Steam contest gives you a chance to win 100 games

[Matthew DeCarlo]

We usually reserve game sales for Fridays, but Steam's latest promotion deserves some special attention. Yesterday, the distribution service launched a holiday contest that will give one lucky customer the opportunity to win 100 games of their choosing. Additionally, 20 people every two days will win five games on their wishlist, and you can also unlock exclusive hats in Team Fortress 2.

Here's how it works. Every two days Steam will post a set of objectives, which are generally game-related achievements. For instance, today's objectives require you to become a Desert Fox in R.U.S.E., unlock the Iron Curtain in Poker Night at the Inventory, and set a certain score in Chime. There's also one non game-related objective that requires you to upload an avatar for your Steam profile.

For a shot at winning 100 games, you have to complete any 10 objectives by the end of the promotion on December 20. You also have to log onto Steam on the 20 to be counted in the drawing. To keep things interesting along the way, Steam will give away five games to 20 people every other day for completing only one task -- and again, some of them are as simple as selecting a profile picture.

You can increase your odds at winning five games by finishing more tasks. Every objective completed gains you another entry in the drawing. Meanwhile, Team Fortress 2 players have a chance to unlock as many as three exclusive hats. You will unlock the "Bounty hat" for accomplishing any five tasks, the "Treasure hat" for doing 15, and the "Hat of Undeniable Wealth and Respect" for fulfilling 28 objectives.

It's also worth mentioning that Steam appears to be discounting any game required to complete an objective. For instance, R.U.S.E. is currently priced at $33.49 (33% off), Poker Night at the Inventory is $2.99 (40% off), and Chime is only $1.25 (75% off). We can only expect that more popular titles will be included as the contest unfolds, so be sure to keep an eye on things even if you're not participating.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/41472-steam-contest-gives-you-a-chance-to-win-100-games.html

 

[TomSEA]

Fun way to have a contest - very innovative!

But I can't believe that out of the 43,218 Steam games I've purchased through their various sales, I don't have a single one of the 3 listed on this first objective set.

 

[lawfer]

The contest itself looks pretty tricky to win. But it's great nonetheless, that's why I love Steam. Good luck to those who try.

 

[Kibaruk]

WOW TOMSEA! Thats a lot of games... anyhow the way I see it at least this 3 are recently released games, so probably that might be it, I still hope there are classics achievements.

This is a good time to pick night at the inventory for the TF2 fans out there, if you didnt want to unload 5 bucks for a couple of items (Lets face it, with no multiplayer who would want a hold'em game to play against the computer...), its items + the chance to win games =) (And get a hat or 2 in the try).

I'm still looking forward for holyday discounts

 

[treeski]

This is pretty darn cool, but I won't buy any games just to do the achievements for the chance to win

 

[gwailo247]

TomSEA said:
But I can't believe that out of the 43,218 Steam games I've purchased through their various sales, I don't have a single one of the 3 listed on this first objective set.

But I'm sure you have an avatar. Probably has a halo. =)

 

[St1ckM4n]

An interesting way to boost sales.

 

[princeton]

TomSEA said:
Fun way to have a contest - very innovative!

But I can't believe that out of the 43,218 Steam games I've purchased through their various sales, I don't have a single one of the 3 listed on this first objective set.

Were those purchases to make up for all the pirates on techspot?

 

[Leeky]

:haha:

Its a whole lot of games, that's for sure! It makes the 8 games I have on steam, plus 1 TF2 beta rather inadequate! :haha:

Nice idea from Steam, though I'll be surprised if I could even take much part without spending a fortune first.

 

[madboyv1]

lol I definitely can see people buying games just for this contest.

Digital distribution at its best; it doesn't cost Steam anything beyond the cost of bandwidth and promotion (which both is negligible) to do this contest, and they will likely get a lot of purchases to participate in the contest. And on the other side, for the user it's a matter of telling their newly paid/won games to install, and it'll download itself and install itself.

Call me old fashioned though, I like having physical copies. If digital, I try to buy games that are NOT linked to Steam if I don't have to... Makes offline availability higher.

 

[Kibaruk]

madboyv1 is mad for sure. "I like having physical copies"...

I love...
...my disks getting screwed.
...my computer asking for my disks to play.
...paying full retail for my games.

What do you mean by offline availability higher? Do you mean the shelves dusters? Or to play offline?

 

[Kibaruk]

Oh and I did buy Chime, just love final portal song! Besides a pretty good game to unstress for just $1,25... less than a candy =) (And an extra chance to maybe win )

 

[madboyv1]

Kibaruk said:
I love...
...my disks getting screwed.

The last game on physical media I had die on me was on floppy diskettes from the early 90s. I think the 3rd diskette of 5 died, it ticked me off SO much but luckily a friend had a copy I could bum to make a duplicate of.You must not know how to store your physical media, or you buy crappy CD/DVD drives, no offense. =p

Kibaruk said:
I love...
...my computer asking for my disks to play.

All of my games from the past half decade (possibly longer) either have a no-CD/DVD patch either developed by a third party or actually offered by the original developers, or never asked for the CD/DVD to play (or at the very least, offered to install additional content so you did not have to load from disc).

edit: OH, and making disc images. If a game ever actually required the disc for whatever reason and a no-CD/DVD patch did not exist, I would make a digital copy of the disc for use with Daemon Tools or similar drive emulation software.

Kibaruk said:
I love...
...paying full retail for my games.

The last time I paid full retail for an "off the shelf [PC] game" was the late 90s early 2000s, before mass digital distribution became a regular alternative... You must not know patience and/or you don't know where to look/shop. Once again, no offense. =p

Kibaruk said:What do you mean by offline availability higher? Do you mean the shelves dusters? Or to play offline?

Play with no internet connection, and without a middleman service. I know you don't technically have to be online to play games in steam (that have offline modes like a single player campaign), but sometimes it simply irks me that I have to use it when it would otherwise not be necessary. Supreme Commander 2 is an example. I bought the game new in store for $20, media and all, only to find I HAD to install it into steam before even the install process, and then the lengthy update download which in steam is always slower than the usual throughput I can get from other servers.

 

[Kibaruk]

For me is the complete opposite when it comes to servers, steam is usualy quite fast on my end. First of all you dont have to worry about disks either they scratch or not (I haven't scratched any... but thats because store them as supposed but even then the disks can fail due to storage conditions), nor have to worry about third party (Ok sometimes the original developers do this but normally this means crackers) for no disk patch.

I agree with game sales, but I havent seen off shelve discounts like steams (Unless you are buying something old).

Took no offense from your comment, no offense here either but I sense more than old-school some sort of fanboyism against digital service.

Also, tell me where to find L4D2 discs new for $5 or the orange box for $7 or dawn of war II gold for $7, and so on but this 3 just as example.

 

[Leeky]

I can't say I suffer much with connection issues, or the performance of downloading from Steam with my internet connection either. :haha:

Only takes a couple of mins to download most games.

 

[madboyv1]

Hold on there Timmy, I did not say I don't like digital distribution. In fact, I have a number of games bought on Steam and Impulse myself. It's just when given the option for similar/slightly more cost, I'll take a hard copy if I can, or a non-linked digital copy.

And yes, I am old school if you want to call it that. I play games to death and then even in their graves after I've buried them. I even have the parts from an old DOS system I have been eying on putting BACK together so I can play some Wing Commander and some other games (DOSBOX does not handle bigger DOS games very well in my experience). =)

As for your sale prices mentioned, The first two are slightly unfair because Valve made them and their games tend to be priced far more aggressive (on steam, which is owned by Valve) than other developers. Dawn of War 2 Gold, I could find for around $10 on the lower end ($15 being a more common price) on ebay, haven't looked at online stores I've done business in the past. Might not be $7, but it's still much less than retail.

And another reason why games on Steam are priced more aggressively than on the shelf because the is no need for packaging, media, and transportation (shipping to store) so while it is not completely fair to try to compare them directly point to point, it is one the biggest advantages for both sides of the coin.

@Leeky: Sometimes it is fast for me, sometimes it's a crawl. It's not the level of activity on their servers; in fact it slows down more often when there are less people on steam, so naturally I blame my ISP, as I do for most of my internet related problems. =)

 

[Kibaruk]

Ok ok, 2 more that comes to mind from latest discounts (And that was why I put dow 2 gold there, and there are a bunch more) are AVP for $7 and Dirt 2 for $5.

Well... I love steam discounts

 

[madboyv1]

Yeah, they are nice, too bad I usually buy the game (regardless of outlet) before steam puts it on sale, I guess that's the early adopter's tax. =p

Oh right, AVP for $9-12 on the low end, Dirt 2 was a little more difficult, $10-$15 on the low end. Again, still a lot less than original retail. =)

 

[Kibaruk]

Who is the impatient one now XD

 

[Johny47]

This is very kind of steam and the developers of the games, and it looks like fun thing to do.

 

[gwailo247]

Unfortunately I didn't have any games from today's contest, but the Undergarden demo was fun to play. I hope I can get by without buying anything for this contest, need to save up my money for the year end sale. If last year is any indication, this year is going to cost me.

 

[madboyv1]

Kibaruk said:
Who is the impatient one now XD

Hey now... I did wait, I waited for a price I was willing to pay (unless I REALLY REALLY want it, I usually wait a couple months to buy 'new' games), it just usually not as low as a Steam discount. At the same time, Steam discounts come and go so fast half the time I either miss out or I just don't feel arsed to constantly check, but that's my fault rather than Steams. =p