What’s the best game deal you ever got?

For me it was the original Subnautica. Was a free give away before it got popular and I had no expectations when I played it. Really enjoyed the exploration and the pacing.

Second was Axiom Verge - I got it for free before it became popular but I don’t remember how. I bought it when it went to Steam because I wanted to support the creator.

Both are fun exploration sorts of games if you haven’t played them. Axiom Verge is a metroidvania. Kinda a weird game, but in a good way.

  • graymess@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    It’s not really worthy of Patient Gamers because I bought it shortly after launch (in an actual box at Best Buy), but the Orange Box was one of the most absurdly good deals I’ve ever seen. I can’t even calculate how many hours I’ve gotten out of it because it ended up on an old Steam account, but TF2 alone is easily my most played game ever.

    • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      9 months ago

      Same story, 1400 hours in TF2, and traded enough hats to sell em all for an Index. Great deal!

      • Bosht@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Okay thats a level of crazy I never thought Id see. Trading in digital items for enough cash to buy a freakin VR set. Madness. Congrats!

        • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          8 months ago

          Thank you! I got wrongfully terminated in my early 20s and got a bunch of money. Took a year off from working and played like 40-60 hours of TF2 a week hahaha

          I didn’t gamble a ton on hats, but I had a “key guy” who would sell me 2.50 keys for 1.20. Probably spent 200 total on keys and one single unusual I pulled sold for 450! A bunch of others sold for 100-200.

          I quit like eight years ago with tonnns of crates in my inventory. One day there was a glitch that made all old crates ONLY drop unusual hats. I logged on and had like 40 of those crates, usually selling for .03. They went for like 8.00-12.00 that day… spent all morning at work listing them on the market!

    • DABDA@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      I was really hoping for an Orange Cube around the announcement of Half-Life: Alyx.

    • korny@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I bought this for the 360 and it blew my mind at the time. I had never played a Half Life game before, and that coupled with TF2 led me down the path to PC building for the superior gaming platform. I owe a lot to The Orange Box!

  • caut_R@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I think I got Terraria for like a buck (can’t remember where) and while it isn‘t my favorite game ever, my gf loved it to death and I got dozens of hours out of it (my gf hundreds). It‘s undeniably a great game and the dev is a maniac in terms of long term support.

    • henfredemars@infosec.pub
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      9 months ago

      I got it in exchange for a slice of pepperoni pizza because an old school friend wanted me to join him.

      Wow, what a value.

  • MurrayL@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I bought a big box copy of Quake 2 on eBay many years ago, and was surprised to open it and find not only Q2 inside the box but also a full retail CD of the original Quake. I’d never played the non-shareware version before, so I got two great games that day!

  • specialseaweed@sh.itjust.works
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    9 months ago

    Decades ago I bought a sealed copy of Dragon Warrior off a guy for $30. While exchanging info he said he’d throw in a sealed copy of Dragon Warrior 2 for $20 more. I wasn’t really a collector (I wanted to play them) so I said sure what the hell, nice boxes and inserts are always cool. I never got around to playing them so they sat in a plastic shell.

    They’re perfect, they’re unopened, and I still got em.

  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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    9 months ago

    I bought Factorio and Minecraft in Beta/Alpha, and still use the same keys to this day. So something like 15 years of entertainment.

    Those definitely weren’t patient gaming buys, but they were good buys.

    That said, I’m not a patient gamer because of cost, I’m patient because I don’t have much time and don’t want to waste it on buggy games. So I wait until bugs to be ironed out and the content to be complete before I buy.

    • jemikwa@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      9 months ago

      I bought Minecraft a month before Beta came out and man what a deal that was. Only something like $10. I got thousands of hours out of that over the following 5ish years. I don’t play it as often any more, but I still think it was worth it

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        Yup, I don’t play anymore, but my kids do. I ended up buying a second license so my two boys could play at the same time with MS accounts, but that original licence has gotten a ton of use.

  • Donut@leminal.space
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    9 months ago

    I don’t know if this counts, but it was a trade. I won Tenchu z for the Xbox 360 and I didn’t have one (yet), so I traded with some random guy for the following GameCube titles:

    • DBZ Budokai
    • Viewtiful Joe
    • Super Mario Sunshine
    • Tales of Symphonia
  • crossmr@kbin.social
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    9 months ago

    Years ago, probably… 2006 or 2007, Microsoft had some kind of deal online where you could get Age of Empires 3 for 99 cents, it wasn’t that old at the time. Bought it on my hotmail back in the day, but lost that when Microsoft decided they desperately needed to wipe e-mails for people.

  • KingJalopy @lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    Picked up borderlands 3 for $3 maybe 2 months after release. Bought 2 copies actually one for my brother.

  • Drasglaf@sh.itjust.works
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    9 months ago

    I got Copy of Maniac Mansion for NES for free at a second hand games store . According to the store owner the game didn’t work and asked me if I wanted it because the box still looks good in a shelf anyway. I put it in my NES and it worked without issues. This was around 10-12 years ago.

    Edit: Typo.

  • tim-clark@kbin.social
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    9 months ago

    Couple of decades ago bought a box of new ps2/1 games that had fallen off a truck… got around 300 games for 100$

  • otp@sh.itjust.works
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    9 months ago

    Final Fantasy 13 disc-only for $0.33 (CAD). It was.3 games for a dollar from the local library when they were clearing out old stock.

  • simple@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    Got Bloons Tower Defense 6 for free on mobile (it was a 24 hour promo I believe), and I also got it for $1 on Steam. There’s cloud save between both of them and I’ve maybe put in over 200 hours into that game, what a steal that was.