And then that person gives away those 17 copies to friends. 8 of those friends wind up using Steam all the time. Great success.

You're making a decent argument of why it's not that great to the consumer, but I'm sure you know that it's great for the developers, publishers, and Steam. Wouldn't you kill for discussions like these to be happening about Impulse?

"Hey guys, SoSE was at 2.50 yesterday, so I bought 10 copies. Anyone want to hop onto multiplayer with me with a free copy?"

Boom. 10 more people are introduced to Impulse.

I understand Kyro's argument well enough, and sure, maybe some people are opening up their wallets to buy a game for a dollar. It's a dollar. I don't know that it's a great idea to compete with Steam by offering relatively weak sales to people who were already going to buy the game to begin with. I mean the conversation about Impulse's sale was pretty much buried the minute Steam's sale went live. You can't buy that kind of marketing, and to say that they're only selling games that are low volume right now... is a stretch and not at all supported. We're not just talking just small indie titles and maybe one or two Valve games here.

You'd be surprised. Most traditional development model titles (focused on new releases, rather than long-term additions and support) make the bulk of their sales early in life and taper off pretty dramatically once the initial rush is past.

They're not picking Steamworks because of branding--they're picking it because it saves them development money and there's no other comparable option (yet). There's plenty of room for alternatives, it's just a matter of getting them out there.

This is a big one too.  I'd generally prefer to support Impulse over Steam, but if I can't buy on Impulse Steam wins by default.

I hope Impulse gets a sale for Dragon Age before Steam does. Trying to get my friend to buy it on Impulse. We all have Steam and only 2 of us have Impulse so this will help cause I am trying to make them get Elemental when it comes out.

Wait, are you saying you don't do mega sales because people might buy things they don't need?

Aww, Impulse is such a sweetheart. I'll be sure to come here and complain about the way Steam treats me. And then go back to Steam and buy 10 more games I'll never play.

Sorry, couldn't resist the analogy.

And yes, we know Steam is making tons of money. The bottom line is this: I bought Gothic II and III for $2.

I'm only being hard on Stardock because I do appreciate you guys. I buy all your first party games because they are good games. I just don't use the Impulse store otherwise because of all the aforementioned reasons.

We've heard this before, pretty much from any store that tries to compete with Walmart. The fact is, most people are not going to spend twice as much for a game at Impulse when they can get it at Steam at such a bargain. Morales aside, money talks. Your sale was buried before it even started thanks to Steam. I have no illusions that they are doing anything for the good of gamers. I have certainly voiced, on a number of occasions, things I don't like about Steam. I also know Steam is DRM despite what some of their biggest fans suggest. I am still going to buy their four packs and enjoy gaming like it should be done, with my friends for hours and days and weeks on end with games we weren't willing to shell out 50 bucks for but find entertaining and worth it at 20.

You might want to take the blame the consumer role, and try and pretend like the only people who buy from these amazing sales are just throwing their money at games they won't play or enjoy, but I am not buying it. My first purchase from Steam was during the big Christmas sale, and now I am working on five or six games and the list is growing. I've sense referred Steam to 3 or 4 people who have also purchased from and now use Steam based solely on price. You know how many people I can get interested in Impulse, almost zero. The sales are not exciting at all. Most people haven't ever heard of Stardock (although to be fair Valve isn't as well known as Steam either). The selection is severely limited here. And despite the software and methodolgy of distributing games and the ability to use non-impulse expansions (at least i think this works), few people care enough about the morale high ground to choose Impulse over Steam.

Given the choice between the two, at the same price, Impulse wins with me, but that rarely happens mostly because of these sales. I think Steam is smart giving a great sale to get new and existing customers talking about them all over the internet. Kudos to them for that. This sale as me checking Steam daily now for the duration of their sale. And let's see, oh yes, I have Impulse to start on startup so I could get in on those great promotions that stopped coming weeks ago, and the only reason I know there was a 15% sale going on is a I happened to see it mentioned on CAG. So i guess there is no reason to have Impulse be a startup application anymore because clearly the promotions reminder is now non-existent.

I don't think there's anything wrong with Steam's sales, and I certainly don't feel that there is anything wrong with taking advantage of them.  I picked up The Witcher last night for AU$17.00.  That's a terrific deal! 

I don't think anyone is trying to argue Steam's sales are just something Steam does because Steam is run by a swell bunch of people.  The more games someone has in Steam, the longer Steam will be open on their computer.  I, personally, use Steam as a discount store.  Everything I've ever purchased on Steam - with the exception of Half-Life 2 - has been discounted.  Impulse, however, has probably made more money off of me and I only own two titles because I'm happy to pay full price for Titles.  Steam is in the 'get people to install Steam' phase of their master plan for domination.  The only issue I can foresee is what happens when Steam moves from that phase to the 'Ok, now let's make some serious god damn money' phase.

On a side note, I received an email from Impulse giving me a discount off of anything on Impulse because I'm apart of their Elemental Army.  The only email I've received from Steam, apart from the purchase confirmation ones, is one telling me my technical issue with Splinter Cell not working wasn't their issue, and the fact that the issue is known and not advertised on Steam's page isn't grounds for a refund as Steam does not offer a refund under any circumstances.

So Stardoc, when can we sales like this on Impulse?

Steam is a discount store for me too.  There are some games that are actually titles I would like to play, not just titles im not interested at all but they are just so cheap I have to buy them.  I wouldn't pay more than $4 for a steam sale nonetheless.  Impulse had sales like these too. Why were they discontinued. I bought GalCiV II this way, the complete pack for $2.  Awesome deal, and that game I wanted to play too.

Actually almost every game I was thinking of buying has popped up in a steam sale this last month!

I've had mass effect, left4dead, oblivion, defense grid, space rangers 2 Dragon age awakening, Max Payne, DoW2: Chaos Rising and Civ 4 all on my list of games to maybe get if I had enough money and they were really cheap - there are only a couple of other games not on there that I'd also had my eye on (which aren't on steam anyway), so almost every game I was interested in buying got discounted to some degree in the steam sale, most of them by a hefty amount (of course I didn't have enough money to buy all of those, but the steam sale has certainly left me with a fairly hefty hole in my pocket and a stack of games I wanted)!

There were a few other games that caught my eye that I wouldn't normally have been interested in buying but which I thought I'd try out given how cheap they were, but not many since my money was going on all the games I had wanted before the sale even started.

In short it seems like every game in the steam catagolue is getting/has already got some kind of discount, and for the majority of them it's 50-75% (with the rest 25-33%)