The Christmas Steam sale is finally with us, following the four days of bidding for games. It's the usual format, with at least 70% of the games on sale, then each day you get several games with even better deals those usually last for 48hours, then there's the flash sales that this time change every 12 hours (used to be 8 hours), and there's the vote for one out of three games which runs over 24 hours. Whichever game winds gets an even bigger discount for 24hours until the next vote winner is up for grabs. You can also collect cards, which are dropped for any game you purchase in the sale, plus you get a card every time you vote (one vote per day). If you manage to collect all the cards, you can then craft yourself a Xmas 2014 sale badge.
You can still swap emicons and backgrounds and cards for gems which can then be swapped for booster packs, (only one per day), or you can sell the gems on the market.
With respect to the auction, I was dubious about bidding until the last 12 hours of the auction, what I did realize early on was that I could exchange all of those useless emicons and backgrounds I'd earned crafting card sets for gems, which could be used either to sell for wallet cash or to bid on loads of games (approx 3300 games). Turns out the auction came up with many better deals than we will see in the Christmas sale, thoiugh my original reson for thinking it a waste of time was based on the first auction, where people were bidding ridiculous amounts of gems for the Christmas background (it went to over a million gems, which at the time were worth £0.42pence per thousand, thats more than £0.42 x 1000=£420 plus other games were being auctions at more than the actual cost of the game before the sale started, eg, CS:GO was initially beiong auctioned at over 80 000 gems (and that was three days before the auction started, so the final cost in gems was probably much higher) 80 000 = 80 x £0.42= £33.60, the actual game before the salke started was £11.99, and now on sale at each sack of 1000 was selling on the market at the beginning for around £0.42pence tohugh at one point in the first day you could get sacks for £0.03, almost a million of those were sold before the price rose sharply. someone made an aweful lot of money via this method as sacks of gems went up to £0.80 at one point, then leveled off at around £0.74pence over the actual auction period (which lasted for 4 days) I managed to get loads of games at over 75% off the usual price, with some games up to 90% cheaper. If they ever do an auction again, it will be well worth participating.
As for the sale, As usual you'll get experience points towards Steam levels (which as far as I can see are virtually worthless apart from maybe some kudos in some circles, plus getting more booster pack drops, which can either be added to card sets or sold on the market.
I've seem some Steam users with Steam levels over 400. To get to this level you inevitably end up buying many of the cards to complete sets. We are talking thousands of dollars just to get to these lofty heights. Digital badges and the ability to say hey I'm level 400. what a joke.
I'm slowly getting tired of Steam despite the amazing bargains. I've turned from a sensible guy who used to play every game to its end, one at a time, or as near as I could manage to finished, to a game collector with well over a thousand unplayed games, some of which I've had for over 3 years. The sales pander to those of us with obsessiv traits, lol. It's such a shame we can't pass on the game sin our digital accounts. i'm sure many people would appreciate many of the ames i have but don't play (simply becasue I don't have the time)
Scuze the rant, I needed to vent. :)
I hope everyone has a very happy and memorable festive season. Give a thought to all those poor people in Africa who are under a massive cloud this Christmas due to Ebola and food shortages.
