A wise friend once told me, "Always wait for a sale if you want to buy any games on Steam".
Truer words have never been spoken. How many of you regretted buying a game for 1000s of rupees only find out the same game is available later for 50 bucks during a flash sale? :P
I am definitely not an experienced Steam user, in fact it's not even been a year since I installed Steam (I'm just a level 2 user), and I use Steam mainly (80% of the time) to play "Team Fortress 2". That's it. TF2 is currently my favorite PC game. But I have a lot of friends who've been using Steam for 5-6 years, and I have seen the way they used to curse every time a game they've already bought is on sale :D
I may not have bought a lot of games on Steam, but I definitely have made my fair share of in-game purchase (microtransactions) on TF2, spending at least around 10k INR on cosmetics and special weapons/taunts so far, as I have mentioned in this blog post. And yup, it was indeed confusing when Steam recently changed the currency from USD to INR earlier this month. I mean, we were so used to comparing which games or items to buy in dollars that when it was suddenly changed to our own currency, we also ended up comparing the cost not just with game-related items but also with the daily commodities that we buy as well!!! :D
And so this morning when I walked into office, our whole gaming division was abuzz with excitement because of yet another ongoing Steam sale.
Some of the bundle offers were unbelievable. A Counter-Strike bundle which consisted of "CS:GO" (Rs. 475), "CS: Source" (Rs. 729), "CS 1.6" (Rs. 369) and "CS: Condition Zero" (Rs. 369) were all available at a price of Rs. 364! That's like, a huge savings! Of course if you already have any of the games above, buying the bundle may not make much sense, but to somebody who doesn't have any of those games on Steam yet, yup it was indeed a fantastic offer.
In fact I was about to buy that, when Sumeet shouted out from his cubicle to inform us that there was an even better offer! It was the Valve bundle.
And Holy Mother of Load, you should check out the Valve bundle!
I've just saved a one way flight ticket from Pune to Aizawl :P Yayyy, mama I'm coming home :)
And so of course, I bought the Valve bundle immediately. 24 premium games at 482 bucks, that's like 20 bucks per game :D
And suddenly, my Steam games inventory was packed! I could sense TF2 about to throw a jealousy fit, but I assured him that he's still my favourite and will always be my favourite. Daddy's just going through a midlife crisis, I assured. He understood I guess :P
Another reason why spending 482 bucks didn't pinch me that hard is because, like I mentioned earlier, we tend to compare things before buying them. And I just realized most of the game items I buy at TF2 are way more expensive than the cost of that bundle!
Like for example, these days I've been buying a lot of "Strange" weapons at TF2 community store that also have a "Killstreak" quality. And I always try to buy the top most level of Killstreak (Professional) if I can afford it, otherwise I go for the next level (Specialized). Just take a look at the cost of Pyro's flamethrowers that have strange and profession killstreak properties!
And since I main as Pyro in TF2, these are the type of weapons I try to get my hands on.
My current Pyro weapon (which I renamed to "Spawn Return Device") not only has a professional killstreak property (Incinerator with Agonizing Emerald sheen) and keeps a track of all my kills, it also has three additional "strange" properties embedded to it - Number of allies extinguished, Medics killed and Critical kills.
Now again, I spent a lot on those extra strange properties, but it helped me keep track of the way I play - "Allies extinguished" let me know if I'm being a good team player and extinguishing my teammates who are in flames or am I playing selfishly for the sake of conserving ammo, "Medics killed" let me know how much impact I'm making on the enemy team since medics are usually the ones who can turn the tide of a battle around, and "Crit kills" let me know how well I am utilizing the full potential of a Backburner since it's main usage is to ambush enemies from behind due to it's 100% crit damage from behind.
You might think 226 kills from a person who mains as Pyro is ridiculous. It indeed is, but I've only started using that weapon a week back, hence the reason for the low stats. Here is another weapon I purchased recently which I haven't got to use yet. Another "strange professional killstreak" flamethrower, the "Forest Fire", a mercenary grade from the "Concealed Weapon Collection". I really like "Projectiles reflected" strange counter as I'm learning how to reflect back rockets and sticky bombs properly and it will show me how much I'm improving my skills, and the "Posthumous kills" counter will let me know if my WM1 had been a success :P I spent 1200 bucks to buy it!
So yeah, considering all that, I think I really had a great deal buying the Valve bundle for 482 bucks. I guess I have a lot of gaming time coming up ahead with all the new games in my inventory, time to kick some ass. Do add me on Steam, user id: Mizohican. Cheers! :)
