Steam Summer Sale 2020

So have Origin I think - it’s just that no-one cares :)

I’ll admit it’s been a long time since I looked at Origin, so I couldn’t say. :)

Since rebuilding my system back in December, I haven’t even gotten around to reinstalling it…

Yeah, you never hear about them. Probably because they largely but not entirely only carry their own titles.

Origin definitely has sales, and very good ones too, but on EA properties mostly of course.

Memories…

Like the games in our backlogs…

It’s odd. When I check my purchase history in the Steam client, it starts with Medieval II: Total War collection in 2007-12-29. Which matches the email I have. However, I bought Sam & Max Season 1 before that on 2007-11-10, Civilization IV Collection on 2007-09-30 and the first one, the Orange Box on 2007-09-25. None of them appear in my purchase history.

2007: 4 games
2008: 5 games
2009: 5 games
2010: 12 games
2011: 23 games
2012: 19 games
2013: 22 games
2014: 30 games
2015: 28 games
2016: 33 games
2017: 53 games
2018: 32 games
2019: 28 games

I’d say it’s correct that prior to 2010 their lineup was weak. Also, with exception of 2017, my purchase speed is quite stable. Though I imagine that is because I overwhelmingly buy during the summer and winter sales.

I think purchase history just includes games bought directly from the steam store. The licenses and product key activations is more comprehensive, as it includes retail keys from, like, those boxes from the olden days with the key codes inside them.That’s where my Orange Box is listed. My first activation is Half-life 2 way back in 2004, but my first purchase directly from steam was: Two Worlds for $19.95 in December of 2007. An inauspicious beginning.

I just checked, and I’m pretty sure I bought games directly from Steam before then, too. Funny that they just don’t seem to have purchase records from back then around anymore.

According to Steam on Christmas Eve of 2009 I purchased Torchlight. This is the earliest entry for both purchases and key activations. What is odd is that I could swear I had to activate retail box copies of my Half-Life games prior to December 2009, and I kind of recall activating other old retail box games through Steam as well. Perhaps those activations were on a different Valve service that pre-dated Steam though.

Anyway, it was fun to look back and see my first couple of dozen Steam games. I’m proud to say I played each and every one of them from December 2009 through July, 2011, at which time I purchased Drakensang and Drakensang : River of Time, neither of which I have played to date. They are my very first Steam backlog games!

Skip the first one and get moving on River of Time!

I was never into FPS, so HalfLIfe and it’s offshoots had (and have) no appeal to me.

Oddly, I didn’t buy my first Steam game from Steam. I purchased Napoleon:Total War at Gamestop, but even though it came with a CD, when I went to install it it downloaded the game from the Steam client. Google says it would have been Feb '10 but I’m pretty sure it was earlier than that, so it may have been Empire.

Whichever it was, it occured to me that if I had to wait for a game to download anyway, I might as well go ahead and purchase it on line.

Ah yes, that’s it. And I did buy Half-Life 2 in 2004 like everyone else. It’s listed as complimentary.

However, Civ IV and Sam & Max are also listed as Complimentary so assume they had some sort of codebase change in late 2007.

According to Steam’s keys and such it says my first activation was Half Life Platinum Pack on 8/23/2004. I know that I had it before then and was activating keys for various HL games (Opposing Force, etc) but it doesn’t seem to track that.

Is there an easy way to count how many games bought per year?

First purchases on Steam were Freedom Force and Children of the Nile bundles.

Heh I started growing my backlog in 2009.
Man was Day of Defeat Source amazing, I must have had over 1000 hours in that game.

My Half Life bought at retail doesn’t show up on either list. First thing is Empire Total War in 2009.

Let’s see of I can figure out how to upload an image from my phone. Yep, HL2 was the first game, then HL2 episode 1, then the Orange Box (mostly for Portal and Episode 2). The snowball started rolling in earnest starting in 2009, it looks like. I think I’m up to around 500 titles these days at most.

Audiosurf was really the game that got me started on the path to buying games on Steam, but I was still mostly activating stuff rather than buying games from them directly until mid-2009.

I remember logging out of the closing moments of one of Blizzard’s open beta phases for WoW and anxiously downloading the Steam client and preloading Half-Life 2. I think that’s how it worked. But, damn, did I have a WoW addiction. Other than S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl in '07 and Warhammer Online in '08 (both retail), because of WoW, I don’t believe I purchased another game until 2009:

I stopped buying PC games in 2017 but now I’m back at it again:

I have a bad feeling a bunch of stuff is going to get added here in the next day or so.

Ditto. Empire was my first Steam purchase in 2009. I didn’t start using Steam regularly until 2011, when Shogun 2 and Skyrim came out.