well.

I bought a copy of Terraria, that was about it. Everything else I owned or had no interest in.

I think I might get used to these evageek L4D2 events.

You guys are doing events?

Not really.
I was just in the mood for some L4D2 and invited some people.

I should start using my steam account I haven't played my games in so long.....

I'm still not clear on exactly what people do on Steam that they don't do on the forums or IRC, but I'm happy to find out if anyone cares to share.

Bagheera wrote:I'm still not clear on exactly what people do on Steam that they don't do on the forums or IRC, but I'm happy to find out if anyone cares to share.

Well, for me it's a matter of accessibility. Forums are an entirely different beast than chatting. Discussion on them is slower, so it consequently is of a higher quality, both in merits and quality of the individual post. Discussions also last longer and stay archived longer on forums.

Steam "Chatting" is closer to IRC, but the best analogy would be AIM/Yahoo way back in the stone age when those programs were used to talk to friends on the fly. For me I never really hit it off with IRC, I like my text discussions, if they feature a mass amount of people, slower so I can read it all and respond how I like. I've already said how much I prefer responding to individual points, or "Omnislashing" as you guys call it, but that's not possible on an IRC. Plus I suck with small talk and I can't edit posts in IRC which just makes it a non interest for me. IRC is also just another program to run. I already run Steam on startup and have it running all the time since it connects me with friends (both actual friends and "friends"), so IRC would just be redundant. Steam also does have a Chat Room function that would fit the bill of IRC but I don't think anyone in the group uses it, at least not when I checked after the group was formed.

And, of course, there's the fact that Steam is used to play games. Steamworks is easily the best multiplayer system on the PC, probably better than any of the console systems too, and Steam is the leading digital distributor. I'm not sure how much you know about it but games that support Steamworks allow me to easily invite friends to a game just by clicking them in my friends list. If I used forums or IRC for that it would require a few things to be successful:

1. People would have to be reading the forum when I posted it to respond. I don't think any of us sit here and F5 for hours so that limits a posts instant exposure and when they do respond, hours later, I may not be interested.
2. People would have to be paying attention to IRC or it would risk going off screen. I suppose IRC also has PM's but so does Steam. Like, right now as I'm typing this IO just PM'd me on steam and it popped up nice and flashy.

Really a better comparison for Steam would be Facebook. You have a connected group of "friends", you occasionally engage in 1 on 1 chats with them, and a key feature of it is that it's so huge, with something like 40 million users "Everyone" has an account. They've expanded the Facebook style most recently with the launch of an improved community page that allows you to post screenshots, videos, and status updates that all your friends can see on their community page, like the Facebook home page.


Really, if any of these guys are using Steam like IRC or Forums I'm not aware of it.

Huh. Looks like I already have an account; I forgot Skyrim used Steam, mainly because I went and installed it and it gave me the finger. Oh well, the account still works. Happy to join the group if anyone cares to invite me. Handle's Bagheera_Rising 'cause someone went and stole "Bagheera", damn it.

Bagheera wrote:Huh. Looks like I already have an account; I forgot Skyrim used Steam, mainly because I went and installed it and it gave me the finger. Oh well, the account still works. Happy to join the group if anyone cares to invite me. Handle's Bagheera_Rising 'cause someone went and stole "Bagheera", damn it.

Is 'Bagheera_Rising' your account name (what you log in with), your display name (what you see if you click Friends), or the ending of your URL on your profile (like Et_cetera in mine)? Searching hasn't turned up any results. Just click one of our profiles in the OP and add one of us to your friends list and we can invite.

[s]Also if you try now you might have problems. Steam's down at the moment so if you can't log in wait an hour.[/s] Steams back up.

If I start using steam again IO you better play with me.

InstrumentalityOne wrote:Not really.
I was just in the mood for some L4D2 and invited some people.

That wasn't even the fun part.



It's probably for the best that I wasn't able to use mic, though.

So, are we going to play Borderlands 2?