Steam Summer Sale

Today marks the start of Steam's annual summer sale. The sale is going to last for 10 days and is going to feature most games going on sale for pretty low prices. Last year I posted that my Steam library had 112 games and I'd only played 41 of them. Clearly I didn't need more games, but I managed to rationalize buying more games at cheap prices. My budget is tighter this year, so it feels like I really shouldn't be buying anything this time around. But I'm still going to browse around and see what's up. There's also likely to be an event of some kind which will provide free Steam cards and such, so I may well be able to sell cards or gems or something to get some games anyway.

I am curious about how the last two big Steam sales (summer and winter) have actually fared for me. Did the games I bought during them get played? Should I start playing any of them now?

Summer Sale 2014

Mata Hari - $4 - UNPLAYED
Magical Diary - $5 - 3 hours, really enjoyed it
Super House of Dead Ninjas - $2 - UNPLAYED
Talisman Digital Edition - $6 - 4 hours, didn't much like it
Banished - $10 - 10 hours, really enjoyed it
Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons - $3 - UNPLAYED
Syberia Collection - $2 - 2 games, both UNPLAYED
Noir Syndrome - $2 - UNPLAYED
World of Goo - $1 - UNPLAYED
GTA IV Complete Bundle - $6 - 2 games, both UNPLAYED

Winter Sale 2014

Dead Bits - 16 cents - 79 minutes, terrible game
Don't Starve Together Frontier Pack - $6 - 4 hours, was fun, will play again with family
Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes - ~$9 (auction gems) - UNPLAYED





All told, things aren't actually looking too good for games bought in the last two sales. Looking at the unplayed games I'm pretty sure if I'd just try them all it would work out to have been a good idea. I think I really need to set something up to force myself to start playing new games. Make Friday be stream a new game day or something like that.

Looking at my games list, I now own 128 games and have played 58 of them. So I made a dent in my backlog in the last year! Not a terribly big one, but one nonetheless.

The bottom line is I probably shouldn't be blindly buying a bunch of games in this sale. But if things are really cheap it's still probably worth taking a chance on them. Dead Bits actually made me money last sale, because I sold the cards it came with for more than 16 cents! There are also a few things I really want to own. If I had the PC version of FFVIII I'm pretty sure I'd start speedrunning it, for example. There are a couple Final Fantasy games I don't own and if they go on sale I'm going to have to pick them up.

Oh, and I have 38 games that are unplayed but that come with Steam cards. I really should get those 108 free cards, because if I can get 6 cents out of each card I can surely get something for free this sale! Woo!