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Friday 11 October 2013

How to build up your library

I have been asked by a lot of people who have added me on Steam from this blog one common question - How did my library get so big in such a short time?

I thought I'd explain it in a quick post to save me repeating myself over and over again so now I can just refer back here.

Firstly, I haven't actually spent that much money on Steam considering I have 671 games. In total I have only spent about £400 on Steam. That works out to be about £1.70 per game.

There are a number of ways I work my purchasing.

1 - Never ever buy a game on Steam unless it is on sale - For the past fair few years, Steam has a massive sale every 6 months or so. One in the Summer, and one around Christmas/New Year. These are your staple sales, where you will pick up most of your games purchased straight from Steam. I normally set my self a target of each week, adding an additional £4 into my Steam wallet so that by the time these big sales come around, I have already got a nice stash waiting to be used. Before people complain about £4 being a lot of money. Think of it this way, it is one less subway sandwich, one less Starbucks coffee and about one less pint of beer. If you'd sooner have one of these things, fine! I'm just using it as a comparison.

You'll also notice on Steam that each day there will be a single game that goes on sale in the daily deal. These deals last about 48 hours normally. Generally these sales are the cheapest the game will be so use your already built up Steam wallet funds on them!

You can also keep an eye on a popular subreddit here - http://www.reddit.com/r/steamdeals. There is also another subreddit - http://www.reddit.com/r/GameDeals which will also give links to other sites but be aware that some of these sites do not provide Steam keys. I tend not to buy anything which I can't activate on Steam just because I like the portability of having all my games in one place.

2- Game bundles - I have only recently in the past couple of months found about these beautiful creations. A game bundle is a collection of games being sold for next to nothing. Most of the time you can choose how much you want to pay for them, as well as being able to donate to charities on most bundles too. I tend to be able to add about 20 games a week to my library through purchasing bundles. I will provide links to the most popular bundle sites below. These are what you should check out very frequently as all bundles will only run for a certain amount of time.

https://www.humblebundle.com/
https://www.humblebundle.com/weekly
http://www.indiegala.com/
http://groupees.com/
http://www.bundlestars.com
http://www.indieroyale.com/
http://bundle-in-a-box.com/

There is also a subreddit for bundles which can be found here http://www.reddit.com/r/Gamebundles

3 - Steam Wishlist - This is probably one secret which most people seem to overlook. If you have an hour or two spare one day, do something productive with that time and sort out your Steamwish list. Go through the whole Steam store (yes, the whole store) and add any game which you find interesting upon first glance interesting, to your wishlist. This way, when the game does go on sale, you will receive a notification (if you use the smartphone app), and an email message. This is a great way to always ensure you know what is happening. When you do get one of these messages, look into the game a bit more thoroughly just to make sure you will like it, read some reviews or watch some YouTube clips before making your decision.

The initial run through the store will probably take you about 2 hours, but once the bulk is done, stay on top of it, when the new releases on Steam are announced, run down the list and repeat the same process. Keep it up to date and you'll reap the rewards as some price reductions are hidden away from the store front page!

Hopefully this will help someone out there! If you also have any tips you'd like to share, leave a comment below.


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