Quoting: SamsaiPeople are entitled to a time-limited discount because the proprietors of the store set a time-limited discount. We can argue whether games are appropriately priced but that is an entirely different issue.

Okay, I suppose the question then is why do proprietors of the store feel the need to exclude or pressure customers with busy lives? What makes me less worthy of doing business and what I can actually do about it?

Quoting: SamsaiYeah, it sucks to miss out on opportunities. But that's life and opportunities are passing you by constantly. Getting stuck on what-ifs isn't productive here or anywhere else.

Indeed, it does suck to miss out on opportunities. Imagine the feeling of a service allowing you to figuratively travel in time and erase past regrets. Magical, really.

Quoting: SamsaiThis goes back to whether games are appropriately priced or not. In our economic system prices are set by sellers and it's up to the buyers to determine if that price matches their demand for a product. In some cases that means waiting for the product to be on sale for the price to match demand. This is not relevant to the discussion though and you feel you are entitled for that price to match your demand even if that means working around the economic system.

I didn't come up with the discounted price, either. The lower price was offered and it matched my demand. Yet no sale happened. You don't want my money anymore, and I believe I am not the only losing party here. What again makes me more entitled than the guy who bought the game a week ago? There's no entitlement, just a missed opportunity as you said. Missed business opportunity and the cause for it was bad timing.

Quoting: SamsaiSo, on one hand you are complaining that you cannot know for certain that the one game you want will be on sale but the next moment you complain that it's hard to keep track of multiple games. So I'm not really sure which of the two is the issue here. It's a fact that you cannot keep tabs on every discount ever, so you need to prioritize and keep tabs on the discounts you consider important. This may require, for example, pruning your wishlists. In either case, I don't believe that because keeping tabs on everything that might be on sale is inconvenient, you now get to use illegitimate means to acquire a product for that price.

Both of the two are an issue! I can't be certain a concrete game will be on sale again and simultaneously there are tons of other games going on sale anyway. In the future of several months forwards, there is no guarantee I will rediscover that same game again when it's on sale, IF it's on sale. Unless I spend considerable amounts of valuable time trying to perfect my wishlist which still has other shortcomings, won't fix the underlying problem anyway and requires time investment which is the very reason that caused this problem in the first place. Why are we playing this hide and seek game?

Quoting: SamsaiGames go unpurchased and unplayed anyway. Either because you miss a sale and have to wait for another one or because a game didn't receive enough publicity and fades into obscurity. Not everyone gets to play all the games. If this was an argument for something, it would probably be another argument for piracy, since one's economic status is a limiting factor on their ability to play all the games they want to.

And regarding convenience, there are lots of convenient things people can do. For example, it might be extremely convenient for me to throw my trash on the street so that I don't need to inconvenience myself with a trip to the trash bin. However, we typically don't tolerate people taking advantage of such conveniences because it makes other people miserable. Something being convenient doesn't justify it, which is a thing I'm trying to focus on here. We know that grey market key trading causes harm to devs, we know that G2A has repeatedly lied and acted scummy about this. Just because they happen to be a convenience for you doesn't override these things.

What are you trying to say, really? If I didn't play games, I wouldn't have a problem? Or that games don't really have to sell?

Here's a thought. How about instead of whining over G2A, we stop and think about how we could improve our business so that G2A doesn't provide such an incentive to use? The thing is, I went LOOKING specifically for a G2A-like service because of that "missed opportunity" feeling and I DIDN'T want to pirate the game. I would really prefer if the stores made up their damn mind if they want my money or not and we could stop playing such games.
In other words, if G2A can meet my demand, why can't the original store? Since the issue is timing? If I made a store that sold only at midnight, can I really call customers entitled for going elsewhere for their purchases? Inconvienience doesn't justify criminal behavior, but if your business rules suck customers are in their right to shop somewhere more sane.
That was of course blown out of proportion and I suppose it got a bit rantier than I intended, but yeah. Perhaps it would be for the best if the time-limited offers were scrapped altogether, as virtual stores just aren't the same thing as real world ones.

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Quoting: Samsai

Quoting: LungDragoThat's the problem, isn't it? There are tons of games, games go on sale en masse and it's very easy to miss one amidst everything else. Or maybe the sale's timing sucker punches you in a different way - it comes right before your payday, it comes right when you were on a vacation with no internet access or maybe you just plainly haven't used your computer for a while. Then when you do miss one, you can't be sure it will go on sale anytime soon or even ever again. So yeah, if I've just missed one, I went to G2A to get it. I guess my point is that time-limited offers such as these have proven inconvienient numerous times and G2A is the service that provides that convienience (for a while, after a certain point the prices there are the same as everywhere else anyhow). I always figured some purchase is better for both parties than no purchase or a maybe-down-the-line-if-the-stars-align-later purchase. It would be better if there was a more direct way that pays the devs better, but that's the can of worms you open with time-limited offers. Either you ax those completely or find a way to improve your service/store so that I don't feel the need to go G2A to make my purchases.

This has a number of problems. Firstly, this is based on an assumption that game sales are random. They are not, the biggest sales are seasonal and if a game is going to go on sale, that's most likely when it happens. You have at most a few month window when you cannot know if a game is going to be on sale. You are also still clinging to an entitlement to a temporarily lowered price but haven't made arguments why that entitlement is justified. Hell, you even mentioned that stores could stop doing sales entire, so why aren't you willing to buy the game at full price? That's what you'd be doing if stores didn't do discounts at all.

Secondly, "some purchase is better than no purchase" isn't really valid when there's a bunch of devs who would rather that you pirate their game than buy on G2A. With many of these purchases no benefit goes to the developer. At best they profit nothing, at worst they take an actual financial hit from it.

Basically, nothing you've mentioned is an insurmountable problem and thus a justification for going to G2A. Sales aren't random, they can be reasonably tracked and games aren't such a vital commodity that you can't wait for the next sale if you happen to miss one. Just because you can get a small amount of convenience from going to a grey market doesn't justify it.

Okay, explain to me what makes anyone entitled to purchase a game at a time-limited discounted price? There are no limited supplies, no manufacturing costs, no shipping costs. No entry fees, club memberships or raffles. I am just as entitled as everybody else, no?
It's just that real life does not bend over backwards over a dev's sale. Sometimes I find myself excluded from this entitlement due to third party circumstances that have nothing to do with me as the buyer or the devs as the seller. Buying the product at now full-price feels bad, I believe understandably so.
Yes, none of this would be a thing if time-limited offers weren't around. But they are. They even come en masse seasonally as you mentioned. Even though there is NO guarantee that the game you want will be on sale, a large enough quantity does go on sale, enough so customers can ask questions such as 'Am I willing to buy this at full price or am I willing to buy this only on sale price?'. Reviews today have a "buy at sale" rating. You're calling me entitled, but it seems to me that everyone is entitled. It's the reality of things when you show you're willing to lower the price - it just might become apparent that your product was never worth the original price in the first place. In other words, if there was no discount, there would be no purchase. Some games I do buy at full price - if I have faith they are worth it. I usually do so right away and I do not need and don't use G2A for that either.
I want to reiterate the fact of oversaturation of discounted games on those large big sales you mentioned. I don't know about you but I don't sit around all day on the Steam page filtering the games. Real life is a thing. Filtering is needed though, as the primary sales-keeping feature I'm aware of, wishlists, have one major problem: you have to know a game exists for you to add it to a wishlist. Second problem is that wishlists really stop working once you add too many games to them, so you can't use them as a "maybe buy at sale" list either. This is why I find myself discovering games after a sale and end up retroactively buying them on G2A so to speak.

Also let me point out that I did ask for better options. It is not my intention or wish to rip of the devs, if it was, I would indeed pirate the game, but I am not using that option. I am arguing though that G2A does provide a convienience service that is not available anywhere else. There are use cases for it and if it weren't around, games would go unpurchased and unplayed - after all, when I missed it once, what's there to stop me from missing it again?

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Quoting: EikeYou didn't use to go to actual real world markets to see if it has got the game you want and for which price back in the times, right?

Exactly once, to find out that retail prices are way too high in my country for a kid to ever buy a game. Back in the day, I got nearly all of my games from my favorite game magazine that came with a CD. When you did buy a game back in the day, you often got it in a nice large case to store the medium in and display on your shelf and you got a bunch of doodads like game manuals, art books, soundtracks. Back in the day you owned your game and you could lend it to your friends, or lend it from them. Not to mention back in the day there were way less games in general to keep track of.
Times have indeed changed.

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Quoting: tuubiAnd you're saying we should all be entitled to sale prices after a sale has ended, even if that means purchasing from a random dude on a shady key reselling site like G2A?

I wishlist games I actually do want to buy, and if I miss a sale, I wait a few weeks or months for another one. There's always something else to buy or play anyway.

That's the problem, isn't it? There are tons of games, games go on sale en masse and it's very easy to miss one amidst everything else. Or maybe the sale's timing sucker punches you in a different way - it comes right before your payday, it comes right when you were on a vacation with no internet access or maybe you just plainly haven't used your computer for a while. Then when you do miss one, you can't be sure it will go on sale anytime soon or even ever again. So yeah, if I've just missed one, I went to G2A to get it. I guess my point is that time-limited offers such as these have proven inconvienient numerous times and G2A is the service that provides that convienience (for a while, after a certain point the prices there are the same as everywhere else anyhow). I always figured some purchase is better for both parties than no purchase or a maybe-down-the-line-if-the-stars-align-later purchase. It would be better if there was a more direct way that pays the devs better, but that's the can of worms you open with time-limited offers. Either you ax those completely or find a way to improve your service/store so that I don't have to go to G2A to make my purchases.

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Quoting: tuubiI always thought the 'legit' way was to suck it up and wait for the next sale.

So, you're saying my best option is to spend hours wishlisting hundreds of games across various stores and spam my email account with a bunch of games I might or might not want to buy at some point?

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So uh, excuse me for my ignorance, but what would be the 'legit' key reselling service? G2A saved my neck so to speak several times before when I missed a sale by a week or something and I figured most keys sold there come from shrewd people who buy a bunch of them on such sales.

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Quoting: SolitaryThe whole Covid situation in Europe is often misconstructed as EU acting late or not doing anything. EU has its limited competency and countries healthcare systems are not part of it, critics often like to bash EU for not doing anything or the opposite accusing them of overstepping their competency. Solving the Covid situation is national problem, so EU really has no say in here. Problem of Italy is that they have oldest population in Europe and they have lower amount of ventilators per capita than other countries. Italy is not a victim that got left behind by bureaucrats in Brussels. Nobody knew what to expect and they were the first that got hit hard, but not the only one (Spain for example).

What EU did and did it well was rescuing citizen from abroad that got stuck thanks to travel bans. What EU can do is to prepare some more coordinated effort in the future, but till then it is up to the countries themselves and that is not EU fault. This whole situation is unprecedented and makes sense there was no master plan for it. No country in the world, democratic or not really knew what to expect and how to prepare themselves. If anybody claims they have the answer (if only they had the power) they are most likely lying, there is no simple solution here. Lot of countries in EU solved the Covid situation fine though.

If anything I would say the migration crisis in 2015 was more of an example where we saw problems of such nature, but even that is not that simple, because it was Germany that initiated that whole mess with invitation and then acted surprised when other countries refused to participate. That whole issue is more political than anything else, because the solutions are already on the table.

I'm aware this is not really an EU problem, I really should have said Europe instead of EU as I actually meant the geographic region rather than a political body. Anyhow, maybe I am biased but to me it was common sense that a virus outbreak was coming. Sure, there was no telling where it would spread next, in our day and age, everyone is traveling from everywhere to everywhere, but that doesn't mean we sit about doing nothing until it actually becomes a real big problem. That's where Italy (and Spain, as you said) came in. Only once the red numbers came from those did I noticed governments taking action. Until that, no one thought of stocking up on medical supplies for the coming crisis. In my country I would call it a debacle - first there were no supplies to speak of at all and then, with a hoorah, medical workers received equipment that a) came late, b) was not of sufficient quantity, and c) wasn't even of the right kind. To me, that's not a government answering a crisis, that's a government trying to placate its subjects with whatever they could scrounge up until they fix their hot mess.

But I digress, a dictatorship could've underestimated the situation just as badly as democracy did.

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Quoting: DorritOpen borders and, in the case of Italy, 300.000 Chinese immigrants is recipe for catastrophe.
What brought us here was too much government; only the fall of these so-called social democracies and the return to healthy individualism will return Europe to its former glory.

I'm not sure you can realistically close borders effectively enough to stop a virus from spreading. So, I don't mean "doing something about it" as preventing an outbreak from happening, I meant it mostly as being prepared for it when it inevitably happens. Which we weren't. We were required to wear respirators even though there were no such respirators available for quite a while. We were caught with our pants down even though it has been coming our way for a long time.

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Quoting: SolitaryI am not sure you or I understand each other. I think democracy works wonders... because it basically limits the aspect of "people problem" that I mentioned, because nobody is allowed to have too much power. The system is designed to limit, slowdown and prevent any radical changes.

Meanwhile with socialism, where you have strong government you get that problem, because you are governed by people that inherently have more power thanks to stronger standing of the state. People with too much power = abuse of power.

The other side of that coin is that when stuff happens and something needs to be done about it, democracy can be slow to react. Take the Covid situation here in EU. Essentially, Italy had to take the punch for most governments to stop just bickering about the issue and start doing something about it.

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So we're covering these kinds of games now? In that case, perhaps I should sign up as an author to lend my considerable experience to GoL. Heheheh.

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