I may have beaten my Steam Sale addiction. Click here to find out how.

[Mister 44]

Like most of you fellow PC Gamers, I've been struggling with Steam Sale Hording Induced Trauma (S.S.H.I.T.). And it started to influence my gaming pleasure. Whenever I finished a game, I would look through my unplayed list for the Next On Backlog (N.O.B.) and find that the backlog has grown by 3, 4 or even more while I've only completed 1.

So I had a one-on-one intervention with myself and I devised a cunning plan.



I was going to stop buying Steam games (sale or otherwise) until I have completed a large chunk of my backlog. Being practical, I've decided that any wallet funds from card sales may be spend as I wished.

How did this work out for me? I purchased 3 games during the summer sale (Indie titles from my wishlist, financed purely with card sales).
And the last few purchases bought with real money:

The Jackbox Part Pack -> 2015/05/07
The Golf Club (gifted to a forum member in the spirit of the pay-it-forward thread) -> 2015/03/06
South Park: Stick of Truth -> 2014/12/27

Yeah, I made this decision a quite a while back. Since I bought Stick of Truth, I have completed 16 games and moved 7 to to my "Don't Like" folder. And I need to finish a few more games before I get back into the sale game. But some of the money I saved went to my GTX 1070 which should come in handy once I start buying the newer games again.
Only problem is that my wishlist is growing very quickly...

Final words of wisdom to keep in mind when the next sale roles into town:
Through careful and systematic analysis, I have come to the conclusion that the price of games rarely increases. Yes, it will drop in a sale and then go back to pre-sale prices, but a year from now it won't cost more than it did today. In fact, it is likely to cost even less
So if the normal price drops, it will cost even less next time it is 50% off.
"Duh", you say. But here's the wisdom: Never bite off more than you can chew. When sale time comes, buy only what you know you'll play until the next sale because there is no point in spending money on a game you'll only play two years from now.

Trust me. I'm the Mister.

So how is your backlog going? Any tactics in place or planned?

 

[FarligOpptreden]

Life decided to stop my spending for me, so I very rarely if ever buy games anymore. If I do buy, it's during a sale of at least 70% off.

My last purchase made with actual money was The Witcher 3 during the last Steam sale, the rest were funded by card sales. I don't regret the purchase at all, as it's pretty much the only game I play these days. More than 30 hours in I feel I've already gotten my money's worth, even though there's at least another 50 hours of play left.

So my tip: buy content-packed games (60 hours+) at cheap prices (< R300), that way you're distracted until the next sale comes along. Aim for a ZAR/hour entertainment rate of R5/h or lower. Challenge yourself to lower that rate with each new game purchase.

 

[Solitude]

I don't buy games during Steam sales, well except for ones that I buy with card money. I do however have an addiction and I'm acquiring games faster than what I can play them.

See, I subscribe to the Humble Monthly Bundle and I also subscribe to XBox Live Gold. That's a lot of new games per month already!

I also get games as gifts, I win quite a few games and I trade my XBox games for other ones when I finish them.

https://trello.com/b/WHCsPfF2/games

I see my backlog as something else though. For me it's a growing library of games where I can pick and choose what I want to play. Sure, I'll probably never play all of them but whenever I feel like a certain kind of game, I have one to play.

My backlog is a blessing not a curse.

 

[Mister 44]

Life decided to stop my spending for me, so I very rarely if ever buy games anymore. If I do buy, it's during a sale of at least 70% off.

My last purchase made with actual money was The Witcher 3 during the last Steam sale, the rest were funded by card sales. I don't regret the purchase at all, as it's pretty much the only game I play these days. More than 30 hours in I feel I've already gotten my money's worth, even though there's at least another 50 hours of play left.

So my tip: buy content-packed games (60 hours+) at cheap prices (< R300), that way you're distracted until the next sale comes along. Aim for a ZAR/hour entertainment rate of R5/h or lower. Challenge yourself to lower that rate with each new game purchase.

This is good advice. One just needs to be careful not to pick a game with a lot of content and it turns out you don't like it.

I don't buy games during Steam sales, well except for ones that I buy with card money. I do however have an addiction and I'm acquiring games faster than what I can play them.

See, I subscribe to the Humble Monthly Bundle and I also subscribe to XBox Live Gold. That's a lot of new games per month already!

I also get games as gifts, I win quite a few games and I trade my XBox games for other ones when I finish them.

https://trello.com/b/WHCsPfF2/games

I see my backlog as something else though. For me it's a growing library of games where I can pick and choose what I want to play. Sure, I'll probably never play all of them but whenever I feel like a certain kind of game, I have one to play.

My backlog is a blessing not a curse.

That is a very positive and healthy attitude towards a backlog. If I could manage that, I would probably not have become worried about mine.

 

[MalicE]

yeah I've been using the "don't buy it if you are not going to play it" model for about a year now and so far it's working great! The only thing that makes it hard some times is the FOMO...

 

[VirtualForce]

Click here to find out how. <--- really? -rep for you! "whistling: Be strong, do give in to the dark cheap side....

One thing I do is to keep my wishlist short. I regularly go through it to trim it so that I dont get notices for a special, midweek, weekend, etc.

No impulse purchases. <--- they leave a nasty aftertaste.

But I'll still buy new releases of games that I really enjoy, for example, this year, Doom, Deus Ex and Dishonored 2.

 

[Mister 44]

Click here to find out how. <--- really? -rep for you! "whistling: Be strong, do give in to the dark cheap side....

Yeah, this is purely a matter of "monkey see, monkey do". Heading from an older post of mine:

Necro? Mini-necro? Do I care? Is the 1070 a good card?
The answer to only one of these questions is "Yes". Read on to find out which one...

As you can see, it may already be too late for me to be rehabilitated.

One thing I do is to keep my wishlist short. I regularly go through it to trim it so that I dont get notices for a special, midweek, weekend, etc.

No impulse purchases. <--- they leave a nasty aftertaste.

But I'll still buy new releases of games that I really enjoy, for example, this year, Doom, Deus Ex and Dishonored 2.

Keeping the wishlist short would be a good tactic. The problem I now face is that when a game from the wishlist goes on sale, I start slipping and want to purchase it purely because I've wishlisted it one time and even though I can't recall why (or even what the game is), I now want it.