Board 8 > B8's 4th annual STEAM SECRET SANTA! [SIGN-UP UNTIL DEC 16] [GIFT BY CHRISTMAS]

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'm actually excited about the person I get to steam gift. I really want to try and find something outofthebox to get him.
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Wickle confirmed didn't get a girl.
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I already have a preliminary list of games to target on and off of my person's wishlist.
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Yeah, I'm looking at two different games on my target's Wishlist, both of which I played and loved.
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I have two different plans depending on if the one I really want to get the target goes on sale
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I have added a couple of you as friends who I did not have yet!
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also whoever has me i recommend keeping an eye on my wishlist as the sale goes on cuz I may buy some on there
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Whoever has me I'm still sorting my wishlist a bit and seeing if there's anything else I want to add
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Another reminder to @LOLIAmAnAlt to make his steam wishlist public by making his profile public (we can't see it).
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Oh yeah, guess we should all be updating our wishlists.
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I fixed some of my wishlist.
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When's the Steam sale?

Also this person I got has pretty good taste.
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I think I saw somewhere that it starts the 21st
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WiggumFan267 posted...

also whoever has me i recommend keeping an eye on my wishlist as the sale goes on cuz I may buy some on there

Unless Steam sales have changed, the deals stay the same throughout the two weeks or so that it goes on. Thus, you can just wait until after your Secret Santa gifts have been sent to you before buying games for yourself.
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I realized I forgot to add everyone as steam friends, gonna do that now
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I approve of my target.

Went through and added everyone.
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Stardew Valley is 9.99 at humble bundle. I know a few people had it on their wish lists.
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/stardew-valley
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Actually several games are on sale now on Humble Bundle (which uses Steam DRM too) so check it out. I know several people have a lot of these games on their wishlists.

https://www.humblebundle.com/store/promo/indie-mega-week/
https://www.fanatical.com/en/latest-deals
http://retroism.com/deals/?blah
https://chrono.gg/past-deals (daily deals)

Fanatical also uses steam. It seems retroism uses steam too. I was kind of wondering if I bought a non-steam PC game (like gog.com or Ubisoft) for someone if it would still count for this.
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Cross Layers of Fear off your wish lists (if it was on there) and get it for free at Humble Bundle

https://www.humblebundle.com/store/layers-of-fear-and-soundtrack
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If you have Twitch Prime, Superhot is free until the 24th if you're interested
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Bump
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@Korayashi is anyone going to get bad vibes for sending gifts through gog.com instead of steam or one of its partners/affiliates

I noticed Ys I & II Chronicles+ was $4.49 over at gog.com and it was #1 on Punnyz wishlist. Whoever has him ... yeah

https://www.gog.com/game/ys_i_ii_chronicles

they also have ALL the Trails games on sale and I know quite a lot of people had them on their wishlists.

$9.99
https://www.gog.com/game/the_legend_of_heroes_trails_in_the_sky

$19.99
https://www.gog.com/game/legend_of_heroes_trails_in_the_sky_sc_the

$22.49
https://www.gog.com/game/legend_of_heroes_trails_in_the_sky_the_3rd_the

$29.99
https://www.gog.com/game/legend_of_heroes_trails_of_cold_steel_the

gog.com must have started their Winter sale already because a ton of items on my 800+ wishlist over there are discounted but they didn't feature their Trails discounts on their main page
https://www.gog.com/

Some of the other titles that I saw on many people's wishlists
Cuphead 16.99
Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice 22.49
Stardew Valley 9.99
Witcher 3 GotY Edition 19.99
Hollow Knight 9.99
Absolver 14.99
Observer 20.09
Orwell 6.69
Pillars of the Earth 20.09
Brothers a tale of two sons 3.74
Hyperdimension Neptunia 5.99
Owlboy 14.99
Ys Oath in Felghana 4.49
Ys Origin 5.99
Ys VI The Ark of Napishtim 5.99
Pillars of Eternity Hero Edition 17.99
Windward 4.49
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I think most if not all people are waiting for the Steam Sale here

I assume theyll be at the same prices, but you never know I guess!
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Xanadu Next 9.99 (gog.com)
Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection 26.99 (gog.com)
Ys Seven 18.69 (gog.com)

Yeah these sites usually mirror a lot of the sales, I hope they aren't all the same though.
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gog sale prices are typically the same as the ones on steam, except for witcher 3 where discounts are larger on gog

other places, like greenmangaming, humble if you include the humble monthly discount, fanatics etc have lower prices than steam on select games
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Does gog use Steam keys? If not I'm inclined to say stick to a platform that does please. Open to others opinions, just seems sorta silly to take the Steam out of Steam Secret Santa though.
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no, GOG is a DRM-free platform owned by CD Projekt Red, creators of The Witcher
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Here were gog.com's gift instructions for comparison

"I RECEIVED A GIFT. HOW DO I REDEEM IT?
A gift code can be purchased by selecting the "Select to gift this order" option, during checkout. You can either send it directly to the recipient, in a GOG-made e-mail, or send it to yourself, and then forward or PM it to someone. The gift recipient will be able to choose which items from the gift they want to add to their account. By default, if the gift recipient already owns some of the items within the gift, these will remain in that gift, and can later on be redeemed by someone else."

https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212804445-How-do-I-buy-something-as-a-gift-
https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212804485-I-received-a-gift-How-do-I-redeem-it-

I think we probably should use steam and/or its affiliates if they have the same offers, but DRM-free gog is great too if they have better offers on certain games. Not buying anything yet though cuz I wanna see what steam does, unless of course gog or one of these other sites has a very time limited offer.
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I feel like this is starting to veer away from the theme of gift giving and just trying to find ways to save the most money
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if I save more money I can get more gift

but I'm also too lazy to use other sites anyway >_>
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This is the time to save money on games though besides those Black Friday/Cyber Monday specials. ;)

Well I heard there's a good January sale too but that won't apply to this.

Another freebie on steam:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/368230/Kingdom_Classic/

Another rpg bundle at Fanatical for $2.49 (You save $78.43)
https://www.fanatical.com/en/bundle/rpg-bundle

Deals like that are pretty suspicious but anyway, shopping/picking the gifts is part of the fun for me.
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Bane_Of_Despair posted...

I feel like this is starting to veer away from the theme of gift giving and just trying to find ways to save the most money

It could be looked at how many quality games could be gifted.
When $15 is the recommended amount saving money is moot.
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Tom Bombadil posted...

if I save more money I can get more gift

Yes very true. If for some reason steam doesn't duplicate the Falcom games sale, you can get 2 out of 3 of punnyz wishlist games for the price of 1 simply by using gog.com instead of steam.

Gut feeling based on past experience that steam will copy gog's Falcom games sale.
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I don't buy Steam-accessible games off of Steam often unless it's Humble Bundle or sometimes Amazon. I'll be sticking to probably those sites for gifts unless another one ya'll recommend comes up -- I know I hope whatever gift I get to be Steam-accessible and I plan to offer the same.

And I'll be aiming for ~$15 in gifts instead of a game listed for ~$15 that I can buy on sale for $5. I figure that's how ya'll have been doing it in the past anyway, but it's my first time joining in so forgive me if I'm being redundant here.
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Yeah, I always buy multiple games as to give my giftee a better chance of liking at least part of my gift. I would feel awful if I gave one game, and they ended up not enjoying their time.
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This is all the spirit of giving. I like the thought of being thrifty to give more for your money to your giftee, but do remember it's not about the deals themselves. It's about the people and spreading some cheer.
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Looks like last year was the only year I got my recipient multiple games. Looking through the years...

2014: KCF - Massive Chalice
2015: Biscuit - The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth + The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth
2016: tazzy - Momodora III; Momodora IV; Enter the Gungeon; The Flame and The Flood

Despite giving out like 10 copies of various Trails games, it looks like I've never given one out during Christmas. Could this be the year?? (no probably not because I think I have the game in mind for my recipient, I just have to see if they own it on another platform first...)

oh god they own that TOO this person is the WORST
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Well I guess one reason to stick strictly with steam or steam affiliates like humble bundle is the steam trading cards/steam achievements.

I think in the future (next year or whatever) this sort of thing should include all other digital/download formats like ps4/xbox/microsoft/ubisoft/gog/origin/Android/Apple store/etc. cuz Bane was talking about a mail in Secret Santa back in post #7 and I considered this the "non-mail in Secret Santa" topic.

Of course just like in a mail in, you wouldn't want to receive games for a platform you don't own or don't want it on, so yeah, platforms accepted should be indicated.

Default is steam since it's so popular, but they don't need to have a monopoly on digitally downloaded games ...
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I'm not sure how many of those offer gifting options. I know Xbox does and Playstation doesn't. While I'm not fully sure on this, I think you can with some of the others but only if you buy codes for stuff and then send said codes to person via PM, email, Discord messages, or however you wish to contact them.

Personally, I like the simplicity of just making it Steam games. It is equally as simple to determine if someone owns a particular game or not. I think that others could get complicated if more platforms/services were added for obvious reasons and also because I'm unsure how many have the following:
- Some kind of wishlist function or at least have gametime tracking so users can see what kinds of games a user plays
- Ability to add peoples as friends to see if X user owns Y game
- If above is a no-go, then the ability to provide a link or screenshot of all the games that B user owns on C platform/service

I am just going to buy via Steam as opposed to places that sell Steam keys like Humble and Fanatical because I like sending the games directly (and the option for the person to receive them at a specific time) and also because I like to imagine seeing someone minding their own business on their computer and getting a notification that they have received a gift and being very excited as they are surprised with the pictures of the games that I have sent them (along with a message).

Getting a PM or whatever with just a bunch of random letters and numbers or links for you redeem a gift seems, I don't know, less exciting and less in the spirit of a secret santa. It that ends up costing me a couple extra dollars, so be it. It's totally worth it. It has that much extrinsic value to me. However, if someone wants to go the key route, I ultimately have no qualms with that.

Obviously, everyone participating this year consented to a Steam Secret Santa, so it would unfair and disrespectful to make any modifications at this point. This is Kora's thing though, so what he says goes.
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i would personally like to stick to steam only for the sake of convenience.

O yeah gog.com has wishlists, collections, and friends lists. I don't think I'll be using it for my particular target anyway, but I thought others might be interested in the deals.

They generally have a great collection of older games plus a lot of the newer ones too. And their sales seem to last longer. Please do consider using it next year in addition to steam. I guess I should have mentioned it way earlier before the signups were done.
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Does the steam sale start at midnight US Eastern Time or sometime in the morning?
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Steam used to have sales begin at noon or 1 PM ET
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the sale is on!

and yes the Falcom games are on sale at steam too along with a ton of others.
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Boom, sent.
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...gift! Awaaaaaaaay!
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! it's starting!

the giftpocalypse

Gifts purchased and scheduled for delivery at 12 am est on the 25th
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