Steam is a platform for gaming that I have found to be very handy. The games are installed on your local hard drive, but if you change computers or want to put your games on more than one computer, all you have to do is install Steam on the computer, and then have Steam install the individual games. And you can choose which games to install. Some can run on Linux so you can install them on a Linux computer, but most require Windows unfortunately. Still you could decide only to install a few games on a laptop with a smaller hard drive, or all of them on a desktop with terabytes of disk space. So while it is not the only platform I use (I also have a lot of games on GOG Galaxy, for instance), I find it quite useful. And both platforms let you update your games easily. Steam in particular makes it very easy to add DLC (Downloadable Content) to your games. for instance, Civilization VI has added lots of DLC to keep the game fresh, such as the Leader Pass, which adds new leaders to the game every few months. You purchase the Leader Pass once in the beginning, and then the new leaders automatically get added to your game. You just open up Steam, and download all available new content for any of your games.
One of the nice things about both Steam and GOG are the sales they run. GOG seems to run sales monthly, while Steam does it four times a year, Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. You aren’t going to find bargains on the latest games in these sales; these are about catching up on games you may not have played when they first came out but might want to try when it doesn’t cost much. And you can get some real bargains if you look.
One of the YouTube channels I follow is a fellow from New Zealand who uses the handle JumboPixel, and he will do reviews of the games on sale on Steam whenever there is a sale, and I find his reviews valuable because he likes the same kinds of games I like. I first ran across him as someone who did videos on Civ V and Civ VI, and then he covered Humankind, which I bought but haven’t played a lot of yet. I always watch his review videos to see if there is anything I want, and in Summer 2023 I saw that Steam had something awesome on sale. Steam, if you didn’t know, is a platform put together by the game publisher Valve, but which has games from any publishers. But the Valve connection may be why they offered the Valve Complete Pack. This bundle of games included:
- Counter-Strike: Condition Zero
- Day of Defeat: Source
- Team Fortress Classic
- Day of Defeat
- Deathmatch Classic
- Opposing force
- Ricochet
- Half-Life
- Half-Life: Blue Shift
- Half-Life 2
- Counter-Strike: Source
- Half-Life 1: Source
- Half-Life 2: Episode One
- Portal
- Half-Life 2: Episode Two
- Left 4 Dead
- Left 4 Dead 2
- Portal 2
- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
- The Lab
First, note that Source in a number of game titles refers to the Source 3-D game engine, so these are all 3-D games. Second, you might not want to play all of these games but there are some real classics in that list. And the bundle cost me, with tax included, $6.94 for all them. For that price, if you only played one of these games for a couple of afternoons you got your money’s worth.
Over at GOG I can see the combo of Master of Orion 1&2 for all of $2.39, Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate 2 for $4.99 apiece, and Myst for $2.99. These are all classic games. In fact, GOG has 50 pages of games for under $5. And once you establish an account at GOG you will get regular emails from them with the latest games on sale. I also want to mention Humble Bundle. They package up a group of games, generally with a theme of some kind, and let you decide how much you want to pay. The more you pay, the more games you get. A portion of the proceeds goes to charity, and the games can easily be added to your Steam account. Right now as I write this I see they have a bundle of up to 16 Train Simulator games. That is a niche audience to be sure, but I fondly remember many hours playing Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon, so I get the attraction. And I have purchased bundles of indie games that run on Linux from them, and run them on Steam, which is also available for Linux, but can only run games that are written for Linux specifically. So, there is no excuse for the game lover not to be playing a ton of great games for not very much money, just by knowing how to shop the sales.
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