The VG Resource

This is the Steam thread! Discussion of daily deals, sales, account sharing, etc goes in here.

What is a Steam?
If you've been living under a rock for the last 10 years and don't know, Steam is a digital distribution service created by Valve [makers of Half-Life/Portal/Team Fortress/Left 4 Dead/etc] that specializes in PC games. You buy a game once and can then play that game on any computer that account is logged in on.
It supports Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux (OS X and Linux currently have much smaller game libraries than Windows though support is growing!) as well as Valve's own Steam OS which is essentially just a Ubuntu fork.

Why is it so popular?
Steam is known for its deep discounts and crazy sales (the biggest and most popular ones being the Summer Sale and Winter Sale) that result in most of its game catalog being incredibly cheap. You can frequently buy games for $5-$10 or so that would normally cost around $30-$50, for example. These sales result in people buying a crazy amount of games because they're so inexpensive.
Because of this, it's completely normal to see people who own hundreds of games yet have enormous backlogs of games that they've never played because the sales were too good. (As of the writing of this post, I own 662 games on Steam but have never played 602 of them, ahahaha)

In short, Steam offers a really good value for the money and just happens to be the most convenient DD service for games.

Where do I get it?
http://store.steampowered.com/
Click the green Install Steam button at the top right of the page and go from there. You'll need to make an account, of course.

How do I see how much time I've been wasting on games?
http://www.gamalyzer.com/
Enter your profile info in the search box and it'll spit out a readout of your playtime divided between games, etc.
There used to be a tracker of how much money you've spent on Steam as well but it got too much use and shut down.

Who else has Steam here?
Eno - http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197965592273
Omnikariz - http://steamcommunity.com/id/Omnikariz/
Psychospacecow - http://steamcommunity.com/id/psychospacecow
Puggsoy - http://steamcommunity.com/id/puggsoy/
ShadeDBZ - http://steamcommunity.com/id/ShadeDBZ/

There is also an official tVGR group which can be found here: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/tvgr

Loot aquired so far: Spelunky, Dont starve, Plauge inc., Hotline miami and Pac-Man championship edition DX.
and Deus Ex Human revolution!

hoping to get Stanly parable and Guacmelee soon.

edit: I now have Guacmelee! thanks Flash sale!

I can't really buy online stuff myself (hence why I don't own every Humble Bundle) and I don't feel like asking my dad or brother for any games, since I'll have to go through some ehhhh conversations without any guaranteed result. I have plenty of games anyway (not to mention Family Sharing), I'm not itching for anything. I did buy LYNE though, since it was $0.74 and I had $0.78 left over in my Steam wallet.

So I crafted all of my badges (and in the process I got the last of the cards needed for the Summer 2014 badge as well so I crafted that too) and my profile jumped from this:
to this
#TeamBlue

I'm still not sure how you level. I'm apparently level 4 if that amounts to anything.

(06-23-2014, 03:50 PM)psychospacecow Wrote: [ -> ]I'm still not sure how you level. I'm apparently level 4 if that amounts to anything.

http://steamcommunity.com/tradingcards/faq

Basically, crafting badges gives you XP, which raises your level. A little excerpt:

Quote:How many badges do I need to increase my Steam Level?
When you get started, each badge you craft will increase your level. Most badges give 100 XP, and it takes 100 XP to get to the next level. The amount needed to level up increases every 10 levels, meaning after Steam Level 10 you'll need 200XP per level, after level 20 you'll need 300XP per level, etc.

I bought Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition.

This will be my first Souls game, so I'm pretty excited. I just hope it isn't to difficult for me...

Bought Tropico 3, had fun with it, quickly got tired of the annoying radio guy and the same 2 spanish songs, won Payday 1 in giveaway 2 days ago, currently above level 60.

Dunno why I haven't been doing this all month.

Bought Portal 2 and crafted two badges, so now I'm at level 6.

#redequalsvictory

The last card I need to craft the Summer Sale badge is 7. I've got triples of 3, 4, 6, and 10. If someone wants to trade just send me a message and I'll give you my Steam name.

This is the final day, everyone! Don't forget to buy the stuff you want now and craft any remaining summer badges since the sale (and all summer cards) expires at 1pm Eastern/10am Pacific tomorrow!

I guess that's enough spending money for now ahahaha
Everything else on my wishlist still costs more than I want to pay so I guess I'll wait for the winter sale to cut it down even more.
All in all I got some of the stuff I wanted most so I'm good with this sale.

Banished
Broken Age
Shadowrun: Dragonfall

I spent 25 USD on the lot, but had I bought it off-sale it would've been 60.

Sadly, I wasn't able to get very many games from this sale, since I'm very short on money right now. But oh well.

I've updated the OP now that the Summer Sale is over so this is just the new general Steam thread.
Let me know if there's anything else that needs to be added.

If you want to link to your profile I'll put it up in the OP as well.