What’s the best game deal you ever got?
For me it was the original Subnautica. Was a free give away before it got popular and I had no expectations when I played it. Really enjoyed the exploration and the pacing.
Second was Axiom Verge - I got it for free before it became popular but I don’t remember how. I bought it when it went to Steam because I wanted to support the creator.
Both are fun exploration sorts of games if you haven’t played them. Axiom Verge is a metroidvania. Kinda a weird game, but in a good way.
I’m not sure if it was the first time they ever did a free weekend for a game or not, but I played Day of Defeat: source and it never left my library. I think I lost that steam account at some point though.
Free, many times…
I bought Factorio and Minecraft in Beta/Alpha, and still use the same keys to this day. So something like 15 years of entertainment.
Those definitely weren’t patient gaming buys, but they were good buys.
That said, I’m not a patient gamer because of cost, I’m patient because I don’t have much time and don’t want to waste it on buggy games. So I wait until bugs to be ironed out and the content to be complete before I buy.
I bought Minecraft a month before Beta came out and man what a deal that was. Only something like $10. I got thousands of hours out of that over the following 5ish years. I don’t play it as often any more, but I still think it was worth it
Yup, I don’t play anymore, but my kids do. I ended up buying a second license so my two boys could play at the same time with MS accounts, but that original licence has gotten a ton of use.
I got xcom 2(200 ish hours) and slay the Spire (500+ hours) from humble bundle.
Decades ago I bought a sealed copy of Dragon Warrior off a guy for $30. While exchanging info he said he’d throw in a sealed copy of Dragon Warrior 2 for $20 more. I wasn’t really a collector (I wanted to play them) so I said sure what the hell, nice boxes and inserts are always cool. I never got around to playing them so they sat in a plastic shell.
They’re perfect, they’re unopened, and I still got em.
First one that comes to mind was getting a used PS3 for $75 in late 2017.
I’d become a big Persona fan after liking P3 and with P4 becoming an all-time favorite soon after, but I’m mostly a PC gamer. I don’t always pick up current-gen consoles. Eventually I got sick of hearing the heaps of praise for P5 that I figured I’d take the risk on a used PS3 (getting a PS4 was way out of my budget). That’s not why it ended up being a great deal, though.
Now that I had a PS3, I figured I’d try all the games I’d been missing out on that didn’t have PC ports. I had a remarkably high hit rate with these: Demon’s Souls, Dragon Quest Builders, Journey, The Last of Us, NieR, and of course Persona 5 itself. Ended up playing through (almost) all of FromSoft’s following games and NieR: Automata because of this pickup. Still never got that PS4, though, so I’m still waiting on Bloodborne and TLOU2.
I think I got Terraria for like a buck (can’t remember where) and while it isn‘t my favorite game ever, my gf loved it to death and I got dozens of hours out of it (my gf hundreds). It‘s undeniably a great game and the dev is a maniac in terms of long term support.
I got it in exchange for a slice of pepperoni pizza because an old school friend wanted me to join him.
Wow, what a value.
I don’t know if this counts, but it was a trade. I won Tenchu z for the Xbox 360 and I didn’t have one (yet), so I traded with some random guy for the following GameCube titles:
- DBZ Budokai
- Viewtiful Joe
- Super Mario Sunshine
- Tales of Symphonia
Psvr (original) as an amazon prime day deal about baby ear after launch. It was about AUS150, so US100 by today’s exchange.
Got Bloons Tower Defense 6 for free on mobile (it was a 24 hour promo I believe), and I also got it for $1 on Steam. There’s cloud save between both of them and I’ve maybe put in over 200 hours into that game, what a steal that was.
Axiom Verge
Yeah, that’s decent. Still haven’t gotten through it, though.
I think that the price of a game matters a lot less than the gameplay time, in terms of value. You can have enormous differences in the amount of time you play a game, much more than the price typically varies from game to game.
looks at Steam
My top-played games by hours of playtime are:
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Oxygen Not Included
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Fallout 4 (the game itself is decent-sized, plus there are expansions, but this is really due heavily to mods)
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Wargame: Red Dragon
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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition (also improved by mods)
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Sid Meier’s Civilization V
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Caves of Qud
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Fallout 76
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Rimworld (mods, though honestly the base game is pretty good on its own)
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X3: Reunion
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Mount & Blade: Warband (again, mods add a lot to this)
So those are probably the best deals, as I’ve gotten the most time out of them.
The bad deals are games that I get and then don’t like and so don’t play.
I don’t see Factorio on this list! Why is the factory not growing?
I played it for a while, but never got that into it. Ditto for Mindcraft and Satisfactory. They’re all fine, but…I dunno. Oxygen Not Included just has more stuff going on.
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Just got the Lego Batman trilogy on Steam for like $5.
Skyrim for under 4 euro (iirc) in 2012 in a christmas sale.
It’s not really worthy of Patient Gamers because I bought it shortly after launch (in an actual box at Best Buy), but the Orange Box was one of the most absurdly good deals I’ve ever seen. I can’t even calculate how many hours I’ve gotten out of it because it ended up on an old Steam account, but TF2 alone is easily my most played game ever.
Same story, 1400 hours in TF2, and traded enough hats to sell em all for an Index. Great deal!
Okay thats a level of crazy I never thought Id see. Trading in digital items for enough cash to buy a freakin VR set. Madness. Congrats!
Thank you! I got wrongfully terminated in my early 20s and got a bunch of money. Took a year off from working and played like 40-60 hours of TF2 a week hahaha
I didn’t gamble a ton on hats, but I had a “key guy” who would sell me 2.50 keys for 1.20. Probably spent 200 total on keys and one single unusual I pulled sold for 450! A bunch of others sold for 100-200.
I quit like eight years ago with tonnns of crates in my inventory. One day there was a glitch that made all old crates ONLY drop unusual hats. I logged on and had like 40 of those crates, usually selling for .03. They went for like 8.00-12.00 that day… spent all morning at work listing them on the market!
I was really hoping for an Orange Cube around the announcement of Half-Life: Alyx.
I bought this for the 360 and it blew my mind at the time. I had never played a Half Life game before, and that coupled with TF2 led me down the path to PC building for the superior gaming platform. I owe a lot to The Orange Box!
Dang, Valve stealth indoctrinated console gamers to Steam with the Orange Box lol.
Got GTA 5 for free from a terrible game store no one should use or give money to.
Only take, no give
