It seems that many of the digital distributors are looking for ways to distinguish their holiday sales from all the others. First Direct2Drive gave buyers a 1-in-5 chance of getting their order for free, now Steam is giving 30 winners the top 5 games on their Steam Wish List, every day. What’s a Steam Wish List? It’s that new marketing stunt that Steam want you to sign up for, so that you can pester your friends to buy you games from Steam (And your friends can pester you).
Yes, this act of generosity is actually a pretty obvious marketing stunt, and one more way for Social Networking to completely overrun our lives. However, you can win stuff if you play along. You’ll need a Steam account to be eligible, but you don’t need to buy anything in order to be eligible for the sweepstakes, which runs from now through Monday.
Also new to Steam's sales tactics are the “Gift Packs” that let you order games in bulk to give to your friends. So, if you have eight pals who haven’t tried Deus Ex yet, you can buy it in bulk with a huge discount, then give it out to all of your friends who, of course have to have Steam accounts to play the game. Steam has four such Gift Pack deals today, and will have another crop each day throughout the weekend.
In addition to the Wish List sweepstakes and Gift Packs, Steam is also having the standard Daily Deals each day through the 29th. There are nine games on sale today with breaks up to 90%.
The relentless forces of Marketing have evolved yet again. Can you resist the siren song of this chance at free games? Let us know what you buy in the comments section below.
