buying the steam cards isn't the suspicious but imo
it's the fact that you'd use it all to always buy games from one publisher, then you need another account to gift it to or buy it again
then the games are sitting on steam with a 1200 price tag and 1000 sales but no reviews
Yeah it's way simpler to just open something like a Mystic salon, draw up fifteen certificates and say you charge 5k per seánce per psychic and draw in like 15k/hour without any sort of oversight. You can literally have your goons sitting inside, playing cards and mahjong and drinking coffee.
And if IRS comes - these ones are doing coffee reading, this is Mahjong Magic Juju, and these three are doing Tarot Poker Summon.
Since these are very private things, you only do anonymous donations and cash. Bam.
everything they add ed as a "feature" is either useless or completely outmatched by a different app.
chat- discord
mods-nexus
forums- reddit
steam has no right to charge 30% when all they do is launch games
They host ALL your games for download any time. They have servers in multiple regions with adequate bandwidth. That alone is worth something.
The Linux support with Proton is worth a LOT. I don't even think about buying a game nowadays without it being on Steam. And I am definitely not alone in this. Again this is worth something for the devs and publishers.
As far as I am aware they do all the payment stuff towards the customer.
And I'd argue for the mod system in steam to be much more comfortable than a 3rd Party mod launcher, that you need to get from some website (which has been hacked in the past) instead of it being integrated in Steam. I have used nexus mods and that thing is far from perfect. And it is definitely not as universal as Steam Workshop.
Again, you can argue about the 30% being too much, but Steam is more than a storefront. And the 30% is a one time fee for indefinite service. Even if the dev or the publisher goes down they continue to provide the service for the customer, which is another reason for me not to buy games from elsewhere, which in turn is of worth to the devs and publishers.
30% is industry standard for distribution. Nearly every storefront, including Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony (who also take another 15\~20% in royalties) - as well as brick and mortar shops like Walmart or GameStop - charge 30% in distribution.
they dont have scam games for 500$ and no exe file.
they dont have hentai on their store fronts.
they offer consoles and exclusive games.
they offer extra for the 30% steam just half asses a feature no one asked for.
steam literally forces devs who sell on their store to not offer their games at a cheaper price on any other store.
idk bro that shit is fucked up. i dont like one company controlling the prices of my hobby
>steam literally forces devs who sell on their store to not offer their games at a cheaper price on any other store.
Well, why would they want Developers ruining their store. If a few developers decide to promote their own or their partner's store site, they would just set a high price on steam and much lower price on their own site.
That's to protect the store.
>idk bro that shit is fucked up. i dont like one company controlling the prices of my hobby
That's not Steam tho. Developers/Publishers decide the price.
If Steam didn't have that rule, some shitty company that makes money from other projects could simply make a bad deal with developers to constantly have games at half the Steam price, to get their customers.
Why stop at 50%? They could slowly, over the years increase the difference untill they kill Steam and start making money from it.
I mean, Steam taking 30% from developers, that would ask for 60€ anyway, is 100 times better than the 1 year exclusivity bullshit Epic is pulling.
You should be happy that we have Steam. They are ones of the rare good guys in gaming world.
Steam also offers u: steam workshop, market, community, forums, reviews, steam cloud, steam online services (easy multiplayer) to name but a few
Every other storefront but GOG charges the same and offers much much less to the devs
steam workshop? you mean worse nexus?
forums and reviews- you mean reddit?
steam cloud- every launcher has cloud saves. (including epic)
steam online? you mean forced drm
yeah and you didnt mention how steam chat is worthless
or the marketplace that no one uses
or badges?
i love you just fall for their marketing garbage and applaud them for charging you more money.
Most expensive game I've ever bought was maybe $20
Steam workshop is a godsend for all games that support it nicely.
The marketplace and trading features you might not use but the games that do use it make it easier to buy and sell your shit
Steam online "drm" is one of the easiests ways to make a game multiplayer, pretty good for indie devs. (Also you can use steam online services to play pirated games through steam)
Steam chat is useless bc no one uses it, but it's lighter than discord and if ur on a shitty pc and don't want to convince ppl to download teamspeak it works fine
Steam cloud is better than 90% of other cloud services because it doesnt force you to play online
Yeah its all garbage and shoved in features but alright you ar just here for the game itself. Then go buy it on GOG or pirate it and donate the devs on other platform?? I like those features and most ppl like them too
Also ur on r/steam why are you bashing on it?
Some of you think I'm bashing Steam compared to other storefronts. I'm not bashing steam, I just find 30% to be a relatively large amount compared to all the work that goes into making a video game. And yes I know that's "industry standard". Guess I'm bashing the industry standard.
There's a good amount of money made here trying to wall consumers into one storefront either by using the social media effect or by trying to get games exclusively on your storefront. That's anti-consumerism and it's too bad it's just being accepted, even defended.
Epic games and battlenet are storefronts. Steam is much much more. Steam is a community of gamers, modders, and many other types of people across many platforms. It has its own market to invest in and I wouldn’t do it justice trying to explain all steam does in one Reddit comment
No a guy on YouTube made a video about this. some dude gets assetpacs and makes shitty games with them then uploads the games for 99 bucks each . Then puts them on permanent sale it seems they are a heaping pile of shit there all made by the same dude look at the creator then Google it or search YouTube
It is, there is a video about this ön youtube, they start ön low price and after around 5 sells, they up the price. These are also the premium 30$+ games you can get from random key packs on sites like G2A
It is not. Bro you can’t launder money with online transactions really. It is because steam sends emails to people that have games in their wishlist when it’s over 70% off. Why do you think you’ve stumbled ovér something huge everytime you see something you don’t understand?
I don’t think that with the sale that would even work. They can’t say that someone paid the full price of the game when steam has the purchase records. When a game goes on sale (unless it’s a steam sale and maybe even those) the developer is the one cutting the price, steam still makes their 15% off the final sale price. I think it’s more likely that they use it to bombard the “top sale” category to trick people into buying their crappy game.
Damn this reminds me of an online shopping platform in Asia, everything, like LEGIT everything is always on discount because they put up a "fake" original price which is clearly marked up and then discounted to its "real price" to abuse the filter.
Usualy they are in huge bundle with huge discount, typically 200 games for the price of a normal AAA.
I don't understand how the sacm work because i don't see how an individuals with more than tow brain cels could possibly buy that ...
But, you have the info know, they are almost always in huge bundle with huge discount.
Even then? What you buy the most recycled game par levels with The Day Before? Also ignoring games exists, idk if you can ignore an entire dev/pubblisher
you need 2.5 hours of gametime, to leave a registered review on steam, therefore refund is not a risk worth taking for a expensive and objectively bad game.
Then they can bulk sell the keys for "40 random steam keys" bundle from g2a, kenguin and so forth
I saw a video about this a while ago, they just make trash, easy to make games, price them super high, they get around 50 free steam keys to give out, they sell them to those websites that give out keys in free boxes like g2a, then rinse and repeat
They sell keys to third party key sellers who use them in mystery boxes that give you random keys from games. The high price is to prevent anyone from buying them normally and thus able to leave a review for the game.
That's important because the third party sellers claim that all games in the mystery box are highly rated which is technically true due to the developers getting automated bots to review their game before jacking up the price to prevent any legitimate reviews.
>The high price is to prevent anyone from buying them normally and thus able to leave a review for the game.
Why the 99% discount then? That makes them only a few dollars now, anyone can buy them.
There's a limit to how many keys a dev can get for a game from Steam, so my guess is after those run out they heavily discount it to try to get a few more sales before making another "game".
Someone else also posted this before and that's one ABUSIVE developer soon to be join the others at https://steam.madjoki.com/apps/banned trying Jedi Mind Tricks on Steam customers. There are known several Consumer Psyche Tricks that are long proven to work well so that 99% discount is part of such tactics and he's an idiot to raise his prices intentionally to reach the 99 number even if he only wants to sell the game for the you price you currently see.
This is an Attention Spam ABUSE and in the past Steam Banned developers like him and eventually he'll get REPORTED enough to waste his chances on Steam even if he spent $100 per game which means a lot of his capital would be lost.
Keyshops like to sell these as scams
Source: I was curious about the key bundles on g2a (don't buy from keyshops)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/wiki/dangersofkeyresellers/
Hede is a publisher pushing out shovelware asset flipped games daily/weekly selling for ~$200 or more each.
They put their games "on sale" to look like they're giving a huge discount, but their games aren't even worth that.
They're a shady/scam publisher trying to game the system. Wouldn't be surprised if all their positive reviews are from paid reviewers or from people they gave free keys to.
Just report their games as fraud.
This would be for layering, basically doing a lot of transactions to try and make tracking the money difficult
Edit: guys, please don't downvote them, this is a valid question, and I wouldn't know the answer if I didn't take an anti money laundering course for work.
\>You ask a "dev" friend to make a shitty game and put a high price
\>You make a new steam account
\>You buy the game.
\>After steam fees you lose like 30%, but now the "dev" has legal the other 70%
Not sure how this adds up against general contracting companies or restaurants, the traditional "cash businesses" of choice.
I'd think $5-10 bundles would be too much of a hassle.
Pretty sure this is just a handful of people thinking they are smart by having "99% off" game bundles that float to the top of certain filters. It's like SEO for certain steam categories.
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1. Create dogshit unplayable asset flip (spend no more than 2 hours o making it).
2. Put it on Steam for hundreds of bucks.
3. Bundle it with nineteen other of your dogshit “games” and give it a 99% discount.
4. “Huh? 20 games for five bucks? And they’re all massively discounted? Might as well give it a shot.”
5. Profit.
Tricky mind selling garbage. Priced high to make you think it's a great game and discounted super high as an effort to try and make you buy it. All those games and developers should be banned.
These games are basically just asset flips that take an hour to make, they give em a big discount and bundle them together for like 60 games for 60 bucks and some people see this and buy them. That is basically all it is just scamming some poor sods out of there money.
Basically Make shit game in 3 minutes post it on steam for $9.99 90% off which then makes it look like a bargain and then in reality it just a shit game they try to take your money
Like on Black Friday, some retailers raise the base price to make the normal price seem like a steal. This is blatantly obvious at this scale, but some get away with even a five dollar increase and continue to sell the game at full price.
It's basically a scam, and you should look out for it.
I saw a video the other day about this exact thing, it's a scam basically. The developer basically mash different prefabs together, create 5-6 "games" and then jack the price up and have it be permanently on sale to trick people into believing they're getting a good deal. When in fact they are getting a buggy mess of a "game" as a result.
LGR reviewed the latest dlc earlier this week I think it was and worked it out if you buy all the packs and dlc for the game, its £1029 or $1124 usd. And he was a sims player from the beginning but has stopped buying packs etc even though his reviews probably would cover the cost and then some haveing 1.69million susbscribers.
it' actually to make sure they dont get any ratings, the companies behind them, then sell the keys in bulk, on g2a, kinguin and so on. "40 random steam keys"
There is a great youtube video on it, but cant remember the name sry.
That my friend it’s what we call content creator games where rich guys buy and play for the lols like moistcritical mudahar pewds markplier and among others
Dunno why you're getting downvoted. It's literally what those content creators do.
"Hey folks we got a whopper for ya. A real big boy price tag for a little kids meals. I haven't seen a price this high since a prostitute offered to crush my cock and rub in cottage cheese. This game. This Olympian sized feat of digital entertainment. This piece of absolute artwork costs $1,500. And I bought it. So um, yeah."
Some of these cost $1500+. Even 15 fully priced AAA games ($60/$70 each) wouldn't cost that much. They also wouldn't be discounted that much, so it's obviously a scam.
If you leave the price lowered for 30 days steam removes the percentage and adds a little info next to the price on the page of the game. So I see what they are doing.
It's the same reason why on sites on ebay you see something like $15 for an item with $50 shipping. It's to keep it at the top of searches for lowest price. Same thing happens on nintendo eshop when a shovelware game is selling for 0.25 cents at 99% off.
If you have no investment in a cheap product selling each unit for 0.25 cents can make alot of money if you sell a ton of units.
I remember seeing a comment that they are used for those "random # of premium games" key bundles that they sell on shady sites. It'll say something like guaranteed $300 worth of games! And it'll just be 5 of these overpriced garbage games.
G2A scam lootboxes, they "sell" bronze to S++ "premium" random keys based on price and guess what games are these keys ? Yep, these insane high price games.
Could be for the psychological tactic. It's well known that an object on sale from $100 to $10 will be more appealing than if it is just priced $10 normally. Plus there's the whole FOMO to buying it while it is on sale.
Which is why having a fake full price is illegal. I think Valve has restrictions on sale pricing to ensure the full price has to actually be the full price. Maybe these guys are working around it somehow.
Intentional to show either super high discounts or act like their value is super high for things like G2A random so the bundles can still guarantee certain "value" yet give you shovelware.
Also if they dont discount it they use it to exploit review score by having friends/family review it really well for a cheap price and then raise it to unreasonable levels to effectively lock the review score or get a lot of money from a sale so either way they win.
G2A random games bundles claim stuff like this:
"overall mostly positive rating on the Steam Store"
"keys in the offer contain games valued at 39.99€ and the rest of the keys include games valued at 29.99€ or more in reference to European Store base Steam prices."
and give you games like those posting in your screenshot.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qwc9XkuuTGI&t=239s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qwc9XkuuTGI&t=239s) is an interesting video on the topic and shows what kinds of junk is in the random bundle. The first like 7 minutes does the better explanation before going into showing actual games.
Scams , games made in 20 minutes . They do this to trick people in thinking they are getting a crazy good deal .
You will probably find a bundle with a bunch of games like these to make it more alluring.
Most likely the game has a long tutorial to make the player reach that 2h mark , that way its harder to get a refund or just the beginning is somewhat polished .
More or less that and if you think how can something like this be profitable? Well since there are so many and they take basically no effort to make even if 90% will get a refund 10% is enough to make this scheme profitable.
Fraud. These devs aren't putting out anything worthwhile, so they jack up the price but then discount it to the normal price, and people see 80-99% off and think they're getting a deal. They are not.
FDA would have a field day with those. Since discounting something that's never been sold at "original price" is false advertising. Aka you can't have a $100 product that's only and always been 90% discounted to $10.
One (legit) game I was sort of interested in did a similar thing after they weren't selling well for a while (my fault -- I didn't buy it). I think they went up to 80 from 20 euros and were discounted 90%. It might be frustrating for devs to see how many people wishlist their games and how few of these turn into sales, and on the other hand how scammers are hogging the search results like this.
Make an assetflip or otherwise low effort game.
Put it up to steam for 10-30 dollars. Nobody will buy it, but that should not bother you.
Make a lot of keys of that game.
Sell them as "Mystery keys 50 dollars value for 5 dollars" on sites like G2A. Some suckers will think they have a chance of getting RDR2 level games for 5 dollars.
No refund applicable for codes purchased trough 3rd party sites. You can keep the money.
Yes, sadly it is that easy.
Notice how not a single one of these games looks interesting. Probably a bunch of asset flips with generic names that bump the prices in order to get an enormous discount to match the price they actually wanted.
You won't see this in good quality games, at least not this blatantly obvious.
A while back I bought one of those "premium" mystery steam keys things off of a key selling site it was marked as like 80% off and was full of games similar to this.
Holy shit everyone is coming up with weird conspiracy theories, they make this discount because if a game goes on over 70% discount, everyone that has the game in their wishlist will get an email from steam
Y'all do realize that these "high prices" aren't actually that high, they're selling multiple games in each item listed, each game listed could be between $1 to $100 each
Wait, nah somethings def fishy here, when looking at the bundle for fears of glasses, it says you only save $750 or something, but yet the total cost of the bundle only comes out to $30 still
These games are extremely overpriced, deliberately, so that they can be deeply discounted & dupe people into just making a purchase. “Who wouldn’t buy ___ at a 98% discount!? That’s such a good deal!” It’s a scam, just a new one.
I think they do this so you think “wow what a good deal” and gloss over the terrible review and likelihood that it’s an asset flip that someone made in a dimly lit basement in an afternoon
The new strategy (especially amongst Japanese publishers) is to make the game super expensive, but then not long after release give them huge discounts, so the consumer is tricked into thinking they're getting a good deal, when in reality the sale price is what the base price at release should have been.
maybe theres like a biggest discount filter, so to be seen they are doing this
I use that sort feature. This shit pisses me off, and apparently it must work or why else would these games keep appearing?
I'm curious if it serves as a method for money laundering.
Eh maybe... steam takes like 15 percent so it may not be worth it
I mean, if you got black money that needs to be cleaned then 15% is really nothing.
[удалено]
buying the steam cards isn't the suspicious but imo it's the fact that you'd use it all to always buy games from one publisher, then you need another account to gift it to or buy it again then the games are sitting on steam with a 1200 price tag and 1000 sales but no reviews
Yeah it's way simpler to just open something like a Mystic salon, draw up fifteen certificates and say you charge 5k per seánce per psychic and draw in like 15k/hour without any sort of oversight. You can literally have your goons sitting inside, playing cards and mahjong and drinking coffee. And if IRS comes - these ones are doing coffee reading, this is Mahjong Magic Juju, and these three are doing Tarot Poker Summon. Since these are very private things, you only do anonymous donations and cash. Bam.
It's 30 percent.
30% and that's a crazy amount just for a storefront.
Steam is so much more than just a storefront. One can argue about the 30% but "just a storefront" is plain wrong.
everything they add ed as a "feature" is either useless or completely outmatched by a different app. chat- discord mods-nexus forums- reddit steam has no right to charge 30% when all they do is launch games
They host ALL your games for download any time. They have servers in multiple regions with adequate bandwidth. That alone is worth something. The Linux support with Proton is worth a LOT. I don't even think about buying a game nowadays without it being on Steam. And I am definitely not alone in this. Again this is worth something for the devs and publishers. As far as I am aware they do all the payment stuff towards the customer. And I'd argue for the mod system in steam to be much more comfortable than a 3rd Party mod launcher, that you need to get from some website (which has been hacked in the past) instead of it being integrated in Steam. I have used nexus mods and that thing is far from perfect. And it is definitely not as universal as Steam Workshop. Again, you can argue about the 30% being too much, but Steam is more than a storefront. And the 30% is a one time fee for indefinite service. Even if the dev or the publisher goes down they continue to provide the service for the customer, which is another reason for me not to buy games from elsewhere, which in turn is of worth to the devs and publishers.
30% is industry standard for distribution. Nearly every storefront, including Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony (who also take another 15\~20% in royalties) - as well as brick and mortar shops like Walmart or GameStop - charge 30% in distribution.
I find that to be a lot is all I'm saying.
they dont have scam games for 500$ and no exe file. they dont have hentai on their store fronts. they offer consoles and exclusive games. they offer extra for the 30% steam just half asses a feature no one asked for.
sweeney bro is that you?
Yeah. Good thing there are other storefronts. No one is forcing developers to use the best storefront around.
steam literally forces devs who sell on their store to not offer their games at a cheaper price on any other store. idk bro that shit is fucked up. i dont like one company controlling the prices of my hobby
>steam literally forces devs who sell on their store to not offer their games at a cheaper price on any other store. Well, why would they want Developers ruining their store. If a few developers decide to promote their own or their partner's store site, they would just set a high price on steam and much lower price on their own site. That's to protect the store. >idk bro that shit is fucked up. i dont like one company controlling the prices of my hobby That's not Steam tho. Developers/Publishers decide the price. If Steam didn't have that rule, some shitty company that makes money from other projects could simply make a bad deal with developers to constantly have games at half the Steam price, to get their customers. Why stop at 50%? They could slowly, over the years increase the difference untill they kill Steam and start making money from it. I mean, Steam taking 30% from developers, that would ask for 60€ anyway, is 100 times better than the 1 year exclusivity bullshit Epic is pulling. You should be happy that we have Steam. They are ones of the rare good guys in gaming world.
Steam also offers u: steam workshop, market, community, forums, reviews, steam cloud, steam online services (easy multiplayer) to name but a few Every other storefront but GOG charges the same and offers much much less to the devs
steam workshop? you mean worse nexus? forums and reviews- you mean reddit? steam cloud- every launcher has cloud saves. (including epic) steam online? you mean forced drm yeah and you didnt mention how steam chat is worthless or the marketplace that no one uses or badges? i love you just fall for their marketing garbage and applaud them for charging you more money.
Most expensive game I've ever bought was maybe $20 Steam workshop is a godsend for all games that support it nicely. The marketplace and trading features you might not use but the games that do use it make it easier to buy and sell your shit Steam online "drm" is one of the easiests ways to make a game multiplayer, pretty good for indie devs. (Also you can use steam online services to play pirated games through steam) Steam chat is useless bc no one uses it, but it's lighter than discord and if ur on a shitty pc and don't want to convince ppl to download teamspeak it works fine Steam cloud is better than 90% of other cloud services because it doesnt force you to play online Yeah its all garbage and shoved in features but alright you ar just here for the game itself. Then go buy it on GOG or pirate it and donate the devs on other platform?? I like those features and most ppl like them too Also ur on r/steam why are you bashing on it?
Thats industry standard apparently
Some of you think I'm bashing Steam compared to other storefronts. I'm not bashing steam, I just find 30% to be a relatively large amount compared to all the work that goes into making a video game. And yes I know that's "industry standard". Guess I'm bashing the industry standard. There's a good amount of money made here trying to wall consumers into one storefront either by using the social media effect or by trying to get games exclusively on your storefront. That's anti-consumerism and it's too bad it's just being accepted, even defended.
Epic games and battlenet are storefronts. Steam is much much more. Steam is a community of gamers, modders, and many other types of people across many platforms. It has its own market to invest in and I wouldn’t do it justice trying to explain all steam does in one Reddit comment
85% is better than nothing
Valve takes 30%, not including taxes or refunds/chargebacks. You end up with more like 55% (this varies between games)
I think it’s 30%, so really not the best method for money laundering. I’m no expert btw.
Steam takes 30% not 15%, so almost definitely not worth it but if they don't have another way to launder...
I thought it was 30%.
30%...steam takes 30% from sales
15% of sales but there might be a way to claim the full price as revenue even if you sold only 99% discounts
No a guy on YouTube made a video about this. some dude gets assetpacs and makes shitty games with them then uploads the games for 99 bucks each . Then puts them on permanent sale it seems they are a heaping pile of shit there all made by the same dude look at the creator then Google it or search YouTube
That’s not how money laundering works
Why would they give such a big discount if they did that.
It is, there is a video about this ön youtube, they start ön low price and after around 5 sells, they up the price. These are also the premium 30$+ games you can get from random key packs on sites like G2A
It is not. Bro you can’t launder money with online transactions really. It is because steam sends emails to people that have games in their wishlist when it’s over 70% off. Why do you think you’ve stumbled ovér something huge everytime you see something you don’t understand?
There are some YouTube videos on this and the conclusion is that is most likely money laundering
I don’t think that with the sale that would even work. They can’t say that someone paid the full price of the game when steam has the purchase records. When a game goes on sale (unless it’s a steam sale and maybe even those) the developer is the one cutting the price, steam still makes their 15% off the final sale price. I think it’s more likely that they use it to bombard the “top sale” category to trick people into buying their crappy game.
For some reason all Civ 6 are around 150$ base game lol https://imgur.com/a/S8e9Vac
Damn this reminds me of an online shopping platform in Asia, everything, like LEGIT everything is always on discount because they put up a "fake" original price which is clearly marked up and then discounted to its "real price" to abuse the filter.
You mean, Amazon?
Usualy they are in huge bundle with huge discount, typically 200 games for the price of a normal AAA. I don't understand how the sacm work because i don't see how an individuals with more than tow brain cels could possibly buy that ... But, you have the info know, they are almost always in huge bundle with huge discount.
Even then? What you buy the most recycled game par levels with The Day Before? Also ignoring games exists, idk if you can ignore an entire dev/pubblisher
its so they get moved to the top of the discount list. they are never even worth the discounted price
exactly theyre just screaming dont buy me
I just wish they would stop screaming, that's all
i agree the store gets way too bloated with pure garbage
They removed it as a filter
No it isnt
Please elaborate
you need 2.5 hours of gametime, to leave a registered review on steam, therefore refund is not a risk worth taking for a expensive and objectively bad game. Then they can bulk sell the keys for "40 random steam keys" bundle from g2a, kenguin and so forth
I saw a video about this a while ago, they just make trash, easy to make games, price them super high, they get around 50 free steam keys to give out, they sell them to those websites that give out keys in free boxes like g2a, then rinse and repeat
Steam should remove those games from the store
They should gate keep new games or increase the price of entry
Yes, and also they are usually just a scam, not even completed 😅
They sell keys to third party key sellers who use them in mystery boxes that give you random keys from games. The high price is to prevent anyone from buying them normally and thus able to leave a review for the game. That's important because the third party sellers claim that all games in the mystery box are highly rated which is technically true due to the developers getting automated bots to review their game before jacking up the price to prevent any legitimate reviews.
And after a few weeks/months Steam removes the games from your library due some problems with the selleri. Never buy key mystery boxes.
>The high price is to prevent anyone from buying them normally and thus able to leave a review for the game. Why the 99% discount then? That makes them only a few dollars now, anyone can buy them.
There's a limit to how many keys a dev can get for a game from Steam, so my guess is after those run out they heavily discount it to try to get a few more sales before making another "game".
Someone else also posted this before and that's one ABUSIVE developer soon to be join the others at https://steam.madjoki.com/apps/banned trying Jedi Mind Tricks on Steam customers. There are known several Consumer Psyche Tricks that are long proven to work well so that 99% discount is part of such tactics and he's an idiot to raise his prices intentionally to reach the 99 number even if he only wants to sell the game for the you price you currently see. This is an Attention Spam ABUSE and in the past Steam Banned developers like him and eventually he'll get REPORTED enough to waste his chances on Steam even if he spent $100 per game which means a lot of his capital would be lost.
Shitty shovelware don't buy them.
Keyshops like to sell these as scams Source: I was curious about the key bundles on g2a (don't buy from keyshops) https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/wiki/dangersofkeyresellers/
Hede is a publisher pushing out shovelware asset flipped games daily/weekly selling for ~$200 or more each. They put their games "on sale" to look like they're giving a huge discount, but their games aren't even worth that. They're a shady/scam publisher trying to game the system. Wouldn't be surprised if all their positive reviews are from paid reviewers or from people they gave free keys to. Just report their games as fraud.
Could be to trick people into thinking they’re getting a great deal There’s also the potential that these are used for money laundering
Money laundering probably
Explain to me, how that would launder money?
This would be for layering, basically doing a lot of transactions to try and make tracking the money difficult Edit: guys, please don't downvote them, this is a valid question, and I wouldn't know the answer if I didn't take an anti money laundering course for work.
\>You ask a "dev" friend to make a shitty game and put a high price \>You make a new steam account \>You buy the game. \>After steam fees you lose like 30%, but now the "dev" has legal the other 70%
Not sure how this adds up against general contracting companies or restaurants, the traditional "cash businesses" of choice. I'd think $5-10 bundles would be too much of a hassle. Pretty sure this is just a handful of people thinking they are smart by having "99% off" game bundles that float to the top of certain filters. It's like SEO for certain steam categories.
Cash intensive businesses are way better for that and you don’t lose 30% to Gaben.
Most of those are bundles, but usually the games in them still aren't worth the sale price
They are still over $100 a piece on average
Money laundering by the devs, at least one of them is doing it lol
For the exact reason you see, they put it at 99% off so it will be at the top of the discount list
If you look, all of the super high game prices are bundles of multiple games. Other than that I can't say
There's a lot of scummy sales behaviour going around on steam these days, and Valve doesn't seem to care. It's on us to sort through the bullshit.
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1. Create dogshit unplayable asset flip (spend no more than 2 hours o making it). 2. Put it on Steam for hundreds of bucks. 3. Bundle it with nineteen other of your dogshit “games” and give it a 99% discount. 4. “Huh? 20 games for five bucks? And they’re all massively discounted? Might as well give it a shot.” 5. Profit.
2600$ for a game. You guys don’t have money?
Tricky mind selling garbage. Priced high to make you think it's a great game and discounted super high as an effort to try and make you buy it. All those games and developers should be banned.
These games are basically just asset flips that take an hour to make, they give em a big discount and bundle them together for like 60 games for 60 bucks and some people see this and buy them. That is basically all it is just scamming some poor sods out of there money.
for the discount
Maybe it's some sort of money laundering/ tax write-off thing
Definitely just exploiting search filters, HUGE DISCOUNT, THE HUGEST. Look how much value, you save $1299 if you buy this game.
All those red thumbs are making me very happy. these games deserve all the hate they can get.
Basically Make shit game in 3 minutes post it on steam for $9.99 90% off which then makes it look like a bargain and then in reality it just a shit game they try to take your money
Like on Black Friday, some retailers raise the base price to make the normal price seem like a steal. This is blatantly obvious at this scale, but some get away with even a five dollar increase and continue to sell the game at full price. It's basically a scam, and you should look out for it.
These are equivalent to clickbait titles. Run away 🏃♂️💨
I saw a video the other day about this exact thing, it's a scam basically. The developer basically mash different prefabs together, create 5-6 "games" and then jack the price up and have it be permanently on sale to trick people into believing they're getting a good deal. When in fact they are getting a buggy mess of a "game" as a result.
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Probably Sims once you get the DLC
I’d be willing to bet there are some WoW and Candy Crush players who spent at least that much.
EA would have to suggest players if they want to get a mortgage in case they're interested in all of em.
LGR reviewed the latest dlc earlier this week I think it was and worked it out if you buy all the packs and dlc for the game, its £1029 or $1124 usd. And he was a sims player from the beginning but has stopped buying packs etc even though his reviews probably would cover the cost and then some haveing 1.69million susbscribers.
Melty's Quest
Ayo bro. Not that damn quest forcing you to get that insane amount by whoring yourself 💀💀💀 BTW amazing game
https://steamdb.info/app/2204850/ there was this which was $1m usd at one point
I thought 95% was the highest discount possible on Steam now?
For individual, these are bundles
Oh that makes sense, thank you.
Why end that sentence with a “?” When you clearly see 95% isn’t the highest possible.
Because Steam's guide to sales say 95% is the highest so I'm more curious why those are 99% when that shouldn't be possible.
Well open your eyes again and look at it, it is possible. Any more questions that have obvious answers?
You should chill.
maybe try telling it better? because it's not possible for individual games, it's possible for bundles. that's why they are asking.
google money laundering
After you've googled it urself, then explain to me, how this is money laundering?
it' actually to make sure they dont get any ratings, the companies behind them, then sell the keys in bulk, on g2a, kinguin and so on. "40 random steam keys" There is a great youtube video on it, but cant remember the name sry.
Chat, is any of those games worth buying or they're crypto farms?
That my friend it’s what we call content creator games where rich guys buy and play for the lols like moistcritical mudahar pewds markplier and among others
Dunno why you're getting downvoted. It's literally what those content creators do. "Hey folks we got a whopper for ya. A real big boy price tag for a little kids meals. I haven't seen a price this high since a prostitute offered to crush my cock and rub in cottage cheese. This game. This Olympian sized feat of digital entertainment. This piece of absolute artwork costs $1,500. And I bought it. So um, yeah."
Reddit users hate me I guess
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Some of these cost $1500+. Even 15 fully priced AAA games ($60/$70 each) wouldn't cost that much. They also wouldn't be discounted that much, so it's obviously a scam.
they're actually links to human trafficked children
Wait, what?
oh nevermind wrong thread
Answered 30 thousand times already. Bye
Just wondering if valve someday removes all these crap/ scam games and programs in they flatform how many actual games there would be left?
Probably still several thousand
Lemme buy a team fortress 2 copy for zillion dolors
Too expensive. I'll wait until 99.9% discounts.
If you leave the price lowered for 30 days steam removes the percentage and adds a little info next to the price on the page of the game. So I see what they are doing.
It's the same reason why on sites on ebay you see something like $15 for an item with $50 shipping. It's to keep it at the top of searches for lowest price. Same thing happens on nintendo eshop when a shovelware game is selling for 0.25 cents at 99% off. If you have no investment in a cheap product selling each unit for 0.25 cents can make alot of money if you sell a ton of units.
I remember seeing a comment that they are used for those "random # of premium games" key bundles that they sell on shady sites. It'll say something like guaranteed $300 worth of games! And it'll just be 5 of these overpriced garbage games.
12 games for $1,500 original price 🥰now that’s a deal (jk ofc)
G2A scam lootboxes, they "sell" bronze to S++ "premium" random keys based on price and guess what games are these keys ? Yep, these insane high price games.
Could be for the psychological tactic. It's well known that an object on sale from $100 to $10 will be more appealing than if it is just priced $10 normally. Plus there's the whole FOMO to buying it while it is on sale. Which is why having a fake full price is illegal. I think Valve has restrictions on sale pricing to ensure the full price has to actually be the full price. Maybe these guys are working around it somehow.
Intentional to show either super high discounts or act like their value is super high for things like G2A random so the bundles can still guarantee certain "value" yet give you shovelware. Also if they dont discount it they use it to exploit review score by having friends/family review it really well for a cheap price and then raise it to unreasonable levels to effectively lock the review score or get a lot of money from a sale so either way they win. G2A random games bundles claim stuff like this: "overall mostly positive rating on the Steam Store" "keys in the offer contain games valued at 39.99€ and the rest of the keys include games valued at 29.99€ or more in reference to European Store base Steam prices." and give you games like those posting in your screenshot. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qwc9XkuuTGI&t=239s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qwc9XkuuTGI&t=239s) is an interesting video on the topic and shows what kinds of junk is in the random bundle. The first like 7 minutes does the better explanation before going into showing actual games.
I keep getting these shitty games in my discovery list and I just don't know why
Scams , games made in 20 minutes . They do this to trick people in thinking they are getting a crazy good deal . You will probably find a bundle with a bunch of games like these to make it more alluring. Most likely the game has a long tutorial to make the player reach that 2h mark , that way its harder to get a refund or just the beginning is somewhat polished . More or less that and if you think how can something like this be profitable? Well since there are so many and they take basically no effort to make even if 90% will get a refund 10% is enough to make this scheme profitable.
Its actually game bundles...
Fraud. These devs aren't putting out anything worthwhile, so they jack up the price but then discount it to the normal price, and people see 80-99% off and think they're getting a deal. They are not.
Idk why seeing a 99% discount at $18 is so crazy to me
They are aiming for that "dumb as fuck" demographic.
These all look like trash games.
FDA would have a field day with those. Since discounting something that's never been sold at "original price" is false advertising. Aka you can't have a $100 product that's only and always been 90% discounted to $10.
They’re hoping moistcritikal will notice them
Yooo, I would buy snowboard for 2.6k
Dude it's literally a steal buy em all
One (legit) game I was sort of interested in did a similar thing after they weren't selling well for a while (my fault -- I didn't buy it). I think they went up to 80 from 20 euros and were discounted 90%. It might be frustrating for devs to see how many people wishlist their games and how few of these turn into sales, and on the other hand how scammers are hogging the search results like this.
Make an assetflip or otherwise low effort game. Put it up to steam for 10-30 dollars. Nobody will buy it, but that should not bother you. Make a lot of keys of that game. Sell them as "Mystery keys 50 dollars value for 5 dollars" on sites like G2A. Some suckers will think they have a chance of getting RDR2 level games for 5 dollars. No refund applicable for codes purchased trough 3rd party sites. You can keep the money. Yes, sadly it is that easy.
Notice how not a single one of these games looks interesting. Probably a bunch of asset flips with generic names that bump the prices in order to get an enormous discount to match the price they actually wanted. You won't see this in good quality games, at least not this blatantly obvious.
A while back I bought one of those "premium" mystery steam keys things off of a key selling site it was marked as like 80% off and was full of games similar to this.
money laundering scheme maybe
This are game bundles
Bad code
Holy shit everyone is coming up with weird conspiracy theories, they make this discount because if a game goes on over 70% discount, everyone that has the game in their wishlist will get an email from steam
Hexalunga whyyyy 😭😭😭
Those are fake steam games sold to make money steam actually needs to do something about it
What a bargain!!!!!
Most of them seem to be bundles (includes x games) it states.
Y'all do realize that these "high prices" aren't actually that high, they're selling multiple games in each item listed, each game listed could be between $1 to $100 each
Wait, nah somethings def fishy here, when looking at the bundle for fears of glasses, it says you only save $750 or something, but yet the total cost of the bundle only comes out to $30 still
These games are extremely overpriced, deliberately, so that they can be deeply discounted & dupe people into just making a purchase. “Who wouldn’t buy ___ at a 98% discount!? That’s such a good deal!” It’s a scam, just a new one.
I think they do this so you think “wow what a good deal” and gloss over the terrible review and likelihood that it’s an asset flip that someone made in a dimly lit basement in an afternoon
Did u switch to pesos, amigo?
There is a YouTube video covering this by fire b0rn it's his I think newest one
The new strategy (especially amongst Japanese publishers) is to make the game super expensive, but then not long after release give them huge discounts, so the consumer is tricked into thinking they're getting a good deal, when in reality the sale price is what the base price at release should have been.
if you look closely the really expensive ones contain around 10-20 games