Treasure hunting has never been so easy!

You don't even have to sail across the seven seas but you still might have to fight THE KRAKEN! Steam, Valve's digital game store/game manager, is a bastion of great deals. Every week they have a mid-week sale and from Friday to Monday they always have an even better sale. For holidays they have salse that would put The Outrageous Audio Guy to shame. (Check that out two links in the same paragraph, have to keep you rabid monkeys entertained some how.) It's usually a different set of games on sale every day for X days during the gift giving season. Last year leading up to Christmas they would have a rotating door of games that were slashed in price, my girlfriend got me Borderlands for thirty three bucks last year. This was two months after it had come out and it was still at a fifty dollar price tag. Now I know I'm sounding like a shill talking Steam up and yeah maybe I am but this years sale is pretty interesting and has already caused some controversy.




Above is how many people are seeing Gabe Newell, the current managing director of Valve. The reason? A sale with the theme of a treasure hunt. The games being on sale isn't the issue, neither is the opportunity of winning games. It's the fact that Team Fortress 2 hats are involved. Yes cosmetic items for a game released by Valve. Now I know not everyone is TF2 savvy so let me explain what a hat is in TF2. You put them on your character to change their appearance. That's all, it's like a hat you or I would wear in real life. So why are people calling foul you ask? The way you get the hats is by fulfilling objectives in the games that are on sale. So it's a marketing decision. On top of that people are complaining that Valve is spending time putting more cosmetic items in game rather than fixing the flaws currently in game. Yeah I can understand that to a degree, but it's only a model. I've been following a TF2 modeling community the last couple weeks and some of those guys literally fart out basic models in an hour. Now think of a Valve employee who's job it is to model and how fast they could make a hat and texture it. I would assume not very long. So in Valve's defense, I don't really think adding the hats are taking too much of their bug fixing time/budget. With all of that you must also be asking yourself, this hat much be pretty damn slick if people are spending money on it. It can be seen here and below.
The hat above is actually one of three hats a consumer can unlock. For fulfilling 5 objectives you get the hat above. Fulfilling 15 objectives unlocks the chest on top of the hat and it drops particle effects of golden money coins as you move around. When you fulfill all 28 objectives over the treasure hunt period you get a super special hat which style is unknown to the common Steam peasant. Valve is planning on revealing that hat at a later date. A lot of people are raging about the last hat specifically, even stating that they will vote to kick players with it, because of how much money you spend on it. Most people want it to use in the "Mannconomy" which is TF2's economy, but I'll touch on that more in next weeks Evolution of gaming. But what it really comes down to is bitching about something, people have to whine about everything and by looking at the Team Fortress 2 forums it's evident. So to keep this rant shorter, how do I feel about it? I'm fine with it, Valve made the choice to include hats in their sell. It's a marketing choice they've been making since Left 4 Dead 2. It's ingenious and compulsive collectors will drop as much money as they can to get the rare and exclusive hats. I'll be the first to admit I'm hat crazy and I have collector habits, ask anyone that writes here, they'll tell you my hobbies and how they consume me. All of my shelf space is taken up by Star Wars, GI Joe, Ghostbusters and wrestling figures and those are just the ones I have on display. I have to have them all (Gotta catch all dem pokemans! - stache) . But from years of collecting I've learned to draw a line, well in most places. I went from wanting 10-15 clone tooper figures to not buying any so I'm on the road to recovery, I think. So in my opinion what it comes down to is people wanting everything and either yelling they can't afford it and people having the money and having to have the rare hat. I'm even trying to get to the 15 objectives hat as anyone that has a Steam account can unlock the 5 objectives hat. But I know realistically that I can't afford the 28 objective hat nor would I want to buy it with Saint Santa day around the corner. But really this sale is all about the games and the opportunity to win free ones, including the grand prize of 100 free games! The bubble that even mentions the hats says "You want hats too?". Valve knows people want hats, they use them because people want them and it boosts Steam's sales. So you can't really blame them, it's the fan bases fault.


If you haven't already you can check out the sales page here.