By Jim Rossignol on March 26th, 2009 at 7:53 pm.
These twenty-four hour sales barely give us enough time to realise that they’re happening. I mean I do have to sleep half the week, you know. Anyway, Ubi’s Far Cry 2 – which I know is hotly debated, but I thought was splendid – is currently up on Steam for $15 until 9am PST tomorrow. Probably. Something like that. I should check, really. What I do know is that it’s a US only offer, and it’s £18 in the UK on Steam. It’s still expensive in the rest of the world though, which is rubbish. Also GoG, whose convenient sign-up link wot-we-are-advertising is at the bottom of our sidebar (eh, wink, nudge etc) have just announced a stack of older Ubi games on their roster, including Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Beyond Good and Evil, and IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946, with more on the horizon. Beyond Good & Evil is one of the RPS love-games. We’d buy it a pint and take it home in our van. (John even wrote longingly about it here.)
26/03/2009 at 19:58 ChaosSmurf says:
Delicious Prince of Persia is delicious, not being available on Steam in the civilised countries.
26/03/2009 at 19:59 teo says:
15$? It’s 25€ here!!
The game isn’t that great anyway
26/03/2009 at 20:00 Recomposer says:
And Cannon Fodder is now on GOG too. Cannon Fodder (excitement rising)!
26/03/2009 at 20:00 Fractus says:
$15? Nice. Steam has it on sale in Europe too for 25 €. Convert 25€ to dollars and you get a bit over 30$.
It’s still slightly cheaper than at retail, so I might get it. However, it’s amazing how a digitally distributed product can be twice as expensive depending on which side of the Atlantic you live.
26/03/2009 at 20:02 pkt-zer0 says:
EuroSteam’s Far Cry 2 goes for 25€ at the moment – only slightly more expensive than retail. WOT A BEARGAIN!
26/03/2009 at 20:02 Colthor says:
That GoG link/ad in your sidebar’s quite handy. You should try to get similarly unobtrusive, un-animated, non-Flash ads for Steam and Impulse so I never have to type their URLs again either. And maybe make you some money.
26/03/2009 at 20:06 Heliocentric says:
Yeah, cheaper at retail. What a bargin, our currency is worth moderately more and we get the luxury of spending numerically more the same product. Yunno what? Piss off ubi. However, ubi on gog? Let me kiss you ubi.
26/03/2009 at 20:06 Still annoyed says:
Cannon Fodder on GOG? That’s great!
26/03/2009 at 20:07 Jazmeister says:
Wow, an effective advertisement! I clicked through, and it looks good!
Just what is wrong with these TV advert types, anyway?
26/03/2009 at 20:19 Seniath says:
I will admit, I caved to the power of The Sale; picked up Far Cry 2 even though I had no real inkling to do so. Not to mention the fact that, even at 50% off, it’s still more expensive than at retail (it’s currently going for £13.99 on Gameplay).
Gods I’m weak.
26/03/2009 at 20:21 Fractus says:
Ah, disregard that “might buy”. Amazon uk has it for £15, or 16 €. What a pointless “sale”.
26/03/2009 at 20:24 dadioflex says:
Was looking around the onlines for FC2 prices (purely out of curiosity) and noticed Fallout 3 is £16.99 at gameplay.co.uk FWIW.
(Oh that amazon FC2 price is marketplace so you’d pay a couple of quid carriage. the standard price is £17.99)
26/03/2009 at 20:26 Frank says:
Heroes of Might and Magic (3D0 era, now Ubisoft’s) is heading to GOG. Best news ever.
26/03/2009 at 20:28 Turin Turambar says:
BG&E, uno of the few Ubisoft games i can recomend! :D
26/03/2009 at 20:29 Tworak says:
Nothing is ever inexpensive on steam. Wonder if these prices will ever get fixed. At least with the steamware thingy games I can buy the retail copy and register it with Steam for like half the price.
Steam store sux
26/03/2009 at 20:33 Fractus says:
@dadioflex
Yep, but I’m ordering stuff from amazon anyway. Even if I were to only order FC2 from amazon, the postage costs are about £2 which makes it still cheper than the cheapest price I can find in Finland, which is 24€ or about 22 £.
26/03/2009 at 20:34 Vaur says:
Not entirely true Tworak; the games for sale (which I think included pretty much all of them) during the Steam Xmas promotion were undeniably inexpensive.
26/03/2009 at 20:35 Xercies says:
Has limited installations not available here and really expensive in Europe so you can go to hell Ubisoft.
26/03/2009 at 20:45 Pavel says:
Umm. I got FarCry 2 COLLECTOR’s EDITION (the one with the T-Shirt dammit!) for 24 Pounds two months ago, in retail, on game.co.uk………….
No, buying games on Steam is NOT a good deal.Not for a new AAA games anyway.
With that said, I just bought (week ago) Orange Box for 15 Pounds, again on game.co.uk…retail.
How much is that on Steam? 30? Yeah, great deal.
But I DID buy Zeno Clash for 8 euros, I gotta admit that.
26/03/2009 at 20:46 Dracko says:
Hahaha! You should have made this post when it was about Brothers in Arms.
26/03/2009 at 20:47 Jahkaivah says:
Incidentally I am having trouble with the copy of Beyond Good and Evil I brought on steam, it seems somewhere down the line Nivida released a graphics driver which doesn’t agree with BG&E’s water reflections (basically ridiculously low framerates during speedboat parts despite my specs being more than high enough, and neither Ubisoft nor Nvidia can be assed to do anything about it.)
Would really like to play this game, but I would rather play it with Water Reflections on as for some reason Game Developers are unable to make the lower spec water textures look appealing (seriously BG&E’s looks like tin foil and Oblivion’s looked like a tar-pit*).
*Actually come to think about it Bioshock’s Tar Pits looked fairly pretty, perhaps that was a bad simile.
26/03/2009 at 21:07 A-Scale says:
http://blog.wired.com/photos/uncategorized/bush.jpg
26/03/2009 at 21:25 Frye says:
Might be cheap but it’s still a Ubisoft game; Lately, I seem to lose interest after an hour or so in their games. They look great but have no soul. At all.
26/03/2009 at 21:35 gbarules2999 says:
I click on that ad occasionally. I support both sides of that arrangement, adblock doesn’t block it, and it doesn’t take a million megabytes to load.
Far Cry 1, you will soon be mine.
26/03/2009 at 21:36 gbarules2999 says:
Did someone just say that Beyond Good and Evil has no soul?
26/03/2009 at 22:05 cHeal says:
I got Far Cry 2 for free and just couldn’t bare to play any more than a couple of hours. Awfully boring.
26/03/2009 at 22:23 Po0py says:
Wow. Far Cry 2 for £17.50! It’s like they took pity on us and decided we could have it at normal prices. Play.com are doing it for £17.99. Steam is a comedy goldmine sometimes.
Um… I’d hold off getting Beyond Good and Evil from gog.com for a little longer. I have a sneaky suspicion about the Steam weekend deal. Although, it could be something like a cheap arse World in Conflict, which wouldn’t be a bad deal at all if it is the usual 75% deal.
26/03/2009 at 22:23 undead dolphin hacker says:
This thread is now about Beyond Good and Evil.
BG&E had brilliant continuity. The game kept my attention throughout its length, and never did it feel like a chore to play. There were no “man, I want to get through this section so I can get to the next bit of story” moments.
It was also kind of… not memorable. I know I unlocked almost everything in the game, but aside from the big spoilers, I can’t recall a single bit of the game.
I think the graphical style had something to do with it (and alot to do with why it sold so poorly). The game’s plot was mature and disturbing at times, but nothing really conveyed that graphically until the last 1/3rd of the game (which is, coincidentally, the part I remember).
In retrospect I want to say the game had a pervasive sense of dread, like we knew the whole thing was building up to some great horror… but that’s not how I remember it. I remember the game being bright, colorful, and cartoony.
I guess the problem I have with the game is that it told too much and showed too little.
It’s also a case study in truly atrocious marketing.
26/03/2009 at 22:24 Blarghhh says:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxKBCLPP20s
Couldn’t get this song out of my head then.
Can’t get it out now.
26/03/2009 at 22:48 malkav11 says:
$15 is actually dead cheap for Far Cry 2. Pity it’s only a bargain for US types, though.
26/03/2009 at 22:50 Michal says:
Well Far Cry 2 is down from US $50 to $25 in Australia, which is about AU $35 at the moment.
That’s a good deal when compared to the cheapest prices here which are around AU $70 including shipping.
26/03/2009 at 22:52 Ravenger says:
Limited activations on the Steam version – sorry no sale Ubisoft.
26/03/2009 at 23:07 Michal says:
WTF does a game on Steam need 3rd party activation?
26/03/2009 at 23:10 cjlr says:
I once got a copy of IL-2 when I bought my old, old GeForce 4 Ti4200 video card. Man, that was like 8 years ago. Wow. Beyond Good & Evil is ace. I got that one for about $15 (that’s $CAN, mind you) about six months after release, and it consumed my next weekend utterly. And maybe it’s just me, but I can STILL find Sands of Time for, like, $10 at most Best Buy locations in Ontario…
Shit, with all those on GOG, now I feel old. And I just turned 18. Wow.
And Cannon Fodder? That game was brilliant. Well, the gameplay was not the greatest, but everything else was top notch. Plus, it had about the greatest ever.
26/03/2009 at 23:14 cjlr says:
And there’s this version, too:
the music video.
Didn’t that game also keep score as home and away?
26/03/2009 at 23:22 Cooper says:
Not only is it cheaper at retail, it still includes the same DRM as the retail version.
You do have to ask in what manner is this a good deal?
I’ll see what the next two are, but my hopes aren’t high…
26/03/2009 at 23:22 Clovis says:
@Ravenger: I guess that’s worth protesting in principle, but I just don’t see Far Cry 2 as a game that I will want to play again in 10 years. If it doesn’t work in the future, who cares? For now, I’m sure I can get $15 worth of fun out of it.
OTOH, maybe I’ll get lucky and have to install it twice, and then have my hardware fail. Then I’ll look perty dumb.
26/03/2009 at 23:40 RLacey says:
All of the prices of Ubi’s games in this week-long sale have been stupid so far. Like Prince of Persia, which they were offering for £14.99, but which I can get from HMV.co.uk for £12…
26/03/2009 at 23:41 Doctor Doc says:
The game sucks anyway and the bad price will save more people from playing it.
26/03/2009 at 23:46 Rich_P says:
The real sales are over at Gamersgate, now client-free but just as ugly as ever :p
King’s Bounty for $9.99 and Universe at War for $4.99
26/03/2009 at 23:55 drewski says:
Cannon Fodder and Sands of Time WILL be had.
But not today.
I already have BG&E, woo!
27/03/2009 at 00:26 Gorgeras says:
Further to the ‘cheaper at retail’ topic: Sega have brought down the price of Empire: Total War on Steam so it now matches that of GAME, HMV and most other places.
But it is still going at £17.99 at ShopTo.net. I’m currently mulling over whether it’s currently worth buying with all the usual Total War bugs in it. I certainly know it’s not worth the hassle at £30, never mind £40. Reviews be damned, I begin to suspect they are not on our side.
27/03/2009 at 00:50 Eschatos says:
And I paid $50 for this piece of crap…
27/03/2009 at 01:05 Novotny says:
IL-2 Sturmovik : the most under-rated achievement of the last 10 years. A majestic piece of software. Alongside Civ, Counterstrike and perhaps TA/Sup Com, one of my top games ever.
And no-one cares about it *sigh*
27/03/2009 at 01:09 Novotny says:
*under-appreciated, I should say
27/03/2009 at 01:10 wiper says:
Tch, I’m with Jim here – FarCry 2 is fantastic. Well worth the £20 I paid for it a few months back; you guys across the Atlantic are getting a fantastic deal!
Also, already having BG&E and SoT (and both on systems that don’t require installs) saves me money here, fortunately.
27/03/2009 at 01:21 Fumarole says:
$15 for Far Cry 2 is a deal. Pshaw to the nay sayers. Too bad you Brits cannot get in on the action though.
27/03/2009 at 01:32 DD says:
15$? that’s a steal for this game.
27/03/2009 at 01:45 jalf says:
Doesn’t seem worth €25 though.
And of course, please note that it comes with luverly DRM. Max 5 activations on the Steam version.
27/03/2009 at 01:52 Oak says:
Those installs are the “refundable” type, where uninstalling earns you another. Silly to have it on the Steam version, but there you go.
27/03/2009 at 02:11 jalf says:
I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember the last time I uninstalled a game. Games tend to stay on my computer until I format.
Anyway, I could live with that restriction, if the price was reasonable. But charging twice as much from Europeans as they do from Americans doesn’t really work for me.
Plus, of course, it’s not like I’m starved for games to play at the moment. I’ve got plenty of mileage left in DoW2 and ETW, and those are only the last month’s games. I’ve still got a backlog of at least half a dozen other games to play when I have time.
27/03/2009 at 02:38 Oak says:
Fair enough. Though if you’re looking to sink a lot of time into a shooter, it’s a good choice. Jim has been reliably on-point in his posts here about why it’s a stranger and far more worthwhile game than the run-of-the-mill FPS it’s often dismissed as. There was also a recent, long discussion of its merit at The Brainy Gamer that’s worth reading if you’re still in the air about it.
Brass tacks, though: it’s breathtakingly beautiful and full of exciting bang-pow gunfights.
27/03/2009 at 03:05 malkav11 says:
It’s not just uninstalling. They have a revoker tool.
27/03/2009 at 05:09 Matzerath says:
Is there a betting pool for the Friday offering?
27/03/2009 at 05:13 Matzerath says:
Here’s the list of possibilities:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ubisoft_games
I’m banking on ‘Grey’s Anatomy: The Videogame’
27/03/2009 at 07:31 Nimic says:
I bought Far Cry 2 on Steam on the day it was released, played it for an hour or two, and haven’t touched it since. I might try it again at some later time..
27/03/2009 at 08:04 Muzman says:
Me too (not on steam though). It seems like a really admirable game and one I should like, but that first part was utterly uncompelling. I don’t like the feel of the controls and the overwhelming browness of it all either (even though it’s one of the few games where that’s appropriate).
I suspect I’ll like it once I force myself to play a bit more but going back to Stalker is just too easy.
27/03/2009 at 08:31 PC Monster says:
@Blarghhh
Oh my god I LOVE ‘propaganda’! I went nuts when I heard it playing outside the bar and would turn the volume up on my speakers just to sit and listen to it. Not long ago I tracked down the soundtrack, and through sheer repetition this track has become one of my 5-star favourites on Foobar, up there with Wipeout 2097′s ‘Canada’ and the Haegemonia soundtrack. What a tune!
27/03/2009 at 08:35 PC Monster says:
PS: Zertagild’s misheard lyrics for the song are also a joy to listen to. :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJeBUaLpxUU&feature=related
27/03/2009 at 09:43 jon_hill987 says:
At £18 I hardly call it a sale, that is the same price as Amazon. And the Steam version still comes with limited activations.
27/03/2009 at 10:05 Lukasz says:
15 usd. yeah. i would buy it
25 usd…
no thank you. game is not worth it. For that price i can get beyond good and evil, cannon fodder and septerra core.
27/03/2009 at 10:32 Tei says:
I have played this game with 4 other friends on a cybercafe. Is really fun as a casual deathmatch game. Good work guys!.
I will not buy it, because I have read is too much consoley, but looks like a very good game. Soo sad got nerfed for the inferior and obsolete console gameplay style.
27/03/2009 at 10:35 Tei says:
More games sould have a pseudo-sandbox gameplay style like Beyond Good and Evil, “Shark” or Puzzle Quest.
27/03/2009 at 12:42 ZIGS says:
On a somewhat related note, Valve and Ubisoft should get testicular cancer. I’m from Portugal and I can order physical copies of games from the UK for less than on Steam WITH the 50% off
27/03/2009 at 13:29 Will Tomas says:
Yes, but then most of these games that have just been released on GoG can still be found in shops for cheaper than $9.99 – most of them are in the £5 rack in Game. At current exchange rate you’d still be better off going to the shop, but I still applaud GoG for putting them out there digitally too. I might even be more tempted that way.
27/03/2009 at 14:43 jonfitt says:
I saw the FC2 sale and bought it forthwith. I disagree with the DRM, but at $15 I don’t care. Yay for flexibility.
It’s a shame Steam in the UK isn’t outpacing retail prices, but retail in the UK discount PC games heavily anyway, so you get spoiled thinking that’s the norm. In the US the retailers don’t chop prices nearly as quickly.
27/03/2009 at 14:44 jonfitt says:
BGaE will be my first GoG purchase sometime soon (I’ve already got pretty much all the games they have which I’d like :) )
27/03/2009 at 14:53 Morph says:
I buy off Steam because then I have a game to play within an hour or so. Ordering off Amazon etc. means I’d have a game to play within a day or two. I’m willing to pay a few quid more to have the game ASAP.
Does no-one else see this as an advantage?
27/03/2009 at 15:11 jonfitt says:
@Morph
I see this as a huge advantage.
I’ll just suddenly get an urge to play a game right now, and Steam fulfils that.
I don’t mean to sound cocky, but my time is worth more than it used to be, and if I’ve got some time and want to play a certain type of game, it’s worth a small price differential to get it immediately.
27/03/2009 at 16:10 Maskatron says:
Uh, some of you may want to pick up Beyond Good and Evil off of Steam this weekend because you get 3 other games (Far Cry 1, IL2 1946, and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic) all for 10 bucks. :)
27/03/2009 at 16:20 ZIGS says:
I buy off Steam because then I have a game to play within an hour or so. Ordering off Amazon etc. means I’d have a game to play within a day or two. I’m willing to pay a few quid more to have the game ASAP.
Does no-one else see this as an advantage?
I just play a pirated version while the legit one doesn’t arrive. lol, sometimes, after the legit ones arrives, I just keep playing the pirated one with the unopened box next to me (happened with Burnout paradise). Heck, I paid for it so it’s ok
27/03/2009 at 16:21 danielcardigan says:
or £8.99. I’m really getting to like digital distribution again. I bought 8 games off Steam last weekend and nearly spent twenty quid.
27/03/2009 at 17:49 Gorgeras says:
I’m surprised at Dark Messiah’s meta-score. I watched the videos and the combat looks brilliant even if the graphics are obviously dated. The player score is somewhat higher and only the magazines that don’t matter gave it below 80.
I will take this offer. Take it and rub it on myself.
27/03/2009 at 18:16 jonfitt says:
GAH! I was going to purchase my first GoG game, but now Steam has 4 for the same price. I already have FarCry and 1946, but still DMoM and BGaE for $10 is a deal.
27/03/2009 at 18:54 Carra says:
Already found the $9.99 price tag a bit too high for Beyond good & Evil as it was up on Steam for €5.00.
And now I also get Dark Messiah for $9.99. Sold!
Bit sad to see Steam trying to steal gogs customers though (don’t tell me it’s a coincidence that those games are on sale the week GoG sells them). I really like GoGs service. But I like my wallet more.
27/03/2009 at 19:16 Carra says:
Also, kings bounty up for €9.99 at gamersgate!
27/03/2009 at 19:57 Alex says:
This post should really be updated to reflect the Steam Weekend Deal.
27/03/2009 at 20:34 Paul_M says:
Does BG&E work on Vista? Steam says not..
27/03/2009 at 22:14 Blather Blob says:
@Alex
The SavyGamer “what’s for sale on Steam/Gog/Impulse/GamersGate/D2D/various websites I’ve never heard of that offer to ship things to you in exchange for numbers prefaced with £-symbols” posts seem to have become a weekend thing here, so I’m sure the Ubisoft pack on Steam will be mentioned at some point.
28/03/2009 at 13:43 EvaUnit02 says:
@Paul_M:-
My Steam bought copy of BG&E works fine under Vista x64, once I used a work-around from the forum (+ ALchemy to regain the EAX support).
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=682893
28/03/2009 at 20:02 Paul_M says:
Thanks – I risked it and bought it in the meantime. It’s about time I gave it a go – a shameful gap in my computer gaming experience.
28/03/2009 at 20:13 jalf says:
@Paul_M: My GoG bought copy of BG&E works great under Win7 x64 as well. I haven’t bothered with EAX workarounds though.
I had to disable HW vertex processing in the launcher to eliminate a bit of graphics corruption, but other than that it’s been a surprisingly smooth ride.
Eh, it’s convenient, sure, but often, it’s not really a big issue for me. If you preorder a game from Amazon or other online stores, they generally ship it a few days before launch so you have it on release day. If I feel like playing a game all of a sudden then yes, I sometimes grab it from Steam. But more often, I’m happy to wait a couple of days to get the nice boxed version, usually at half the price or less.
The convenience of not having to wait for a game to be shipped to me doesn’t outweigh the crazy Euro prices on most of Steam’s games.
(And as someone said above, once I’ve ordered it, why not pirate it as well? Best of both worlds, no?)