It’s been a while since I had a bit of a rant. Can’t be having that, so let’s see what there is to complain about. Turns out that there’s plenty, though I suppose I need to be specific. I mean, it’s not like anyone cares that I thought I’d somehow dodged having hay fever this year thanks to an inexplicable lack of symptoms. But no, here I am with burning eyes, having to think of something at least tangentially related to gaming for me to bitch about.

Let’s go with the Steam Summer Sale again.

I say again because I complained about the very same thing last year. My reasoning broke down into five main categories: “Got That Already”, “That’s Crap”, “Not Sure If Want”, Trading Cards / Steam XP / FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF-” and “The ‘Meh’ Factor”. Most of these are self-explanatory, but to save you the hassle of having to read what is no doubt a broken article (because Z1G has been through about three redesigns since then), let me summarise.

The first category is simple: I don’t care if a game I already own is on sale, except if I’ve made the mistake of buying it at full price and it’s fallen too quickly. It’s even worse in a few cases where DLC isn’t discounted in the same manner. Take Skyrim or Dishonored, for example: I’m much better off just buying the GOTY versions of these games – i.e. the entire game AND the associated DLC – than just buying the DLC separately. Which makes no sense. I’m literally paying less for more content. So it’s sort of a double-whammy of annoyance: a sale spot is either taken up by something I can’t benefit from, or I benefit from it in a stupid way that makes my brain hurt.

The second group is even easier to explain: these are games that I believe are shit. Some of these are objectively bad games that have no purpose being on Steam in the first place. Over the past year, these have become much more copious: hell, I did a rant on that very topic not that long ago. Other games are just a matter of opinion; while I may not enjoy them, someone will. You can put just about any sporting title you care to think of in this category, because fuck sports.

The third category is a bit of a weird one, since it covers a broad range of desires and excuses. I might want a game, but not want to spend that amount of money; perhaps I should wait until the Winter sale for an even better deal? Or maybe it’s a damned cheap game that looks good, but I’m not sure I’ll ever play. The weirdness stems from my own indecision, as opposed to any fault with Steam itself. This leap of logic doesn’t stop me from getting angry at Steam, however: it’s like getting pissed off at your inability to do something in a game when you know it’s 100% due to a lack of skill as opposed to a bug or shitty mechanics. No matter what, you’re going to take your frustration out by shouting at the TV. Same rule applies here, except I shout at the Steam front page.

My favourite complaint is always going to be “Oh for the love of fuck what new gimmick have Valve thought up this year?”. For quite some time now, I’ve not been disappointed. This year, not only do we have the stupid crafting mechanic and random rewards for perhaps 0.00001% of Steam’s userbase, but we’ve also been split into teams! Now, as a person who (somewhat paradoxically, given my love of MMOs) rarely enjoys multiplayer elements of games, you can imagine just how many fucks I give about being shoved into a team. Why couldn’t Valve do a good gimmick for once? GOG got it right – flash sales that are actually short-term instead of 8 hours long and/or telegraphed for half a day beforehand. Plus, they were actually giving away certain games for free for a while. To anyone. Not just 30 people per day on the fucking Red Team.

Last of the old complaints was the “Meh” factor, which is exactly what it sounds like. I don’t get excited about Steam’s sales nowadays. It’s like how Christmas was fun when you were a kid, but nowadays it’s just an impending date where I’ll have to spend more money than usual but maybe get a few nice things at the same time. Whatever lustre or magic they once held has long since dissipated. But while Christmases are content to remain simply tolerable, Steam Sales just seem to be getting worse. There’s more and more to hate with each iteration, especially when you factor in some of the latest developments to the Steam experience.

For one, what the hell is the deal with putting early access and pre-order games on the sale? You should not be actively encouraging people to buy these games, Valve. The developers sure as hell can try, but in their own quiet way. It shouldn’t be front and fucking centre on the store. There’s no justification for that, especially when the whole idea behind early access is to support the developer if you like the game in the first place. Titles like DayZ actually discourage you from buying unless you are so hyped for the game that you can barely breathe, or have money to throw away. Games like Castle Story? Kickstarted almost two years ago, it’s still not officially “out”. You should not be discounting a fucking beta that Steam claims was released in 2013. Piss right off.

Here’s where I might recommend what to do to change this situation, or perhaps mitigate the bad by mentioning the good. But I am losing the ability to keep my eyes open, so that’ll have to do for now. Rant over.

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