Steam's Black Friday deals will probably put it out of business

by Griffin McElroy on Nov 26th 2009 9:05AM

After reviewing Steam's Black Friday offerings, we can't help but find the post-Thanksgiving sales offered by other retailers kind of adorable. Aww, you're knocking $10 off the price of Red Faction: Guerrilla? That's cute. Steam is selling that game, and almost every other game by THQ in an enormous, $49.99 bundle. You've got a buy-one-get-one-free deal on LucasArts adventure games? How quaint. Steam is selling like, every LucasArts PC game ever in yet another $49.99 bundle.

On top of those two preposterous offers, Steam will be slashing prices on a handful of games every day for the next five days. Today's sales include Batman: Arkham Asylum for $24.99, Far Cry 2 Fortune's Edition for $9.99 and Dragon Age: Origins for $37.49. In short, you should spend as much time downloading things from Steam as you possibly can this weekend -- with prices like these, we're guessing they'll be filing for bankruptcy some time before Christmas.

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Tags: black-friday, black-friday-2009, bundle, deal, digital-distribution, lucasarts, sales, steam, thq, valve

Reader Comments (67)

I guess that's the beauty of Steam, all the downloads are digital, no physical copies of stock to shift.. just a pretty much unlimited amount of every game out there.

They're not losing money, they're making it. I'd bet all of these deals are well negotiated with the publishers and Steam gets a nice commision.

Once a game is out of it's honeymoon period, game sales slow down... and if you shift a digital copy of a game... it's pretty much just profit for everyone.

Plus, it's nice to grab a copy of a game you may have missed playing when it came out, some experiences aren't to be missed.

You're forgetting bandwidth costs.

I agree. I stopped pirating games awhile ago, but deals like this give me some of that ability to taste the waters. There are two games in there worth the money to and the rest are nice "eh, I may play them" full releases. Even aside from these monster deals, you can pretty much get sample packs year 'round if you wait. Really, what's the point of waiting years for dirt cheap used deals when you can still support the game and get the same percentage off in a fraction of the time?

Gamestop, you are dead to me.

Just letting everyone know, If you havent played Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, I highly recommend it.
Sure, its a bit old now, but I had sooo much fun with the cheats on that game!!

A few gb of bandwidth nowadays is not even worth thinking about, especially when it's in such a massive quantity like Steam uses.

@Hydrophobicfish

Bandwidth is ridiculously cheap compared to burning, printing, packaging a game, then shipping it to a distributor who ships it to brick and mortar stores who pay people $8/hr to sell it to you.

Downloading Grid now got it for a fiver! Thats the second game I've got for this little, last one was STALKER.

I was going to get Far Cry, then I noticed it has SecuROM... even thought it's on Steam. A bit redundant, no?

I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what they have further along. My wallet, however, quakes with fear.

I've read on the Steam Far Cry 2 forum that it no longer installs SecuRom even though it's still listed on the store page. Supposedly as of the latest patch the activation limit has been removed.

Yes, a recent patch has removed both the need for a disc in the drive and all DRM. Nice of Ubisoft.

It's almost like Steam is run by Santa Claus himself...

Gabe is Santa?!

It is all starting to make sense... The puggy stomach, good humor, politness... Quick, someone get on google and see if Gabe has an affinity for the color red!

I wanna see a photoshop of Gabe Newell in Santa clothes.

well that explains why Santa hasn't given me a PS3

Red crowbar in HL

Why do you guys never mention driving games? I mean, the best deal of them all is GRID for 75% off, but you choose to mention other stuff just because you think it is more exciting?

It's because it is more exciting. Who cares about another racing game when you can be Batman?

The batman game for 25 dollars is fantastic. Exactly the sale I was holding out for. How can PC gaming die when it can be so cheap!

Oh Steam, how I do love you when you drop the overpriced crap and do these deals.

Now if Sacred 2 would stop being ridiculously overpriced.......

Very, very, VERY awesome deals... I can't wait to see what's coming up.

I will laugh so hard if Left 4 Dead 2 goes on sale! I mean, come on, Dragon Age came out this month and now it's 25% off. Not to mention the Dell deal for $29.99 so I honestly wouldn't be too surprised.

I'm so glad I didn't buy L4D2 right away.

A heads up to the people who buy the LucasArts package... Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight & Mysteries of the Sith lack music/the CD soundtrack I believe.

L4D2 is already on sale at a lot of places. After playing it I see why.

Because it's a game everyone should be able to play, regardless of financial status? I totally agree!

Because it's bad. It's a bad game, is what I'm saying. It is worth less because it is bad.

I'm keeping my fingers crosses for Modern Warfare 2. If they're cuttin' prices on Dragon's Age, which did come out this month, I think there's a slight chance MW2 could be in that bunch.

...pleeeeeeease.

LFD2 did go on sale.

That sounds pretty cool, plus I don't have to worry about them selling out or anything.

Oh, hello

Time to install Windows.

Nice...I was holding out on Dragon Age. No longer! The collector's version is on sale too FYI.

If i already have the regular dragon age on my computer, do you think it is madness to get the deluxe edition?

The content included in the Digital Deluxe edition is worth maybe $20 tops. Warden's Peak costs, like $7 to buy separately. The extra items you can't get anywhere else so depends what those are worth to you I guess. The only other bonus are some neat wallpapers and the soundtrack, which is actually very good. Still, not worth another $50 on top of what you already paid.

Ok, thanks for the advice.

fuck my life steam.

these bastards make me spend more than i ever would on these "sales"

also, once again, this is why i love my pc gaming

You're right, price is the last area that PC still beats consoles at. It's the only reason I even buy PC games. All the games I couldn't justify purchasing at the time for my 360 or PS3 I buy a year later on the PC for $10.

a year later?

you mean half a month

Am I crazy for not picking up Farcry 2 for 10 bucks? Already grab Osmos... oh the I should be happy that I'm saving so much money.

Oh other good deal D2D has Crysis Maximum Ed. for $20...

Steam is single-handedly bringing PC gaming back. Before Steam it was only Blizzard keeping it together. But Blizzard is not PC gaming, maybe PC Game (singular)

But seriously, fair DRM and time limited CRAZY sales is what Digital Distribution should be all about. Thankfully Valve has that figured out. Now we just need MS and Sony to do the same. (XBL Deal of the Week is crap compared to what Steam does. And Sony doesn't have deals of the week. But the current deals on PSN are very nice. They should happen more often and random.)

I think I just shat myself.

Seriously, thats a great deal for all those THQ games. Like a really great deal.

I bought Osmos thinking it was Eufloria.

Both are pretty cool, and quite relaxing. I think I prefer Osmos to Eufloria, has a bit more challenge to it.

Surprisingly I found some good deals off of steam when I was expecting to buy most of my games on steam. I picked up L4D2 PC for 20 bucks+COD4 PC for 20 bucks and free shipping on both. No way was I going to pay 40+ dollars for COD4 when it has been out so long. I've played it a lot before I just finally decided to get a copy of my own and I didn't really like MW2. I almost picked up FC2 for 5 bucks but decided not too because it would have meant actually going to best buy which I despise.

Just remember that most of the Lucasarts games being sold that are old are a major pain in the ass to get running well on new machines. They were too lazy to update them and they even lost the source code on some of them. A bunch of idiots there i t seems... Although, at least Steam barely lets on to that fact in the fine print and their forums have fixes and workarounds for most.

Still, good deals all around. I picked a few things myself. The only time I do digital distribution is for deals such as these.

Hey, since this is a 'Sale' article, Amazon's deals are going to be big today.

First is going to be Brutal Legend, from what I can tell, followed by some Madden, Fifa, NFS Shift, Uncharted, Killzone 2, one of those 98 dollar DSLites, and Sonic and Mario at the Olympic Winter Games.

Eleven pages of deals in all.

I wish Amazon Canada didn't suck so hard. Visiting Amazon.com is depressing.

I'm just shocked they're discounting so many big games! That means tomorrow is going to be insane.

The infrastructure is all good there, apart from on huge game launch days. I remember back when steam was a baby, when you were downloading a game it'd say "download sponsored by..." but that seems to have disappeared in most cases. They're definately making more profit than they spend on bandwidth.

ohh I want some deals on Valve games

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Steam's Black Friday deals will probably put it out of business

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