We’re all guilty of compulsively buying games during Steam sales. You can’t blame us. Those juicy 50% off deals are far too tempting to not fork out the cash and concoct grand plans for the months of gaming ahead. But how many of us actually end up playing them all? I picked up The Stanley Parable for peanuts a while back because of the rave reviews it received, but have yet to sample its delights. And don’t get me started on free games.
In its latest sale, appositely labelled Spring Cleaning Event, Steam wants to make us better consumers and is encouraging us to load up those untouched titles in exchange for badges. During sales, badges are usually obtained by clicking through the discovery queue as fast as possible. This time around Steam will go so far as to scan your library and suggest a title you’ve never played to make things that much easier.
The perks are divided into two categories. Projects reward you with trophies and they run along the lines of ‘Play a game you’ve played more than 2 hours of, but haven’t played in a while’ or ‘Play the first game you added to your Steam account’. Win five trophies and you’ll unlock a badge, which can be leveled up by completing daily tasks with sanitation-themed titles such as ‘Speed Clean’ and ‘Spin Cycle’.
In an odd move, Steam are simultaneously offering nine highly praised games in a free weekend format. The mixed messages are confusing, but they are free so what the hell. The titles on offer are Borderlands 2, multiplayer survival gem Don’t Starve Together, Paradox’s definitive city management sim Cities: Skylines, orc-bashing galore Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, RPG Tyranny, good but overdone zombie game Left 4 Dead 2, generator fixing sim Dead by Daylight, Castle Crashers, and for the racing aficionados out there, Dirt 4.
The selection is reasonably good given the games are free for the weekend, but surely the whole point isn’t to add more games to our libraries, is it? Regardless, any excuse to play more games is perfectly acceptable. Steam’s Spring Cleaning Event runs until May 28th and seems to be an appetizer for a full blown sale coming in the not too distant future.
