Steam Wishlists

5th December 2011

Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3

This is an off-the-cuff article, that is to say I am basically writing it with no research and no drafts. What you get is the first thing that comes out my head and I am in a hurry!

I love Steam. It’s made my life so much easier. Partly because I hate DVDs or CDs and partly because of all the other features. Sure, there are some things I HATE about it, but everything in life is a compromise.

Anyway, one of those features is the Wishlist. When somebody does something nice for me I sometimes buy them a game from their wishlist.

It’s an easy way to thank them without embarrassing them by asking what game they would like. Of course, Valve didn’t invent them and I have been using my Amazon Wishlist for years(If anybody wants to thank me 😉 )

It clearly helps their business. But how does having 10 games or more on a list help them? I am asking that questions because Valve recently started their Daily Wishlist Giveaway. Every day, 10 people get a game of the day if they enter the draw AND have at least 10 games on their wishlist.

I suppose that it means the more games on people’s wishlists, the more games people buy for those people.

It’s incredibly clever on Valve’s part – gotta respect that. They are really leveraging their delivery platform.

So, it’s not a proper poll question but who has added games just to enter the giveaway?

And do you have any other ideas why they want you to have 10 games on our wishlists?

14 Comments

  1. You know what? I am going to add games to my wishlist and enter the draw, just to see what happens. Wish me luck.

  2. MikeS

    For me personally, the wishlist is pretty pointless. I made one during the Summer promotion, as making a list earned me a ticket, and I’ve just updated it for this latest prize draw, although the chances of actually winning are remote to say the least!

  3. MikeS

    I wonder if Valve collate the entries on wishlists so that publishers can decide how to best market and price their games on Steam? There must be a lot of factors that persuade a publisher to discount their game(s) for a Daily Deal or a Midweek Madness promotion and this could be one of them.

    1. Good point. May help to set price points too.

  4. Dias

    The image link on the main page is broken.

  5. Soylent Bacon

    I’ve only added games to my Wish List for the giveaway and the summer promotion. I never really considered that others could use it as a gift-giving guide for my friends. I guess it can come in handy for games I forget to mention that I want, especially older/obscure games, since they don’t tend to come up in conversation often.

  6. Derbler

    there are more than 10 games I want and do not have, so for me it’s a non-issue

  7. Well, yeah, I added 10 games for a previous draw similar to this. But now I just add games to the wishlist I want.. just for me to see xD I have 25 so far in order of most want. The chances are slim but hey, its free, worth a try, gotta be in it to win it, Good luck everyone!

  8. Aaron

    For me it is nice as I love to pass it forward so in some cases I will purchase the game just to give it away. Just my thought, The wish list to some person with 8 games and it took him 2 years to get those games and for me to show up and give that sort of person a game makes a bad day turn good.

    1. That’s a great thing to do. I’ve done it a few times when there have been amazing offers. I still remember when somebody bought me Osmos (Sorry, I can’t remember who, wasn’t somebody I chat with very often) made me smile the whole week.

      Perhaps I should start a Pay It Forward week promotion.

  9. I only started using the wishlist as part of the summer sale promotions but I have found it handy as a sort of bookmarking tool for games on Steam. If I see something that is interesting but I either don’t have the time or money to buy it, I will add it to the wishlist. That way I can check back to find what I thought was good when I have time or there is a sale etc.

    There are so many games on steam now that the smaller indie titles get buried after a while, especially when big retail releases come around during holiday season.

  10. Poison_Berrie

    I use the wishlist to check up on prices.

    I handily got all the games I’ve been planning on getting in one list.

    EDIT: Thank you Phillip and your Amazon wish-list for attending me of an new Reynolds novel in the works.

Leave a Response

Comment Formatting Guide

Well formatted comments are much easier to read. Please copy and paste the HTML Tags to use in your comment

  • HEADER: <div class="fix"></div><div class="sbe3">TEXT HERE</div>
  • BOLD: <strong>TEXT HERE</strong>
  • ITALIC: <em>TEXT HERE</em>
  • SPOILER: <span class="spoiler">TEXT HERE</span>