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Comment by christophilus | Hacker News Reader

PSA: Two of my favorite games, Limbo and Inside, are on sale now for a bundle deal of $3. That’s a great value.

Nice to see at least somebody is actually putting their games on sale. The last few Steam sales have been pretty sad. Back in the day you could look at your wishlist and the average game would be 50% off, with lots of 75%s and 90%s. These days they act like giving you 20% off a five year old game is some big sale.

It's probably a matter of tastes but the games I'm interested in are on deep discounts. I only picked up a few because I already have a big backlog. The sales are there but it depends on the game.

I picked up Forza Horizon 5 for 50% off and Doom Eternal for 67% off. Cyberpunk is 50% off, Back 4 Blood is 80% off, Control is 75% off. It’s not everything that’s on huge sales, but there’s plenty of deals on big games.

I just opened my wishlist and everything is 50-90% off except for two items one of which is a relatively new DLC expansion (other DLCs for the same game are 50% off).

I really shouldn't buy more games now though, when I have so many that I haven't even played yet or barely played.

That depends on what on your wishlist though. I just bought Halo collection (90% off, includes 6 games) and Sleeping Dogs (also 90% off) for a grand total of $5 (localized pricing).

Heres the thing though:

I got sleeping dogs for the same price several months ago and could have also done so twice a month ever since... It's effectively just the going price and the discount is pulled just as an incentive to push immediate purchase when people do happen to log in....

I've stopped buying things on sale and am now waiting until I'm ready to play a specific game before buying it... Nearly 100 unplayed games on my gig with most never going to get played (I played Baldur's Gate enough as a kid, I don't need to play EE).

Inside was an amazing game. The feeling of the environments you go through is just indescribable, like a combination of megalophobia/submechanophobia and mystery.

Agreed, these are two brilliant games from Playdead. Apparently they've been hard at work and are hiring for their 3rd title, which I personally can't wait! Definitely worth a buy/play.

amazing value indeed. You'll get a good 5 very high quality hours on each of them.

Every time I compare the values of video games to movies, even the small indie ones come out on top.

Cinema is so expensive nowadays.

> Cinema is so expensive nowadays.

and that's not even taking in account the overpriced pop-corn

I actually don't mind the popcorn price, as that goes directly to the theater. If you choose your theater wisely, you're helping a local business.

Nor the fact they still show ads before the movie you paid for.

I kind of wouldn't mind too much, but they start the movie around 30 minutes late just to show ads and trailers.

Then also arrive at the cinema late so you can skip the ads. I always arrive about 10 min late to skip the ads.

Yeah, but I'd have to learn the timing like it's a train that's regularly late roughly the same amount. It's easier to learn to watch movies home.

Doesn't work at the drive-in, though thankfully ours only shows one preview before the feature.

But the drive-in is an edge case.

> the drive-in

Tell me you live in the US :D

Even in the US drive-ins are a relic of another time and most of them have closed. They were most popular from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Everyone should make the effort to support the ones that are left. Going to them is an event, and affordable.

"Going to them is an event, and affordable."

Hmmm.... So is bull fighting but most of us refuse for various ethical and moral reasons...

Maybe we should treat a giant parking lot that goes unused for 99% of the time, and requires people to use polluting transportation when they could use public transit to go to a theatre, as the giant unethical mess it is, eh?

To be fair, most movie theaters in the US have a giant, 99% unused parking lot attached to them anyways. Plus anywhere with a drive-in probably doesn’t have transit.

Most theatres are part of malls now aren't they, with the parking shared and therefore not unutilized most of the time?

Or is that just everywhere I've been?

Yup. Here's a site to find your nearest drive-in, anywhere in the world

https://www.driveinmovie.com/mainmenu.htm

Sadly there aren't many left. The one we go to in Australia is shutting down this week: https://www.whichcar.com.au/news/melbourne-lunar-drive-in-ci...

Only went as a novelty maybe a few times before having kids. This drive-in was a godsend since having kids ~5 years ago, and have been going regularly since. Extremely handy during COVID too.

That's why actors are celebrities spending millions on drugs while game developers constantly question whether they should get a real job

Yet, cultural footprint aside, in economic terms the video game industry is significantly larger than film.

(Sorry, citation needed, but I clearly recall reading this from a reputable source.)

"Gaming is Five Times Bigger Than Movies Now"

https://gameranx.com/updates/id/416500/article/gaming-is-fiv...

Unfortunately a lot of that is ad filled P2W shovelware

Not much different than Hallmark shovelware

Many people only play free phone games. It tracks. I know people on the internet constantly discount it, but mobile is much too big a platform to ignore in discussions like these

I think the market is confusing gambling with gaming. The two markets don't overlap (or not directly, I'm sure there are people who enjoy both). We pretend they do, but the only thing they share is the technical aspects in producing something. Diablo Immortal clearly highlighted this.

It's equivalent to saying that soccer and basketball are the same game because played both with a ball.

"core gamers" (the gamers that play videogames) are actually "videogamers". Mobile gamers are gamblers.

Of course there are also some videogames in the mobile world, so you can find some core gamers playing videogames on mobile

> game developers constantly question whether they should get a real job

Same model. Most actors stay poor and barely make it. You just only know the most successful ones, which is a tiny minority of the acting pool.

Yeah but B listers can make a very good living, often times with more steady work than A listers since they don’t have to manage their reputation as much. They’re the session musicians, or the AAA dev working on his indie project on the side of film/TV. Still they’re also a minority but if you show up and do your work for enough years it’s an achievable track.

Notch of Minecraft fame is arguably richer than any actor has ever been.

I’ve bought it, even if i have them on Epic Store… and I don’t even have a steamdeck yet.

About a year or 2 ago I started to mainly buy games on Steam (and even wait if they start out exclusive to something like Epic) just so I can get the "free" Steam Proton compatibility for my Linux machines (NixOS), my Mac, and my Steam Deck

How they can offer games for so low?

The cost per unit is 0. Once they’ve sold a game at full price to anyone that will pay, they can lower the price to near 0 to capture any remaining demand along the curve.

Yup! The term is marginal cost: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_cost

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